Why don't you guys feel the medicinal flavour in Root Beer Sodas?

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AskAnAmerican-ModTeam@reddit

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SirTwitchALot@reddit

Our medicine is flavored differently

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railmanmatt@reddit

Artificial grape, anyone? Yuuuuck.

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Jill1974@reddit

Artificial cherry. Double yuck!

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ur_moms_chode@reddit

Whatever the fuck Augmentin and Triaminic were, barf

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rikityrokityree@reddit

Orange- ade?

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ur_moms_chode@reddit

I don't know what it was but I would literally throw up

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Jill1974@reddit

Cherry Robitussin (sp?) was my personal dread. 🤢

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ur_moms_chode@reddit

I don't hate it

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OG-BigMilky@reddit

Yup I think that’s why I hate Dr Pepper.

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rikityrokityree@reddit

Vs medicinal cherry?. Ill take grape

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stitchplacingmama@reddit

I have to hide grape zyrtec and I tried the artificial grape flavoring for water and my kid drank it and asked for more. I also tried black cherry when they were out of grape flavor. He also liked that one and declared it his favorite. It makes me gag when I open the container. He also loves mixing the grape and black cherry flavoring. I once got equate brand dayquil, it had an unlabled flavor but it was orange and next to the honey flavored dayquil. I took a chance, it was the worst surprise, as it was actually cherry. I nearly vomited.

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revengeappendage@reddit

We used to have to give children’s liquid Zyrtec, grape flavor, to our dog. Then she would burp, and it would smell like artificial grape, and I’m still kind of weirded out thinking about it lol

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alicelestial@reddit

i had grape and bubblegum medicine as a kid, but don't consider either of those flavors medicinal. grape soda was my favorite as a kid but cherry is my favorite now; bubblegum flavor tends to remind me of the mouthwash from the dentist when i was little, but not so much it prevents me from ingesting bubblegum flavored things. i didn't know this was a thing, BUT, i am neurodivergent so maybe this is just one of my Things.

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Saltpork545@reddit

We don't associate the flavor with medicine or mouthwash. Our medicine and mouthwash are flavored differently. We associate the taste with root beer. If you grew up with a flavor association with candy and someone else came along and said 'why doesn't this thing taste like medicine to you?', why do you think that would be? Your medicine isn't flavored like it but a drink you grew up with is.

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rikityrokityree@reddit

What flavor was the old Vicks 44? That stuff aside from being 120 proof had a weird herbal flavor

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JadeHarley0@reddit

Because it's delicious

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Redbubble89@reddit

It was what parents had out at cookouts and pizza parties for the kids and it has a vanilla rooty flavor. Moxie from Maine is a drink that I am shocked is still consumed. Root Beer was something we acquired as kids like a cream soda. I think certain grape flavors taste worst than root beer.

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Icy_Advice_5071@reddit

Moxie is disgusting. Sorry. Lots of good things from Maine, but not that.

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Redbubble89@reddit

It is earthy and bitter and I can understand why it was so big through the 1920s and when Ted Williams was on the bottle but also why it's declined and stuck in cult status. Some people like sambuca and that flavor and why others can't stand the stuff.

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cool_weed_dad@reddit

Moxie is my favorite soda but completely understand why many people don’t like it. It definitely has a slightly bitter medicinal flavor to it.

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Redbubble89@reddit

It's one that I tried as a kid and hated but as an adult, it's interesting but wouldn't go out of my way for it.

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EntertainmentFew7436@reddit

First time I tried Moxie, I had to pull to the end of a parking and spit it out before I’d… um… get sick! Fwiw, it’s as bad as Marmite.🤢🤢

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cool_weed_dad@reddit

It’s always fun getting people to try for the first time lol. About 2/3 react with violent disgust to it.

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ThroatFun478@reddit

Moxie is flavored with gentian root. I didn't grow up with it, but I like it. To me, it's kind of like the bitter herbal aperitifs like aperol or campari.

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machagogo@reddit

Becauee our medicine isn't flavored that way

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ThroatFun478@reddit

I'm not gonna pile on with the same (true) answers as everyone else. But I will say that we have a number of beverages that are, I guess, herbal in character. There's root beer, of course, but birch beer is also great! Try sarsparilla if you can, or spruce beer. There's also ginger ale and ginger beer, and cream soda! Dr. Pepper is perceived as medicinal by some, but I don't agree. Good luck trying weird American sodas!

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aliquotoculos@reddit

Most of our root beer sodas are artificial root beer flavoring, so that may contribute. Also have TONS of sweeteners.

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thatsnotideal1@reddit

The medicine we grew up with didn’t have that flavor. I associate strong fake cherry flavor with cough medicine, for example.

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ValityS@reddit

From what I recall it's mostly very old medications which used plant derived ingredients which often had a similar taste to root beer. Many of these contained ingredients refined from roots, barks and herbs and usually had left over taste from them. As opposed to being for the purpose of adding those flavors. Particularly common are older medicated toothpastes, mouthwashes, antiseptics, cough syrups and occasionally pain killers.

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Icy_Advice_5071@reddit

True, but then Dr. Pepper has a strong cherry flavor, and I like it just as much as root beer. The flavor I have aversion to is imitation raspberry.

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oswin13@reddit

This. Black cherry soda tastes like medicine to me. Actually grape tastes like Dimetap to me. Live me some Root Beer though.

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OpportunityTop5274@reddit

Yes, I avoid the red colored candies in a package because those taste like medicine to me.

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brUn3tt3grl@reddit

As a kid medicine was pink bubblegum flavor. Wish it still was haha.

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Illustrious-Shirt569@reddit

A few years ago I had a throat infection, and was prescribed amoxicillin (I’m in my 40’s). Just for kicks, I asked if I could get it as a liquid instead of tablets since I remembered liking the “gooey pink stuff” a lot as a kid. Well, it was definitely sweetened, but did NOT taste good. Oh, well.

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ssk7882@reddit

Because our children's medicine isn't flavored with salicylates. Ours is usually flavored with sickly-sweet artificial cherry.

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_Troika@reddit

I’m so interested to know what European medicine tastes like to see what I’m always hearing about Root Beer and Sarsaparilla also have a very strong involvement in American culture, so even if we did have your medicine I think we’d say our meds taste like root beer, not the other way around

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EntertainmentFew7436@reddit

And horehound?

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manicpixidreamgirl04@reddit

Because our medicine doesn't taste like that

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Nynasa@reddit

Our cough syrups aren't root beer flavored

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EntertainmentFew7436@reddit

I think they used to be?

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NoContextCarl@reddit

Its all personal preference; modern USA root beer probably doesn't resemble root beer from 50+ years ago. Way too sweet and syrupy even compared to when I was kid. There's some smaller niche brands of more traditional style root beer, so that would likely be the closest thing to how it used to be. But again, all personal preference...some love it, some hate it.

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skin_peeler@reddit

I quit drinking grape pop and grape Huggies as a child for that very reason. They have that distinct Dimetapp flavor. Except one is carbonated and the other isn't.

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tea-wallah@reddit

We do recognize that it’s an odd flavor. But were used to it.

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RVA_SuperRaven@reddit

I hate root beer; it taste like dirt to me. or awful well water. I am an American.

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Freethecaterpillar-3@reddit

Our medicine is usually cherry or nasty fake purple grape flavored. I despise grape flavored anything so I always got the nasty cherry stuff. I still can’t drink cherry flavored alcohol of any sort because it’ll give me the reaction you speak of. Yuck.

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Dazzling_Dish_@reddit

Cough syrups here are cherry, grape and orange flavored. Childhood medicines are flavored the same way with bubble gum being popular. You don’t get a medicinal taste, just a gross artificial bitter taste sometimes.

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Hoosier_Jedi@reddit

It never occurred to you that our medicines might taste different? Why is it that foreigners REFUSE to even try to use critical thinking about America?

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kanhaaaaaaaaaaaa@reddit (OP)

Have you ever thought sometimes it's a good idea to have discussion along with searching about same thing? Forum exists to share experiences.

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Hoosier_Jedi@reddit

So, no, you never bothered to think about why. But you don’t want admit you couldn’t figure out the obvious answer, so you have try to reframe things to save face. We’ve seen this dance before, champ.

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SpeedLow3@reddit

Because then they wouldn’t be able to flatten us in their small world view created by watching *** checks notes**** friends and the documentary high school musical

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Hoosier_Jedi@reddit

It never ceases to amaze me how often people use “Friends” as an example of American culture. It’s not 1995 anymore FFS.

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2PlasticLobsters@reddit

Are you in/from Germany? I've heard medicine tastes like root beer there. Ours tends to be either a fake cherry flavor, which really tastes nothing like cherries. But it's better than the green cold medicine that tastes like toxic waste.

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geneb0323@reddit

I actually really like the taste of the green cough syrup.

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christikayann@reddit

The green nyquil is licorice flavored

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Broad_Tie9383@reddit

Like nightmare licorice, though, which is actually how I feel about the grape flavored stuff also.

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kanhaaaaaaaaaaaa@reddit (OP)

I'm from India but yeah I've been to Germany too. Upon researching, our cough syrups have herbal flavouring probably why I sense the similar smell.

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riarws@reddit

I’ve been told it’s wintergreen flavor. We don’t use that for cough syrup, only for food and drink.

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Far_Silver@reddit

Our medicines are usually grape or cherry flavored.

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Upstairs_Highlight25@reddit

I associate the three similar flavors of root beer, sarsaparilla, and sassafras with sweets because all three flavors are used for sweets locally. It doesn’t taste like medicine to me as I never had medication with a similar flavor. Some artificial orange flavors take me right back to being sick as a child because I had orange flavored cough syrup. My mother always picked orange flavored cough syrup as she had cherry flavored as a child and hated the taste.

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gard3nwitch@reddit

In the US, children's medicines are usually either artificial grape or artificial cherry flavor. I can't drink grape soda because it tastes like medicine.

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Broad_Tie9383@reddit

All the Brits complaining it tastes like toothpaste really makes me want to try their toothpaste. Ours is just varying degrees of mint.

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OG-BigMilky@reddit

Jäegermeister = Vicks Formula 44D

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aku0012@reddit

I can't have any cherry flavored alcoholic drink. Makes me think of Robitussen. 🤮

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JohnMarstonSucks@reddit

I didn't grow up using liquid medicine other than the pink amoxicillin I would get for ear infections. There are no flavors out there that make me think of medicine, just bad attempts at flavor when I use liquid medicine now.

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DragonKing0203@reddit

Our medicine is flavored different to yours, so we never develop the association. It’s like if all medicine tasted like… I don’t know, chocolate. That doesn’t mean chocolate tastes bad but we would develop an association with chocolate flavor as medicine.

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devnullopinions@reddit

Our medicine flavorings are different. If there is a flavor it’s commonly flavored as cherry or grape.

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SpeedLow3@reddit

Girl what tf are you talking about…

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d_ippy@reddit

I love root beer but then someone told me it had wintergreen and licorice and now it’s all I taste. I still like it though.

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Prestigious-Name-323@reddit

Because our cough syrup doesn’t taste like root beer.

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Henry_Fleischer@reddit

We probably have differently flavored medicine. It could also be that you have differently flavored root beer, for example Mug brand root beer tastes different from Red Arrow or Dad's.

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Vachic09@reddit

Our medicines are generally cherry, grapes, or bubblegum flavored.

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TeamTurnus@reddit

Our cough syrup is usually artifical cherry flavored. That has rhe same effect on some people and cherry sodas.

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FancyRatFridays@reddit

We don't have medicine that's flavored like root beer. In general, when our medicines are given artificial flavors, they tend to be flavored like fruits (cherry, strawberry, grape, and so on.) I personally think most of these artificial fruit flavors are awful. The closest thing we have, I think, are certain kinds of cough drops which have a strong herbal flavor. Not everybody likes those, though. On a side note, your comment about becoming addicted to root beer flavor reminded me of this scene, from the show Star Trek: Deep Space 9: https://youtu.be/6VhSm6G7cVk?si=Uwn3en75X5FnPxS4

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greenmarsh77@reddit

Our cough syrup is flavored with artificial cherry, grape or mint-ish. From my understanding, sassafras is used a lot in cough syrup in Europe, which gives it that root beer like taste.

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Kyauphie@reddit

Honestly, it's why I don't like the flavor of Root Beer and never have. I'm Gen X in the US.

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callmeseetea@reddit

The wintergreen and sarsaparilla flavors that make up root beer are not common medicine flavors in the US. Our medicines are usually more artificial or fruit flavored like orange/cherry/grape.

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mothwhimsy@reddit

We have different flavored medicine, and we're used to drinking root beer, so it tastes like a drink. Some people do dislike root beer because of how herbal it is though. It's not my favorite, but I wouldn't really call the flavor medicinal. Usually cherry flavors are the ones that taste like medicine if they're fine wrong, because we have a lot of cherry medicine

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Unusual-Calendar767@reddit

I do, I hate it, funny you say that

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Unusual-Calendar767@reddit

It didn’t help that it doesn’t taste like beer at all. I was a disappointed kid all around haha

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Any59oh@reddit

Some of the home made ones I've had over the years can but commercially available ones don't (they don't have a strong enough flavor and have more sugar) but also we don't really make sassafras flavored medicine nowadays

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Outsideforever3388@reddit

Maybe because none of our cough syrup has this flavor? It’s usually cherry or honey.

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ucjj2011@reddit

In my experience, common flavors are grape, cherry and bubble gum.

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Mental-Paramedic9790@reddit

There’s one that taste medicinal to me. Can’t remember the name of it. It might be Fitz’. And I used to really like Virgil’s, but the last time I had it it tasted kind of medicinal.

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Im_Not_Nick_Fisher@reddit

You likely have licorice flavored cough syrup. Which isn’t the same here. It’s mostly cherry, bubblegum, or strawberry flavored. My wife doesn’t like Cherry Coke or doctor pepper because to her it tastes like medicine.

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NonSupportiveCup@reddit

Why does your medicine taste like my rootbeee?!

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Naive-Direction1351@reddit

Becuase our meds growing up was cherry or grape

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goblin_hipster@reddit

Taste is subjective and cultural.

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PrimaryHighlight5617@reddit

Does Cherry taste medicinal to you? That's what Cherry tastes like to us. Chemical artificial cherry flavor is what is used to flavor medicine.

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jessek@reddit

I do? That’s why I’m not a fan of them.

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DBL_NDRSCR@reddit

recently i got sick and realized nyquil does taste like root beer

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foozballhead@reddit

Our cough syrup is usually a nasty cherry-ish flavor. Our medicine is never rootbeer flavored. So it's not medicine to us.

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Common_Vagrant@reddit

Our medicinal flavor is more cherry than root beer. I can’t stand cherry flavored things for that reason other than cherry coke. I guess some people do enjoy the flavor because companies make it and sell it, like White Claw or Mtn Dew hard seltzers

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lemmesenseyou@reddit

Cough syrup to me is either cherry or menthol. I don't know that I've ever had medicine that tastes like root beer.

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itsmyparty45@reddit

Root beer doesn't taste like medicine, but Dr Pepper does.

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SirAlthalos@reddit

because that's not what our medicine tastes like, so we don't think it tastes medicinal

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