The Origin of Root Beer

When I first started this diet, I brewed myself two cups of dandelion and burdock root tea a day. It's pretty nasty stuff, but very good for the kidneys. Today I only brew it with burdock root, the less nasty of the two.

Today when surfing the web I found out an interesting factoid- dandelion and burdock is actually a popular drink in the United Kingdom, where it's even sold commercially as a soft drink (usually carbonated and sweetened). There are a number of probably apocryphal stories concerning its origin, the most popular being that it was created by Thomas Aquinas. After a full night of prayer, he "trusted God to provide" while walking through the countryside and made the drink from the first two plants that he saw. (Guess which ones.) This same formulation was later made using sassafras root, today known as root beer.

I love root beer, though I could probably count on one hand the number of times I drink it in an average year. Another interesting factoid is that root beer greatly increased in popularity in the United States during Prohibition, when it was seen as a popular alternative to regular beer. For this reason it isn't nearly as popular in European countries, where it's always been legal to drink alcohol.