The big soda shakeup: Bringing on the fizz

How natural and organic brands—and now the big players—are transforming soda into a wellness sensation.

I've been involved in the natural and organic products industry for about 15 years. If back in 2010 somebody said ashwagandha and ube would one day be hot, I'd shrug. No shocker.

But soda? The stuff of Big Gulps? Buzzy in this industry?

No way.

Turns out, yes way. Hot.

And as often happens in the broader food industry, it is plucky startups in the natural and organic products industry that are transforming a giant but pedestrian category into something sparkling with sexiness and zeitgeist zest.

It took Olipop and Poppi to enliven an industry that long ago let its effervescence fall flat. Now Coca-Cola has introduced its competitor for these "good-for-you" sodas, with Simply Pop. And Coke's main competitor, Pepsi, aims to debut its own contender, Soulboost, this spring.

The flood of newfangled sodas—often dubbed functional soda—doesn't stop with this lineup. As a judge for New Hope Network's 2025 NEXTY Awards, I sipped through several new soda brands touting health advantages, some of which were tied to benefits similar to those championed by Olipop and Poppi: gut health.

Soda's new wave, however, does extend beyond gut health. No- or low-sugar (which isn't a new thing) figures into many formulas, including the soda brand recently launched by Nixie Sparkling Water. So do clean ingredients and sometimes the addition of botanicals such as maca root and turmeric, and amino acids like L-theanine. A favorite of the NEXTY Awards judges was Fresh Fizz's Data Cola, a clean ingredient, certified organic soda sweetened only with dates and flavored with spices and botanicals.

Lines between other types of better-for-you beverages and soda, too, are blurring. Health-Ade, the kombucha brand, introduced SunSip prebiotic sodas last year. Another kombucha brand, Humm, manufactures a probiotic soda. Reeds, famous for its ginger beer, is launching Soda Smarter, a botanical-packed soda line (prebiotics, functional mushrooms, adaptogens) next month. The brand Tepache offers a soda based on a traditional fermented Mexican pineapple beverage, called tepache.

Meanwhile, plenty of brands including effervescent ready-to-drink beverage Kin Euphorics—which began (and continues) in the non-alcoholic space—flirt with the booming soda trend.

Many of these innovators will showcase their products at Natural Products Expo West next week in Anaheim. Have we reached peak wellness soda? I doubt it. Expect to see more sodas at next year's Anaheim extravaganza, too. Today's soda sparkle is rapidly legitimizing the category—it's got plenty of room to grow.

With so many startups and smaller legacy brands wading into the soda pool, as well as enormous conglomerates such as Coke and Pepsi, the battle for dominance—and also for survival—is poised to get more intense.

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