This Pepsi parenting hack may help during flu season
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Pepsi only decided against 'Brad's Drink' because of one medical concern. (Reuters)
If you’re having trouble getting your child to take cold medicine, Reddit has the perfect solution for you. One parent crafted a canny illusion with an unopened Pepsi that had her kid guzzling cough medicine without cringing or crying.
“It’s not medicine, it’s Pepsi,” the parent captioned the photo. It features an adorable child sipping from what he thinks is a can of Pepsi, unbeknownst to the bottle of cold medicine that the straw really leads to behind the can.
So the kid will grow up thinking soda tastes like cold medicine — and can rid him of a stuffy nose.
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“Now this kid will grow up seeking Pepsi to cure every ailment,” remarked one snarky Reddit user.
But the hack was actually far more ironic than meets the eye. You see, Pepsi was originally called Brad’s Drink, but later renamed for its rumored ability to cure digestion problems.
“Fun fact,” one commenter asserted, “Pepsi got its name as a cure for dyspepsia.”
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“Pepsi is a Greek word and means digestion thus the word dyspepsia when you have digestion problems,” said another.
But the use of soda as a cure-all for illness didn’t stop at Pepsi Cola. Other companies had rumors about them, as well. “Coke also used to have cocaine in it, which is why it was sold as a medicine. It had a numbing effect. And 7 Up used to have Lithium,” a Reddit user pointed out.
However many correlations exist in history, soda does not cure illness — at least not anymore. Instead, soda has been associated with making things a whole lot worse. If your kid has a cold, don’t give them actual soda. It has a whole lot more than just a spoonful of sugar. But this hack could be cute, and save you the screaming once you do try and force the medicine down.