One of the more disgusting news stories doing the rounds at the moment concerns a lawsuit against Pepsi claiming that a dead mouse was found in a can of Mountain Dew. Pepsi’s defence? The mouse would have dissolved and turned into jelly, apparently. That’s a disgusting thought and a weird legal strategy, but what’s less clear is whether it would happen in Australia.
Picture by Callan Fraser via Mountain Dew AU
The reason? Mountain Dew in Australia is a rather different beast than its US counterpart. While both have an effectively identical kilojoule count (500Kj in a 250ml glass), the US version contains caffeine, while the Australian version doesn’t. And while the American drink follows typical US practice in using high fructose corn syrup as its main sweetener, the Australian version uses sugar. Whether these differences would hinder the drink’s alleged mouse-dissolving properties is a tricky chemical question, but we shouldn’t jump to conclusions.
In any case, as we’ve frequently advised when it comes to drinking, water is a much better choice than soft drink in any form. Water will not dissolve a mouse, though it won’t stop it rotting.
Pepsi Says Mountain Dew Can Dissolve Mouse Carcasses [The Atlantic]
StevoTheDevo
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 11:52 AMI’m guessing that PepsiCo think the acids are likely to dissolve a mouse more than the sugars.
StevoTheDevo
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 11:56 AMThe linked article also points at the acidity..
I wouldn’t expect the acidity of either version of the drink to be sufficiently different solely due to the difference in sugar used to sweeten the drink.
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
Thursday, January 5, 2012 at 9:00 AMHang on.. Don’t most soft drinks have acidity regulators anyway?
Drew
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 12:08 PMI bet that right now, somewhere within Pepsi HQ there is a mouse inside a Mountain Dew can.
Matt
Thursday, January 5, 2012 at 9:22 AMNo… but there used to be :)
Edrin
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 12:17 PMRight before lunch…..
Then again, i’m guessing that i can use pepsi to remove rust??
StevoTheDevo
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 12:40 PMIndeed you could.. You could use any soft drink for that matter.
Edrin
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 12:44 PMAnd yet I still drink that stuff boatload every month.
Something is wrong somewhere.
Deb
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 2:35 PMexcept for the fact that your digestive system is also covered in acids and would dissolve the crap out of more than rust.
Soft drinks are bad because of all the sugar you consume mindlessly and the sugar and acids that can accumulate on your teeth, not your internal organs
EMC2
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 2:41 PMok, so who is up for a mythbusters-style experiment? ;)
Stove
Thursday, January 5, 2012 at 2:45 AMSo…a softdrink here is different to a softdrink in the US which lawyers claim may have non-useful properties – but you’re not sure and have no evidence to decide on?
I’m just curious; where’s the lifehack in this?
Jason Hammond
Thursday, January 5, 2012 at 8:28 PMthe next time my cat catches a mouse i am going to try this out.
Rhys Hale
Friday, January 6, 2012 at 12:54 AMI’ve found ants living under the lid of a bottle of Mountain Dew, and on another occasion I found a drowned insect of some kind in a sealed bottle.
Gary Tong
Saturday, January 7, 2012 at 10:08 PMOff-topic, there is a blog that’s conducting an experiment whether Mountain Dew does dissolve mice. Daily updates.
http://liquidmousedew.tumblr.com/