So, it looks like 7UP used to include a psychiatric medication as one of its ingredients. Gizmodo revealed this fact today, featuring a 20-minute 1950s propaganda video for the beverage.
“Most everyone likes lemon,” the video claims. And apparently most everyone also liked lithium citrate, a chemical compound of used as a mood stabiliser in treatment of manic states. Listed on the label as lithum soda citrates, 7UP put it in there to “smooth and mellow the acid sharpness of our drink.”And to smooth and mellow consumers too, I guess.
7UP was called ‘Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda’ originally because of the chemical, and was marketed as a hangover cure. Either way, the lithium citrate was removed from in 1948.
Watch the video above.
Hannah Scholte