Editing Root beer (section)

==History==
Root beer has been drunk in the United States since at least the eighteenth century. It has been sold in confectionery stores since at least the 1840s, and written recipes for root beer have been documented since the 1830s.<ref name="Beach-1833">{{cite book| year=1833 |last=Beach |first=Wooster |title=The American Practice of Medicine: Being a Treatise on the Character, Causes, Symptoms, Morbid Appearances and Treatment of the Diseases of Men, Women and Children, of All Climates, on Vegetable Or Botanical Principles |volume=1 |location=New York |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hx80AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA32}}</ref>{{rp|32}} In the nineteenth century, it was often consumed hot and was often used with [[herbal medicine|medicinal intent]]. It was combined with soda as early as the 1850s; at that time it was sold as a syrup rather than a ready-made beverage.<ref>{{cite book |last=Smith |first=Andrew |date=August 30, 2006 |title=Encyclopedia of Junk Food and Fast Food |publisher=Greenwood |pages=231–232 |isbn=978-0313335273}}</ref>

Beyond its aromatic qualities, the medicinal benefits of sassafras were well known to both Native Americans and Europeans, and druggists began marketing root beer for its medicinal qualities.<ref>{{cite book |last=Cresswell |first=Stephen |date=January 6, 1998 |title=Homemade Root Beer, Soda & Pop |publisher=Storey Publishing |page=4 |isbn=978-1580170529}}</ref>

[[File:All gone Could I have another glass of that Hires' Rootbeer.jpg|thumb|upright|alt=Drawing of a boy holding an empty glass asking for more root beer, evidenced by bad contrast superimposed text|A Hires' root beer advertisement from 1894]]
Pharmacist [[Charles Elmer Hires]] was the first to successfully market a commercial brand of root beer. Hires developed his [[wikt:root tea|root tea]] made from sassafras in 1875, debuted a commercial version of root beer at the Philadelphia [[Centennial Exposition]] in 1876, and began selling his extract. Hires was a [[teetotaler]] who wanted to call the beverage "root tea". However, his desire to market the product to Pennsylvania coal miners caused him to call his product "root beer", instead.<ref>{{cite book |last=Funderburg |first=Anne Cooper |title=Sundae Best: A History of Soda Fountains |year=2002 |publisher=[[Popular Press]] |isbn=978-0879728540 |pages=93–95 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Wr_yPYvkNWwC&pg=PA93 |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://gourmetrootbeer.com/history.html |title=Eric's Gourmet Root Beer Site - History |website=gourmetrootbeer.com |access-date=8 February 2015 |archive-date=11 February 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210211173348/http://www.gourmetrootbeer.com/history.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

In 1886, Hires began to bottle a beverage made from his famous extract. By 1893, root beer was distributed widely across the United States. Non-alcoholic versions of root beer became commercially successful, especially during [[Prohibition in the United States|Prohibition]].<ref name=Smith2012>{{cite book |last=Smith |first=Andrew |date=November 30, 2012 |title=The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America |pages=1, 188 |publisher=Oup USA |isbn=978-0199734962}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.gourmetrootbeer.com/history.html#hires |title=Local Historians Argue Over the Root of Hires |first=Eileen |last=Bennett |date=June 28, 1998 |work=[[The Press of Atlantic City]] |access-date=April 5, 2015 |archive-date=March 2, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190302221419/http://gourmetrootbeer.com/history.html#hires |url-status=live }}</ref>

Not all traditional or commercial root beers were sassafras-based. One of Hires's early competitors was [[Barq's]], which began selling its sarsaparilla-based root beer in 1898 and was labeled simply as "Barq's".<ref>{{cite book |last=Boudreaux |first=Edmond |date=February 5, 2013 |title=Legends and Lore of the Mississippi Golden Gulf Coast |publisher=The History Press |page=145 |asin=B00BBXFJOC}}</ref>

In 1919, Roy Allen opened his root-beer stand in [[Lodi, California]], which led to the development of A&W Root Beer. One of Allen's innovations was that he served his homemade root beer in cold, frosty mugs. [[IBC Root Beer]] is another brand of commercially produced root beer that emerged during this period and is still well-known today.<ref name=Smith2012/>

[[Safrole]], the aromatic oil found in [[sassafras albidum|sassafras roots and bark]] that gave traditional root beer its distinctive flavor, was banned in commercially mass-produced foods and drugs by the [[U.S. Food and Drug Administration|FDA]] in 1960.<ref name="dietz">{{Cite journal |doi=10.1021/tx7000527 |pmc=2504026 |date=April 2007 |author1=Dietz, B |author2=Bolton, Jl |title=Botanical dietary supplements gone bad. |volume=20 |issue=4 |pages=586–90 |issn=0893-228X |pmid=17362034 |journal=[[Chemical Research in Toxicology]]}}</ref> Laboratory animals that were given oral doses of sassafras tea or sassafras oil that contained large doses of safrole developed permanent [[liver]] damage or various types of [[cancer]].<ref name="dietz" /> While sassafras is no longer used in commercially produced root beer and is sometimes replaced with artificial flavors, natural extracts with the safrole distilled and removed are available.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfCFR/CFRSearch.cfm?fr=172.580 |title=CFR - Code of Federal Regulations Title 21 |website=fda.gov |access-date=21 March 2017 |archive-date=29 July 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200729051147/https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfCFR/CFRSearch.cfm?fr=172.580 |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Higgins |first=Nadia |date=August 1, 2013 |title=Fun Food Inventions (Awesome Inventions You Use Every Day) |url=https://archive.org/details/funfoodinvention0000higg/page/30 |publisher=21st Century |page=30 |isbn=978-1467710916 |url-access=registration}}</ref>