A shocking bit of misinformation has captured the hearts and minds of high school and college students of late â" the notion that the popular American soft drink Mountain Dew can be used as a contraceptive.
It is widely believed that drinking Mountain Dew will drastically lower the sperm count in males. Some fear this will cause impotency, while others apparently view it as a birth control panacea.
Lest you think I'm joking, the Wall Street Journal reported in 1999 that during the fall of that year this rumor "boomeranged across the country from Oregon to Washington, D.C., and from Texas to Montana." Its popularity continues to perplex health care officials, not to mention Mountain Dew's manufacturer, PepsiCo.
"This is an urban myth," avows Jonathon Harris, a public affairs manager for the company. He likens it to tales of people encountering Elvis in a convenience store â" i.e., not merely false, but "absurd, unfounded and ridiculous."
Rumormongers attribute the soft drink's alleged spermicidal properties to its high caffeine content (55 mg. per 12 oz. can, versus 45.6 mg. in Coke and 37.2 mg. in Pepsi) and/or the coloring agent Yellow Dye No. 5, but there's nothing in the scientific literature to support either claim. The FDA determined long ago that Yellow Dye No. 5 poses no health threats to non-allergic people, and as for caffeine, there's evidence to suggest it actually increases the motility and effectiveness of sperm cells, not the opposite.
The rumor goes back to the mid-1990s, at least. Variants over time have included the claim that Mountain Dew causes young males' testicles to shrink or their penises to shrivel. Where these notions came from is unclear, but they echo tales going even further back (at least a decade) among African Americans to the effect that companies allegedly owned by the Ku Klux Klan or other racist organizations purposely add sterility-causing ingredients to foods and beverages popular with black people.
