14 ms·

I am ignorant in this topic, but why do americans seem to drink soda( pop as they call in cinema) excessively ? I live in India and flavoured soda is considered

• pvarangot 5y ago
  Washes away the fat and caffeine helps with the digestion of heavy meals. Same reason Italians drink wine and coffee and/or smoke cigarettes. Making super heavy meals part of your _daily_ routine is hard without supplements.
• DaveExeter 5y ago
  Excessive soda consumption? That's me! But I drink the sugar free versions. I guess because it is cheap (~$1 for 2 litres), sweet, and fizzy.
  • Spivak 5y ago
    Honestly yeah, I just prefer all my drinks fizzy. But carbonated water has something off about it.
    • vorpalhex 5y ago
      The ph sits in a different place. Try adding a dash of lemon or lime juice.
• dxscorp 5y ago
  American who's kicked a soda addiction -- it's super cheap, tasty, has some caffeine, and it's everywhere (gas station, convenience store, supermarket, advertisements), not to mention you have to walk by a soda fridge near the checkout lines of most retail stores. I only drank diet soda but you become so desensitized to it that water is 'boring' in comparison you don't reach for it as easily
• yodsanklai 5y ago
  Advertisement. Coca Cola spends billions every year in advertising. Nobody would drink this otherwise. What I don't get is how they can get away with it. I mean people are getting crazy over companies like Facebook but junk food companies get a free pass for some reason. Most Americans are even unable to see the link with obesity rates.
  • perl4ever 5y ago
    It used to be a cliche that American tourists were the only ones who would order water at cafes or restaurants in certain countries.
  • vlunkr 5y ago
    Well that's a chicken/egg problem right? Coke and Pepsi wouldn't have so much to spend on advertising if they weren't already very popular.
• silicon2401 5y ago
  It's just culture. Some cultures eat a lot of rice, some drink a lot of vodka, some eat a lot of fish. Probably a mix of marketing and cultural taste like most things.
• CyanBird 5y ago
  Soda is highly subsidized in the US, it is a consequence of US gov subsidizing corn syrup, so on a ratio of wages to prize sodas are very, very, very cheap, and in a country with few public bathrooms or public fountains, the easiest way to have a drink while on the go used to be sodas These days it is more common to ask for water, but even then, that will be bottled water and the prices can be similar to soda
  • vorpalhex 5y ago
    You can always ask for a glass of water specifically. Any place with a soda fountain can give you cold, filtered tap water.
    • CyanBird 5y ago
      Exactly But that didn't use to be culturally ingrained in the US until just relatively recently, and since then it has been exported abroad
  • zz865 5y ago
    Soda isn't really subsidized. Yes corn is subsidized but the main cost of soda is advertising, packaging and distribution, the flavor and syrup (or in the case the sweetener) costs nothing.
  • vinay427 5y ago
    Are we talking about the same US? I don't live there anymore, but I'm always surprised by the high number of indoor fountains in publicly-accessible buildings (as well as many parks and outdoor locations) there. For instance, every library, shopping mall, or larger store seems to have one near the bathrooms. Meanwhile, in some European countries, for instance, outdoor fountains can be more plentiful which is fantastic in its own way, and indoor options are much less common. In others, neither outdoor nor indoor options exist so one is forced to find a public bathroom to use the faucet. In some other countries, both public bathrooms and water fountains can be very rare, which unfortunately leaves no viable option.
• ecshafer 5y ago
  There are a few reasons. One is that soda is marketed extremely heavily by Coke and Pepsi as a very normal drink to have all of the time. The other is that is pushed in restaurants a lot as it has a huge profit margin, similar to alcohol but you can have it as a child; relatedly children get a taste for it as its very sweet and sets people up from child hood. Another is that corn syrup is heavily subsidized, and is in food everywhere here, and very few families have a house wife cooking food from scratch these days. So processed food with sugar additives is normal giving people these addictions and cravings.
  • halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
    Idk if “cooking from scratch” is something of privilege but my entire extended family and my wife’s entire extended family all cook “from scratch” most of the time unless we’re dining out. Anecdotal but I’ve known very few people/families who rely solely on take out/prepared meals for their sustenance.
  • Dma54rhs 5y ago
    You don't need a personal chef to cook non processed food at home, not even a stay at home housewife of 60's. This is the most privileged thing I hear Americans repeating. All the raw ingredients are there at your supermarkets, cheap prices compared to your wages. I've seen it with my own eyes from visiting. It's just laziness and saving time, billions of people around the world cook at home from raw ingredients. They also go to work. People are lazy and prefer to replace it with netflix which I don't have a problem with until people lie to themselves and others about the reasons.
    • AniseAbyss 5y ago
      My mom had a job. When she came home she still cooked a meal for her family. With vegetables. The real truth is that a majority of Americans are now overweight. Unhealthy lifestyle has been normalised to a point when non fat kids who don't eat pizza for lunch will be bullied.
      • 5y ago
• wil421 5y ago
  A ton of fast food to fast casual places offer it with meals so people just drink it. I usually get unsweet tea instead (no it’s not the tea you are thinking of). Mexico consumes the most Sodas and beats the US despite having a much smaller population. Most people I know who actually buy soda and bring it to their home either don’t drink alcohol or coffee. Plenty of Indian’s drink tea and there are probably street vendors who sell sugar cane juice or fresh squeezed fruit. Everyone has their vices. Lots of people chew Paan and betel leaf but you’d never hear about it in the US.
  • dhosek 5y ago
    In Mexico, there's also the fact that soda is often the most easily available source of clean water. When I was in rural Chiapas and Guatemala ca 1992, I think I drank very little that wasn't soda during that time.¹ 1. Because the glass bottles were fairly precious by local economic standards, soda would be served "to go" in a plastic bag with a straw and a rubber band to keep it closed.
    • wil421 5y ago
      Yes I’ve had the bag method in Costa Rica. They wouldn’t even let me touch the bottle.
• switchbak 5y ago
  When I was a kid and I'd visit my Dad he always had 'pop' around, and it was just something we'd power through without thinking. I'm not sure if I even thought that it was bad for me in a concrete way. It was just super sweet and felt 'fun'. When I was 19 I worked at a tech company with unlimited pop available. The 15lbs of additional weight caused me to look at it a whole different way, and broke that habit pretty fast! Now the only time I have Coke is after a huge endurance event, otherwise it's just way too much.
• ashtonkem 5y ago
  Unrelated, but it’s “pop”, “soda”, “soda pop”, or “coke” (regardless of brand) depending where in the US you are. It’s a regional dialect thing.
  • nicoburns 5y ago
    Does “coke” include non-cola flavoured beverages in parts of the US? Here in the UK we tend to call them “fizzy drinks” FWIW.
    • sokoloff 5y ago
      In the south-eastern US, it's totally normal to order an "orange Coke" (which Coca-Cola either does not make or does not call "Coke" at a minimum).
      • dhosek 5y ago
        I can kind of see how that came about—my kids would assume that any soda I drank was a diet coke and would refer to orange soda as orange diet coke.
    • nyx 5y ago
      In the American South, you're likely to hear "coke" regardless of whether it's actually Coke, or even cola-flavored. It's "pop" up north, and "soda" in the northeast and southwest (plus a couple of pockets near Milwaukee and St. Louis, which would otherwise be "pop" territory - fascinating stuff).
      • tombert 5y ago
        Whenever I would visit family in Louisiana, it was pretty common to go to restaurants, and even at places that exclusively served Pepsi products, asking "what kind of Coke do you want?"
    • zeku 5y ago
      Yep. Coke is every carbonated sugar drink. You have to get all the way to la croix for it to stop being a coke. South-Eastern USA aka "The American South"
• zeku 5y ago
  It's normal to give to children due to marketing and it has not 1 but 2 addictive ingredients. Sugar && Caffeine. I was addicted to soda as a teen and it was very difficult to quit I had huge cravings.
• TameAntelope 5y ago
  I don't like the blandness of water, if you want a first-person perspective. I consume a lot of diet soda, probably 8-10 cans a day. I'm always drinking something; if it's not soda, it's green tea, or gatorade, or coffee. I always need to be drinking something and diet soda is... well, something. It's not much of a decision point, I don't really think about it in terms of expected value or return on my choice, diet soda is simply the answer to the question of, "What are you drinking?" And despite articles like the submission, there's no real observed downside to this choice (I'm not obese, and have never been obese, so this article doesn't really apply to me), other than potentially what the carbonation could be doing to my teeth, and as long as my dentist doesn't seem to have any concerns (she doesn't), I persist.
  • mpfundstein 5y ago
    tip: take carbonated water and put some lemons in it. removes the blandness
    • LouisSayers 5y ago
      If you do this all the time you may have issues with your teeth. Acid + teeth is not a good mix.
      • dymk 5y ago
        Soda (even diet soda) is incredibly acidic - lemon water is better than nothing
  • Gene_Parmesan 5y ago
    No judgment is meant here - I am always so curious about people who think water is bland. When I'm thirsty, cold ice water is the best tasting thing on the planet to me. I enjoy the taste of diet pop, but I also find myself reaching for it sometimes out of sheer boredom rather than thirst. If I drink some water and I find it bland, to me that's a sign I wasn't actually thirsty. I don't think there's anything unusual about reaching for a soda as a treat for its taste. But in terms of pure thirst-quenching - damn does water hit the spot.
• milesvp 5y ago
  I can tell you that for me personally, it’s a way to get a small bump of caffeine. I’ve learned to drink more tea in the last few years, but having strong bitter receptors make coffee a flat out no.
• websap 5y ago
  It tastes delicious and its super cheap. 36 cans at costco are about 10 dollars. I love having one after lunch or in the evenings when I'm unwinding. No calories, better than alcohol and the delight. The only thing is if I drink a lot of it in a week, I sort of get used to the taste. Also Coke Zero is the only one that I've found that doesn't have an artificial taste to it. Things like Sprite Zero have a very odd after taste. I'm originally from India, so I can understand your apprehension, but a diet soda is really cheap here.
  • 74d-fe6-2c6 5y ago
    I'm pretty sure a beer would be more healthy than diet soda ...
• brandonmenc 5y ago
  Tasty. Fizzy. Caffeine. Cheap. Tons of flavor options.
• onkoe 5y ago
  It's pretty darn good and you can find it everywhere for quite cheap.
• KorematsuFredt 5y ago
  > I live in India and flavored soda is considered luxury item here. I worked for a B-School program which looked at growth opportunities for Cola in India. One of the challenges were lack of electricity in large parts of the country. Even those who had electricity did not get it for 24x7. Those who had it uninterrupted could not afford to buy a freezer. This prevented the whole appeal of cold drinks that are not cold. Coca Cola and Pepsi invested heavily in refrigeration technologies as they mass imported cheap fridges and offered them for free. But electricity being government controlled remains a luxury in India. Coca Cola and Pepsi did crazy things to solve this problem including creating tie ups with ice makers who supply ice slabs for special events to brine based coolers than can keep things cool for 12 hours. The results however were stunning. From 2016 to 2020, India has doubled the per capita consumption of cola per year to around 88 bottles. I think it is fair to assume that the ceiling for this number is around 1500 bottles per year because both USA and Mexico consume that much soda. Given the income difference between both countries I think that is an upper bound. USA has 30x of India's per capita income but only 20x more soda consumption. Which makes me think Indians are going to hit that 1500 bound much much sooner than expected. Note: Some of our research results were fascinating and counterintuitive. People preferred Coca Cola because it was "healthy" to a locally produced freshly squeezed sugarcane juice. The reasoning was that while the juicer center does not even have a food department clearance and is unsanitary, people had more faith in soft drink manufacturers quality control. Ice mixed with sugar cane juice was often transported via two wheelers, kept on the road and smashed into smaller pieces with a hammer. When people were convinced that the sugar cane juice was produced in extremely clean fashion people preferred it over coke and were willing to even pay more than coke. Companies like Paperboat in India have come into existence from these sort of insights.
• LAC-Tech 5y ago
  > I am ignorant in this topic, but why do americans seem to drink soda( pop as they call in cinema) excessively ? I live in India and flavoured soda is considered luxury item here. You answered your own question - because America is wealthy and Soda is cheap. I'm in New Zealand and soda was definitely a luxury growing up. But here it cost 14.57 USD for an 18 pack, while for a 24 pack in the states it's 10.22 USD. So almost half the price.
  • ne0flex 5y ago
    There's the fact that soda is packed with sugar and people getting addicted to the dopamine hits. [1][2] [1]https://wexnermedical.osu.edu/blog/addicted-to-soda https://wexnermedical.osu.edu/blog/addicted-to-soda [1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6488513/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6488513/ In the case of diet soda, I assume that since most people already start drinking regular soda, there's a placebo effect.
• swayvil 5y ago
  Marketing. Lots of marketing. Mind control is real. If they told us to cut off our nose today you'd see a lot of noseless Americans tomorrow.
• hansoolo 5y ago
  It's such a good question! And all the answers here are "it's cheap" or "I'm used to it" or "I only drink the sugar free version"... Why is there no self reflection? Everyone's getting pested by theses corporations. "I don't like the bland taste of water." wtf is wrong with you?! Some people in the world have to walk miles to get water! And we could have it from the tap. Just drink it from the tap! Seriously, I thought people were smart in here, but all these answers...
  • Clubber 5y ago
    >Why is there no self reflection? >Seriously, I thought people were smart in here, but all these answers... Shame culture is sad and pretty obnoxious. Does that a make you feel good about yourself, was that your objective? WTF do you care what people drink? Maybe do some self reflection on that.
• opan 5y ago
  Several people I know who grew up drinking pop will say they "hate water". Drinking water for them is boring or like a chore. The local water here is even highly ranked among the US as a whole for good taste, so it's not that our water is actually bad. I do recall feeling similarly in the past. At some point I got a nice metal water bottle and started carrying it around and drinking water, and I grew to enjoy it. Time away from pop and energy drinks for a while also made it more obvious how gross my mouth feels after drinking some. My tongue feels coated and sticky for hours, my teeth sometimes seem to feel weak. I imagine in the past this was something like my normal state. I didn't know what I was missing. It's hard to convince people to change on this. They'll get an attitude like you're some health freak trying to hook them on a diet. Even my parents have a favorite pop each and will drink 2-3 a day. Caffeine probably plays a large part as well. Most of the people I have in mind don't like or consume tea or coffee at all, because they don't taste very good (especially when you're used to pop).
• rasz 5y ago
  Water? You mean like in the toilet? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YZnORoAWkA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YZnORoAWkA
• krageon 5y ago
  > We just drink water with everything People who grow up on soda invariably think water "tastes bad", which has been the reason folks around me keep drinking it. I find it as mystifying as you.
• ASalazarMX 5y ago
  I don't know if someone already mentioned this, but a big factor is that a bottle of soda costs the same as a bottle of water, and some times even less. It's absurd, because soft drinks are made of water, so water must be cheaper! Unfortunately, soft drink companies try to corner the bottled water market so it doesn't undermine their sales.