Student Publications
University of Houston
151C Communications Bldg
Houston, TX 77204-4015
713.743.5350

©1991-2007
Student Publications,
All rights reserved.

Last modified:

Contact:
ktruitt@uh.edu

Opinion

Savor the conformity

James Davis
Opinion Columnist 

I don't know about the rest of you, but when I get up first thing in the morning, nothing prepares me for the day like vanilla yogurt and a crisp, refreshing Tab. No, I'm not talking about LSD. I'm talking about Tab, the world's first mass-marketed diet cola, the one in the gaudy fuchsia cans. Since its debut in 1963, Tab has endured the rise of Diet Coke, Coca-Cola Zero, Pepsi One and all the other diet cola permutations of the last five decades.

OK, so all that stuff in the first paragraph was a lie. I've never drunk a drop of Tab in my life. I've never held the dewy can in my shaky, caffeine-worried hands. I don't even have a solid idea of what it tastes like.

I know for certain, though, that Tab is cool. In fact, Tab is so cool that it recently appeared in the pages of The New Yorker with such other hepcats as John Updike and Calvin Tomkins. 

In the magazine's "Talk of the Town" column, Ben McGrath complains about how the release of the new Tab Energy, a Red Bull-inspired soft drink advertised during this year's Super Bowl, could uncover "one of journalism's secret and most self-conscious power cliques: the cult of Tab lovers." 

Columbia journalism professor Steve Isaacs drinks the diet cola religiously despite pleas from his doctors to quit.

"I tell them to go to hell," he told the New Yorker.

Isaacs so admires the drink that he works it into his curriculum. Every semester, he holds up a Tab and asks his students to cook up 100 story ideas based on the can. He threw a party last semester where the Tab flowed like wine, and his students were more than enthusiastic about drinking it. Isaacs may be crazy, but he's not alone.

So what exactly is the appeal of this nearly extinct cola? Apparently, it's kind of disgusting. Steven Brill, CEO of the radio network Air America, said, "it tastes like metal," which, actually, may be part of its draw. After all, Starbucks' coffee isn't exactly the nectar of the gods, but we have two stores on this campus alone.

Maybe its underground popularity has something to do with masochism. The drink has a sturdy reputation of being unhealthy. Unlike Diet Coke and most other low-calorie beverages, Tab is sweetened with saccharin, the sugar substitute the FDA deemed carcinogenic in the late 1970s. Nevertheless, Tab today still contains a mixture of saccharin and aspartame, a noxious blend that film critic David Edelstein said gives Tab "the courage of its convictions." Edelstein has four cases delivered to his house on a semiweekly basis.

Four cases! And I can't find a grocery store in Houston that sells a single can. It could be because Tab was originally marketed to women -- its can is fuchsia, after all. We don't want to sully Texas' masculine reputation with no lady drink. Leave that to lisping, Yankee journalist types.

Then again, we steal from every other culture here in Houston, so why should the New Yorkers and their effete diet sodas be an exception? 

What I propose, then, is that students demand every convenience store at UH begin stocking Tab or, at the very least, Tab Energy. We're a hip bunch; we deserve it. Forget the tinny aftertaste; forget the vague suspicion that you might get cancer -- nothing tastes quite so sweet as conformity. 

Davis, an opinion columnist for The Daily Cougar, 
can be reached at jpdavis@uh.edu.