Mountain Dew

Coca-Cola has never shied away from trying new variations of its classic beverage. The company also is known for adding flavorful twists like lime and lemon to its drinks. But last week, both Coke and archrival Pepsi revealed that a more disturbing addition had made its way into their drinks: fungicide.

For most of the past decade, buying Oreos or Trident gum for your kids meant sending money to the Marlboro Man. Those brands have gone their separate ways, but there are still many odd matches in the wild world of conglomerates, where companies own siblings that don't really look like one another.

Early today, food conglomerate PepsiCo announced that its second-quarter profit fell two percent, against a sales drop of three percent. The company earned $1.66 billion, a slight drop over last year's $1.7 billion in profits. This reflected a revenue drop of three percent, from $10.95 billion to...

Whenever I walk down an aisle at the grocery store, I'm tempted to try one of the many off brand snacks that seem to collect at the bottom of the shelf. Even though the packages and names often look like they were put together by a 3rd grade class on a sugar high; the low price is enough to grab my...