Root beer started as a drink Native American tribes made from the bark and roots of the sassafras tree, which grows across eastern North America. Settlers picked up the recipe and started brewing it as a mild medicinal drink, often with bits of wintergreen, sarsaparilla, vanilla, and licorice mixed in.
In 1876 a pharmacist named Charles Hires bottled a version and sold it as “Hires Root Beer” at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. It became one of America’s earliest mass-produced soft drinks. For nearly a century, every cup of root beer got its distinctive flavor from real sassafras root.
Then in 1960, scientists discovered that one of the chemicals in sassafras root - safrole - could damage the liver in big doses. The US banned it from food. Modern root beer is flavored with artificial sassafras or wintergreen oil instead. The taste is close, but root beer brewers will tell you the real thing was something else entirely.
