As we deal with this extremely hot weather, we all want to reach for a nice cold beverage to cool down. After water, soda (or pop, as I called it growing up in the midwest) is the most popular drink in the United States.

Conventional soda pop is also one of the unhealthiest drinks. It’s loaded with sugars. And high fructose corn syrup at that. Additionally, conventional pops lack any nutritional value. Fortunately, one of the fastest growing subcategories of natural products and natural beverages is prebiotic soda pop. These products are founded by people who loved a good soft drink, but wanted something healthier.

While prebiotic soda pops have seen immense growth over the past several years, some are still not familiar with them. Others will ask what’s the difference between prebiotics and probiotics. Here it is. Prebiotics are plant fiber which feed your good bacteria. Probiotics are living bacteria which add on to the amount of good bacteria in your digestive system. Both are beneficial and necessary to maintain good digestion.

For many reasons, prebiotics have become more likely to include in functional soda pop than probiotics. One decision to go with prebiotics was that both probiotics and prebiotics are important to include in your gut and a good number of probiotics drinks, such as kombucha, are already on the market. While probiotics have a flavor of their own, prebiotics don’t have any flavor. So consumers can focus on the ingredients themselves in the prebiotic drinks. Many have found prebiotic formulas are easier to develop than probiotic ones. Another case for prebiotics is they’re more shelf stable than probiotics. And one prebiotic soda maker went with prebiotics because some heat is applied to the spices they add and probiotics would be destroyed by the heat. Others have seen the advantages of both prebiotics and probiotics and include both in their beverages.

Along with prebiotics, a number of other functional ingredients are used from kombucha cultures to apple cider vinegar to ginger. Many of these sodas use cane sugar while some use only natural sweeteners such as stevia, monk fruit, or fruit juice. All of the brands below contain significantly less grams of sugar than the conventional soda pops.

After prebiotic pop’s breakthrough in the beginning of the decade, the market has become very saturated. But not all prebiotic beverages are created equally. While just about all of them contain some organic ingredients, only handful are fully organic certified. As so many chemicals are sprayed on our crops these days, I emphasize the ones with all organic ingredients.

In alphabetical order, here are the 5 best organic prebiotic soda pops:

Daytrip

Daytrip was founded in 2019 on the belief that we could all use more ways to get away and the power of plants is the way to help you get there. Daytrip first produced CBD-infused sparkling water. In addition to CBD, all of the beverages also included terpenes. Terpenes are the primary elements of the essential oils in plants. Terpenes also provide hemp plants with their flavor and aroma. Botanical terpenes have many mood elevating benefits. More recently Daytrip began offering prebiotic soda. All of their prebiotic sodas include their proprietary blend of terpenes, elderberries, and prebiotic fiber. Daytrip sees their prebiotic sodas as tasty way to boost your mind-gut connection. For the prebiotic sodas, Daytrip has popular soda pop flavors of root beer, Dr. Pepper, and cream soda and fruit flavors of berry citrus, clementine, and grapefruit lime.

Evolution Fresh

Back in 1995, Evolution Fresh was founded with the goal of giving more people access to healthy fruit juice. Years later, Evolution Fresh invested high pressure processing to be able to sell their juice outside of California. In 2013, they then opened a juicery in Rancho Cucamonga, CA, becoming the first juicery of its kind in North America and allowing their juices to be available across all of the United States. Their products are TRUE Certified, recognizing their commitment to production practices which sustainable and environment friendly. Most recently, Evolution Fresh has expanded into brewing soda pop. Their pops contain prebiotics and probiotics and come in the fruit flavors of berry burst, orange squeeze, strawberry vanilla, lemon lime, and tropical mango.

Live Beverages

In 2013, Trevor Ross originally made his first Live Beverages as a way to help his father kick his soda addiction. Instead of taking aways his dad’s soda pop altogether, Trevor came up with a soda substitute which tasted like cola. He also felt that making kombucha with pop flavors would help differentiate his kombucha from others in what had became a very saturated market. So Trevor was able to take his drinks made for his father and sell them to help millions of other people make better decisions. In 2023, the Los Angeles kombucha company Better Booch purchased Live Beverages to add a drink to its line which contains both prebiotics and probiotics.  The original cola kombucha is now with other kombucha versions of traditional pop, which are root beer, cream soda, lemon lime, and cherry berry.

Nekter Pop

Founder Adam Lazar was attending an open house for a maple farm in Vermont with his daughter when the idea of Nekter Pop came to him. At the farm, Adam saw thousands of gallons of maple sap water being tossed out. After talking to the farmer, he learned that the maple syrup producers only use 3% of the sap to make maple syrup and related products. Adam was also taking probiotics for his gut health problems. The supplements were helping, but he often forget to take them and was looking for a way to always get in his daily allowance. Adam realized the remaining 97% of the sap could be used as an organic water for a gut healthy probiotic soda. As a result, Nekter Pop was born. Nekter Pop uses both probiotics and prebiotics. Nekter comes in the varieties of root beer, black cherry, lemon lime, and orange.

Wild Wonder

wildwonder was founded to be the world’s first sparkling drink to combine the  two essential elements of live probiotics and prebiotic dietary fiber. wildwonder worked with microbiome specialists to discover a resilient strain of probiotics to balance the gut. They also use an exclusive mix of chicory root and jerusalem artichoke, which both contain the plant fiber inulin. Additionally, their beverages contain superfoods such as ginger, turmeric, and rose along with fresh California fruit juices. wildwonder’s offerings are apple yuzu, blackberry violet, pink momelo limeade, cherry lemonad, raspberry lychee, strawberry passion, guava rose, pineapple paradise, and mango gold.