I’ve always been a big fan of making things from scratch. It’s more the fun of knowing that you’re creating something from ingredients that you either grew yourself or ingredients that you were able to pick up at a farmer’s market — either way, it’s very empowering as well as tasty. Needless to say, when you can make a drink as delicious as root beer (maybe not so delicious to our European readers), it’s all the better. Root beer that is actually not going to overwhelm your system with artificial ingredients and a ton of sugar. How can you possibly lose in this scenario?
All of this being said, my latest “Featured Recipe” is for Homemade Root Beer from The Nourished Kitchen. Check out the list of ingredients and I think it’s something you’d be pleased to serve your kids (or yourself) anytime without fear of the sugar highs that usually follow a typical soft drink. Of course, it’s totally gluten-free too.
Wintergreen leaf, though almost always an ingredient in most traditional root beer recipes, replaced sassafras as the prominent flavor in root beer during the 1960s when a study conducted on lab animals implicated safrole, a naturally occurring polyphenol, in liver cancer. Of course, the lab rats were fed massive quantities of safrole – the human equivalent of consuming about 32 twelve-ounce bottles of root beer a day. After the study was released, the FDA required commercial soft drink makers to remove sassafras from their brews. Of course, cinnamon, nutmeg and basil also contain safrole but this seemed to escape the attention of the FDA.
Interestingly, while massive quantities of safrole caused liver cancer in lab animals, it seems that small doses may actually play a protective role for humans. Some studies indicate that safrole may actually stimulate the death of cancer cells, particularly oral cancers1,2 though it may also do so in lung3 and prostrate4 cancers.
Wintergreen, already an ingredient in root beer, offered a flavor profile strikingly similar to that of sassafras, and made a ready replacement. Most root beers made today contain neither sassafras nor wintergreen and are instead made with artificial flavors. Even wintergreen extract, the preferred flavoring for many home brewers, is difficult to attain and typically is made with propylene glycol – a petrochemical…
