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Comment by tjr | Hacker News Reader

For some people, it seems to be. I suspect part of the issue is how abundantly available it is. For example, you go to the theater, and you can either buy a single bottle of water, or a cup of soda with free refills. Many restaurants offer only local tap water as a water choice, which varies in good taste. Lots of vending machines offer only soda, no water, again leaving the water-drinkers to search for a hopefully-clean, hopefully-not-too-bad-tasting drinking fountain.

I'm not saying you can't avoid soda if you try -- I rarely drink it myself -- but the culture seems to basically throw it in your face as the standard beverage of choice.

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Even at the workplace, many offices offer unlimited free soda as a perk. I almost never touch the stuff and would love to have access to healthier options. I haven't seen a single job posting featuring regularly stocked fresh fruit as an incentive.

>Even at the workplace, many offices offer unlimited free soda as a perk.

Is that still true? I know Microsoft did it in the early years, but that was a long time ago.

It's definitely true in the SFBay Area.. They might not advertise it explicitly, but most offices I've visited have free soda. The more progressive (or better funded?) ones have other better options too like Odwalla or Naked Juice.

Aren't those drinks full of sugar too? How much better than soda are they?

yes. Along with milk, canned carbonated water (Talking Rain), and canned fruit juice.

The salad bars are fairly low cost too and feature stuff from local producers in Washington State, so A+ for that.

... but that's not going to stop you from filling your plate with cheese, fried chicken strips, ranch dressing, and then calling it a salad.

Yes. Free soda at work is still common at IT workplaces, my office has an entire fridge which is just for canned soda and gets restocked weekly.

Yes, employees at Microsoft have access to unlimited soda, milk, juice, etc.

Source: I work there.

I can't speak for other places, but certainly Dropbox has fresh squeezed juice available, in addition to smoothies, agua fresca etc.

I worked for a company that offered regularly stocked (every day) fresh fruit. Food of pretty much any kind was available if you made the request. It wasn't advertised in job listings, though.

> Many restaurants offer only local tap water as a water choice

Amusingly in my neck of the woods, my wife and I noticed a few years ago that most of the Korean restaurants had high-quality filtered water (some advertised local water stores, others we could just taste it).

Makes a huge difference IMHO - too bad more places don't offer good local filtered water - it's cheap and makes the food taste better.

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