The Main Flavoring Ingredient in Mountain Dew Is More ‘Natural’ Than You Think

This article is part of our Cocktail Chatter series, where we dive into the wild, weird, and wondrous corners of history to share over a cocktail and impress your friends.

With its radioactive-looking green to mellow-yellow hue, Mountain Dew presents itself as anything but natural. And when we consider the many offshoot flavors of the original formula, they all also look like soft drinks from a sci-fi movie, with colors ranging from cherry Jolly Rancher red to bright neon turquoise.

The CGI rainbow represented by the Mountain Dew lineup screams artificial coloring and high-fructose corn syrup, but within the Dew’s laundry list of ingredients lies a surprisingly all-natural flavoring agent.

Right after carbonated water and high-fructose corn syrup, the third ingredient listed on every can of original flavor Mountain Dew is concentrated orange juice.

According to men’s lifestyle publication MEL Magazine, said concentrated OJ is processed to remove excess water, thus yielding a solution that’s seven times more potent in citrus flavor than standard orange juice. The ingredient also shows up in Diet Mountain Dew, Live Wire, and Code Red, but not in the Voltage expression or the formerly exclusive-to-Taco-Bell Baja Blast flavor.

Bear in mind that the Mountain Dew brand doesn’t describe its flagship flavor as an orange soda. In fact, it doesn’t list any descriptors for its profile, but anyone who’s done the Dew knows that it has a vaguely citrus-forward flavor. The funny thing is that many distinctly orange-flavored sodas, like Fanta, Orange Crush, and Sunkist, don’t contain any orange juice at all — in the U.S., at least.

So why does Mountain Dew have OJ in its formula? It’s not completely clear, as the brand has never confirmed why or when it began adding concentrated juice to the soda. However, it is public knowledge that Mountain Dew went through several recipe tweaks along its rocky road to success. And in 1974, PepsiCo began putting “orange flavoring” in the soft drink, which likely translates to the addition of OJ.

Still, this doesn’t mean that Mountain Dew is healthy by any stretch. Given the fact that the soda doesn’t list any vitamin C in its nutrition facts, the quantity of orange juice in any can or bottle can’t be substantial. Plus, every 12-ounce serving of Mountain Dew packs 92 percent of the recommended daily intake of sugar, so high-fructose corn syrup is unfortunately the real star of the show.

For hardcore Dew devotees who don’t want to succumb to scurvy, there are two silver linings. MTN Dew Kickstart, a line of energy drinks launched by PepsiCo in 2013, does contain 5 percent real fruit juice (a combo of orange juice and white grape juice), and certain flavors deliver as much as 100 percent of the daily recommended intake of vitamin C per can. For those looking for a more DIY approach, there’s Mountain Dew A.M., a short-lived, ill-fated blend of Tropicana orange juice and Mountain Dew that was available for a few months at both Applebee’s and Taco Bell in the mid-2010s. But if its brief on-premise existence is any testament to its taste, it’s probably best to stick to Kickstart.

*Image retrieved from eugen via stock.adobe.com

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