>>>>>Sorry about the caffeine abuse...even if it was Diet :-}
>>>>
>>>>Actually, Diet Pepsi is pretty low on caffeine (or so I recall from reading). Of course, Pepsi Max has more.
>>>
>>>Used to have a friend who drank non-caffeine Diet Pepsi - which begs the question 'Why bother?'. Tasted like flat, watered-down Pepsi with that nasty diet aftertwang.
>>
>>Decaf coffee has never made sense to me for that reason.
>>And they charge more for a pound of decaf than for regular.
>
>OK, as with the lead in the gasoline, there's the cost of extraction (or neutralization, who knows), but the really stupid gimmick was the "non-smoker kit" that you could buy with some cars. It cost $20 and consisted of a piece of plastic which covered the hole where the ashtray and lighter used to be.

True about extra work to remove caffeine from coffee. They used to use benzene, which is pretty nasty but modern processes are pretty benign.

Lead was not naturally present in gasoline, it was added in the form of tetraethyl lead. So, removing it should have reduced the price of fuel; OTOH replacement octane boosters/valve preservers were more expensive.

Mass production has led to endless anecdotes like your one about ashtray and lighter. What gets expensive is any deviation from the production main line, no matter how ridiculous it seems.