A year or so ago I attended the National Folk Festival, in Lansing, Michigan. There I heard a talk by a man whose family has been in the root beer making business for four or five generations.

He claimed to be the ONLY maker left of "real root beer", because all other root beers are made with artificial flavoring. Sassafras roots of the right type are hard to come by, but more importantly, sassafras is toxic to the liver, it seems. Why he and his family are still allowed to make it, I don't remember.

He maintains no-one has been able to make an artificial sassafras flavor that comes very close to the real thing, his own company included. They have tried, and are still trying to do that, and he thinks his company may shortly succeed.

Dave Oesterreich