In 1767 in Leeds, England, the chemist and theologian Joseph Priestley discovered a method for infusing water with carbon dioxide by suspending a bowl of water above a fermenting beer vat at a local brewery. Priestley published his findings in a paper titled "Impregnating Water with Fixed Air," describing the pleasant, slightly tart taste of the resulting carbonated water. This invention laid the scientific foundation for the entire carbonated beverage industry, which would eventually produce the sodas and soft drinks that constitute a major segment of global junk food consumption.

Priestley himself was a prolific writer and political theorist whose literary works intersected with his scientific career, and his discovery prompted Romantic-era poets to consider the relationship between industrial chemistry and human sensory experience. The artificial creation of pleasurable sensations through chemical processes became a theme in poetry about modernity, prefiguring how later poets from William Blake to T.S. Eliot would use manufactured food and drink as symbols of industrial civilization's capacity to synthesize both pleasure and alienation.