Did your grandparents ever tell stories of how soda used to cost a nickel, and was served in a small, 8-ounce glass bottle, typically enjoyed on Saturdays as an afternoon treat?

Well, those days died quickly.

Over the span of the last century—particularly from the 1950s into the first 10 years of the new millennium—soda will go down in the history books as a driving force in the obesity epidemic. We demonize fat, but sugar is probably the bigger threat. I’d go so far as to coin this period “the years of liquid sugar”—aka, when big soda won.