Dirty soda started as a Mormon alternative to booze. Now it's everywhere.

When The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives premiered in September 2024, viewers were treated to a glimpse inside the chaotic, less-than-holy lives of Salt Lake City’s TikTok-famous Mormon moms . The ladies backstabbed and gossiped, spread swinging rumors, and instigated friendship breakups, all while posting many an ill-advised TikTok dance. But instead of being fueled by alcohol like so many of the narrative arcs on reality television, the drama on Mormon Wives sprang from sobriety — and perhaps a minor sugar high. As they worried about the end of #MomTok and discussed modern Mormonism, the women abided by their religious strictures and forwent coffee and alcohol in favor of gigantic 40-ounce megamugs of sugary sweet liquid, procured at local soda shops like Swig and FiiZ. Welcome to the era of dirty soda.

What is dirty soda, you may be wondering? Isn’t all soda a little dirty? Sure, soda is full of chemicals, sugar and dyes — and by almost all accounts, it’s pretty much terrible for you — but a dirty soda elevates the unhealthy quotient to another level. Take a regular soda and add sugary syrups and flavorings, creams, and a squeeze of fruit juice, and you have yourself a dirty soda, a beverage so supremely unvirtuous that it may as well be a beer. (But it’s not, which, for the Mormons, for whom alcohol is forbidden, is the whole point.) If a Diet Coke is a fridge cigarette — a naughty indulgence — a dirty soda is a whole pack chain-smoked. Born in the Mountain West, it is a quintessentially American beverage: After all, what could possibly be more American than taking something unhealthy and making it even unhealthier?