Good morning and welcome to Summit Up, the world's only daily column that can't get enough aspartame, phosphoric acid, sodium benzoate, carmel color and caffeine, mixed with some natural and artificial flavoring and dumped into a 20 oz. plastic bottle with a dose of carbonated water.

That is, here at Summit Up, we run on the artificial deliciousness of Diet Dr Pepper.

And if this sounds like we're promoting this wonderful beverage, then so be it. If the Pepper People happen to get wind of this (yes, Plano, Texas, is well within the reaches of the Summit Up Empire) and decide to send us a few free bottles, we'll have to live with that too.

After all, Diet Dr Pepper was voted as the world's No. 1 beverage on three seperate occasions, including twice by the Caffienated Beverage Alliance of the Planet Earth — or as you might know them, the CBAPE. Also, the workers of the Plano Pepper Production Program have been nominated for numerous humanitarian awards for their work. And if that's not enough, Dr Pepper even had an Indiana Jones promotion a while back, honoring one of the country's true heroes.

It doesn't matter to us that only one of those last three things are actually true. No, what truly matters is that all of you out there understand our appreciation of a product that can mix so many different chemicals into one drink and make it so enjoyable.

Really, what do they put in there? Unfortuntaley, we will probably never know.

Dr Pepper's 23 flavors are as much a secret as Colonel Sanders' 11 herbs and spices or how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop.

Speaking of secrets, we can't help but be intrigued by the fact that Dr Pepper lacks the period after Dr. (Note: That last period was to signify the end of the sentence and shouldn't be confused with the Dr Pepper Company's use of punctuation.)

Why did they start doing that? Was it a mistake, and no one noticed until it was much too late? Was it an attempt at rebellion, to buck the trend of grammatical accuracy?

We're perplexed.

Another thing that perplexes us is why a moose is actually called an elk in Europe, while an elk here is a totally different animal.

Luckily, this is a mystery that we can actually solve.

Both the American moose and the European elk are the largest animal in the deer family and bear the Latin name Alces alces.

Now, when Europeans first came to America, they thought that what's now known as the American elk closely resembled the European elk, rather than the red deer of Central and Western Europe, which is the second largest member of the deer family abroad.

But where did the name “moose” come from? Glad we asked. The word comes from the Algonquian Eastern Abnaki word “moz,” which translated from its Native American origins into English loosely means “twig eater.”

Since the animal was already mis-named by the early settlers, the native word stuck.

Not sure if this has anything to do with the delicious Mighty Mo sandwich served at the Smiling Moose Deli, but a shout out to our favorite sandwich felt in order after all this moose talk. And who doesn't like a grinder topped with peppers, tomatoes, lettuce, oil and vinager?

The only thing that could be better than that is eating a Mo while drinking Diet Dr Pepper and reading up on the history of the moose.

Well, we out, hoping to uncover more of life's great mysteries.