If you like drinking Mountain Dew and don't want anything to taint your taste for it then I suggest that you don't read any further. This will probably put you off the stuff for life. I read a story yesterday about a man who claims that he found a mouse in his Mountain Dew. Ewwww.

But it's not just that that's absurd... and gross. Pepsi Co.'s defense in court is even absurder... and maybe grosser. They argued that it wasn't possible because Mountain Dew would have reduced the mouse to jelly by the time it was opened 15 months later. However there may be truth in this according to other sources who said that citric acid as a powder form when added to soft drinks lowers the pH of the drink and makes it highly acidic meaning that it could plausibly dissolve a mouse within a few months.

According to Yan-Fang Ren of the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, "dissolving [the mouse] does not mean it will disappear, because you'll still have the collagen and soft tissue part. It will be like rubber." which I guess is pretty close to Pepsi's "mouse jelly" argument.

The most worrying thing about all of this is what Mountain Dew is capable of dissolving in our bodies. Other studies have revealed that citrus sodas like Mountain Dew erode tooth enamel six times faster than colas that contain phosphoric acid. One experiment soaked human molars in Mountain Dew for two weeks — equivalent to 13 years of average exposure - and the molar's enamel lost six percent of its volume!!!! While molars in Coke lost just over one percent. And for all those who think that Diet Dew is better... it's worse...eroding eight percent of the molars' volume. In fact, citric acid has a "chelating effect" meaning that it combines with the calcium in teeth and bones to dissolve them even faster hence the dissolved mouse.

In Mountain Dew's defense, if you even care at this point, orange juice is just as acidic as the Dew (but at least it offers some nutritional value). What's more, you'd have to keep swirling Mountain Dew around your mouth for two weeks before it would dissolve anything. But I'm sure there are those that drink it religiously every day that get pretty close.

As for the court case, given the mouse jelly argument, it seems that the said man who had the mouse experience might have been bluffing, as if the mouse did dissolve into jelly, it would have been virtually impossible to identify it as a mouse.

Either way, I'm never drinking Mountain Dew again.