The famous Coca-Cola contour bottle with its typical “female” shape (or so says the analysis of some psychologists and anthropologists) is celebrating its 100-year anniversary and, in the process, a pop-up store opened on Vienna’s Freyung (among many other places, of course).

Meanwhile, I’m reading up heavily on the theme of spices, flavor, and health.

Interesting theme: When the pop-up was announced on Facebook, the comments were wild and worried; who’d ever want to show support for that unhealthy, dangerous sugar water? – but of course, there were lots of visitors. The sales numbers aren’t too shabby, either…

…and anyways, the search for sugar is a major part of our genetic-behavioral makeup. Sweet = good.

Of course, we can learn to find more or less sugar normal, and a better-developed liking for the taste of real foods rather than junk foods only pretending to taste good would do us good. Sweet things will remain enticing, though.

Sugar is all the more fascinating to me as it would, looking at it through a historical lens, fit squarely into my theme of spcies (if not pungent ones, of course)…
Honey used to be available in many a place, every once in a while, but refined sugar is an ‘invention’ that spread only slowly. It was one of the great status symbols (and it may have thrown pepper off its throne and thus indirectly contributed to the low status assigned to the chile peppers) – and it has developed into one of our big problems…
Sweet taste is heavenly. Just not in excess amounts.

It may be a good context in which to reconsider sugar a spice.