Given A Choice, 13% Would Drink This One Soda For The Rest Of Their Lives

Even though drinking soda for the rest of your life probably isn't such a good health move, many of us have our go-to. You know the one — a fizzy, cold treat that goes as well with some greasy fried food as by itself for a pick-me-up at work. And when it comes to soda, people have some strong opinions. You only have to Google "Coke vs. Pepsi" to find thousands of heated debates on the matter.

So Mashed decided to find out for real: Which one soda would people drink for the rest of their lives, if they had to choose? The answers from our 656 respondents were as different as you could imagine, but of course, there had to be a winner. Of the choices of Coke, Sprite, Mountain Dew, Dr. Pepper, Fanta, and "other," Coke predictably won by a wide margin with 30.34 percent of the vote. That's no surprise, as Coca-Cola Classic continuously tops lists of the most popular soft drinks year after year (via Caffeine Informer). But the real eye-openers were the other sodas people flagged as their faves.

While the distinctive, sweet fizz of Coke did it for almost a third of our respondents, the next most popular drink was Sprite with 15.4 percent of the vote. Dr. Pepper, the classic Texas soft drink, came in third with 14.94 percent of the vote. But then, people, then, came the real surprise. Up to 13.41 percent of the people we surveyed — that's almost 90 people — would, if they had to give up all sweet, carbonated beverages in favor of one master soda, would choose Mountain Dew.

Perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise that Mountain Dew is the fourth most popular — despite the host of negative cultural connotations and thinly-veiled assumptions about socioeconomic status that accompany this drink (via Eater). 'Dew holds a healthy legacy in nerd-dom and gamer culture (via New York Magazine), and to a lot of people, "Mtn Dew" simply tastes good. Also, there's the caffeine content, which handily surpasses Coke's by over 20 milligrams, according to KLTV. 

Other honorable mentions in the "other" category included Pepsi, of course, as well as Diet Pepsi, root beer, and ginger ale. There were also some wild-cards, like Tahitian Treat — a favorite of the rapper Drake, per Vice — and Goya Guarana Soda — a tropical soda, per the brand. Count us impressed with the breadth and depth of your soda choices.