What's The Deal With Those Gross Chunks In Some Poppi Soda Cans?

Imagine you're drinking your favorite flavor of Poppi, the prebiotic soda brand that helped launch a "gut healthy" soda revolution, when you taste something solid and filmy in your sip. Pouring it out reveals strange, darkly colored chunks that you can't quite identify. Is it pulp? Is it (yuck) mold? Is it some kind of debris, or something even worse? Don't worry, there's a fairly simple explanation for the mystery sediment.

Unfortunately, without lab analysis, we can't tell you with absolute certainty what's in those mysterious bits at the bottom of your prebiotic soda can. But we can break down the most likely explanation, which should hopefully alleviate your fears of the worst. Poppi and other prebiotic sodas are made with ingredients like cassava root fiber and agave inulin that are beneficial to gut health — though experts debate how much these drinks really help. These natural fibers, along with the apple cider vinegar and fruit juice concentrate used in Poppi's fruity flavors, are likely to settle and clump up into the sediment you see in your drink.

If you're still suspicious of the stuff you see floating around in your prebiotic soda, try listening to what the companies themselves have to say about it. Though Poppi has yet to offer an official statement on the presence of sentiment in its sodas, competitor Olipop says this on its website: "It is perfectly normal to see pulp or sediment in Olipop products. Our Olipop flavors with natural vanilla may contain dark specks due to the vanilla bean used...Pulp can also be present in certain Olipop flavors with natural fruit juices." 

We can't say for sure that the dark specks in your drink are of non-gross origins (after all, sometimes anomalies do occasionally occur in the manufacturing process), but if you see them repeatedly, it's pretty safe to assume they're natural byproducts of the ingredients in your beverage.

Still, if you would rather not see dark chunks in your soda can — we get it. The best way to deal with any pulp or sediment in a canned drink is simply to give it a gentle shake to reintegrate clumps back into the liquid. You could also try using a cocktail strainer or tea thermos to strain out any clumps, though that might require more work than it's worth to drink a can of soda.