Bionade

Dieter Leipold was the master brewer at Privatbrauerei Peter in Ostheim, a small town in northern Bavaria, and a relation by marriage of the Kowalsky family, owners of the brewery.

Worried about the future of the company, which was facing bankruptcy,[1][2] he had the idea of producing a nonalcoholic drink by fermentation, on the same principles and under the same purity laws as German beer: the drink would consist only of the natural ingredients malt, water, sugar, and fruit essences, and would not contain corn syrup or other artificial additives.

[3] He experimented for eight years in a bathroom laboratory, spending €1.5 million of the brewery owner Peter Kowalsky's money.

He isolated a strain of bacteria capable of converting the sugar that normally becomes alcohol into nonalcoholic gluconic acid, which he used to ferment the new drink.

The bottle was made out of clear glass (instead of brown) but its form was based on a classical vitreous longneck beer format.

This appealed to some of the protesters against the 33rd G8 summit, which was taking place at the time in Heiligendamm, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, and led to the stereotype that anti-globalisation activists always drink the beverage.

[12] The term is a German equivalent of e.g. LOHAS and Bobo (bourgeois bohémiens) and gained some media attention and expanded use since.

Henning Sußebach described the Prenzlauer Berg (Prenzelberg) as an experimental field of "New Germany" and Biotop of the rich and creative and young urban professionals.

They support the claim of healthiness by referring to the relatively low level of sugar, sodium and flavor-enhancing additives, the absence of phosphorus or a stabilising agent, while both calcium and magnesium are present.

[3] The website makes more health claims and suggests that calcium is needed for bones and teeth, for nerves and muscles, while magnesium is said to work against listlessness and fatigue.