Tab, stylized as TaB, is a diet

Diet soda

Diet sodas are typically sugar-free, artificially sweetened, non-alcoholic carbonated beverages generally marketed towards health-conscious people, diabetics, athletes, and other people who want to lose weight, improve physical fitness, or reduce their...

 cola soft drink

Soft drink

A soft drink is a non-alcoholic beverage that typically contains water , a sweetener, and a flavoring agent...

 produced by the Coca-Cola Company, first introduced in 1963. The soda was created by Coca Cola after the successful sales and marketing of Diet Rite

Diet Rite

Diet Rite is a brand of no-calorie soft drinks originally distributed by the RC Cola company. It was introduced in 1958 and initially released as a dietetic product, but was marketed to the general public as a healthful beverage in 1962...

 cola, owned by The Royal Crown Company; previously, Diet Rite had been the only sugarless soda on the market. Tab was "marketed to consumers who want to keep 'tabs' on their weight."

The soda was fairly popular throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and the Coca Cola company made several variations of it, including Tab Clear

Tab Clear

Tab Clear, a variation of Tab, was Coca-Cola's contribution to the short-lived "clear cola" movement during the early 1990s. It was introduced in the United States on December 14, 1992, in the United Kingdom a month later, and in Japan in March 1993 to initially positive results...

 and Tab X-Tra, as well as caffeine

Caffeine

Caffeine is a bitter, white crystalline xanthine alkaloid that acts as a stimulant drug. Caffeine is found in varying quantities in the seeds, leaves, and fruit of some plants, where it acts as a natural pesticide that paralyzes and kills certain insects feeding on the plants...

-free versions.

The soda later garnered negative publicity when scientists speculated that its main sweetener, sodium saccharin, was a potential animal carcinogen

Carcinogen

A carcinogen is any substance, radionuclide, or radiation that is an agent directly involved in causing cancer. This may be due to the ability to damage the genome or to the disruption of cellular metabolic processes...

.