Mead ingredients of alcoholic beverages led to commercial mead becoming a more obscure beverage until recently. Some monasteries kept up the old traditions of mead-making as a by-product of beekeeping, especially in areas where grapes could not be grown. The English "mead" – "fermented honey drink" – derives from the Old English "meodu" or "medu", and Proto-Germanic, *"meduz" (source also of Old Norse mjöðr, Danish mjød, Old Frisian and Middle Dutch mede, Old High German metu, German Met "mead"). "Madh", and the related terms "mad" (मद, مد) and "madira" (मदिरा, مدِرا), also mean alcohol. These words are all derived from the
Orbitz (drink) Orbitz (drink) Orbitz is the product name of a discontinued noncarbonated fruit-flavored beverage, made by The Clearly Food & Beverage Company of Canada, makers of Clearly Canadian. It was introduced 1997 and quickly disappeared due to poor sales. Made with small floating edible balls, the drink was marketed as a "texturally enhanced alternative beverage" but some consumers compared it to a portable lava lamp. The small balls floated due to their nearly equal density to the surrounding liquid, and remained suspended with assistance from an ingredient known as gellan gum. The gellan gum provided a support matrix—something like a microscopic