Hacker News Reader

Comment by boydjd | Hacker News Reader

What are you drinking instead of soda in your country?

That question - in and by itself - gives you away as an American. As a central European who grew up on water, fruit juice (80-60% water thinned) and tea (green, herb and on and off black) it made me chuckle. I have never seen so much soda consumption anywhere on this planet before coming to the US.

America definitely drinks more soda than anyone else: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/map_of_the_.... 3x as much as most central European countries.

Notwithstanding the golden "correlation != causation" adage, I found that only two things are truly consumed in much larger quantities in America than any other country I know: soda and high fructose corn syrup...at the same time being the only country with a 35% obesity rate...hmmmm

Oh really?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/09/mexico-obesity_n_35...

Relevant numbers from the article:

US obesity rate: 31.8% Mexican obesity rate: 32.8%

Also, Mexican soda exclusively uses cane sugar. I buy Mexican Coke for the new times I drink regular soda for that reason.

Not true. Saudi Arabia is the most obese country on earth, at 70%.

Britain, Australia, and New Zealand are also substantially obese. All of those are coming increasingly close to catching America in obesity, with their obesity levels exploding higher.

Here's the latest data I know of on this:

http://www.socialprogressimperative.org/data/spi/components/...

The United States comes in at 8th highest obesity rate, after Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, South Africa, and Mexico.

A lot of the "fruit juice" (in America, at least) contains just as much HFCS as soda.

I don't know if this is the case in the rest of the world or in this study though.

I'm fairly sure in the UK you can't legally call fruit juice with added sugar/sweeteners "juice" - it would have to be fruit drink or something

It's the same in the US ... except you can call it "juice drink" or "juice cocktail", which isn't very clear.

Wow that's weird, if I heard "juice cocktail" I'd think Mango and Orange or something. "Juice drink" is plain misleading.

That's what we have regulations for ;-) Everything called "fruit juice" in the EU needs to be 100% juice (but it can be made from concentrate).

Of the ~20 countries I've visited I think only the US had HFCS in the fruit juice. (It tastes funny/unfamiliar, so I notice.)

Instead they contain sugar, natural or added, and about as much as cola (~10%). The cola also has sugar instead of HFCS.

The US Government's vast, and continued, subsidization of corn is what led to the creation of HFCS. Makes sense, unfortunately, that the US would be drowning in it.

That's a good question. Back in the old country, people don't drink as much soda but they have another "drinking" problem--beer and hard liquor. That's much worse than soda, but it's a real addiction (alcoholism).

In the other country where I lived a big chunk of my life, they usually drink green tea.

uh, water?

Water? Like out of the toilet!?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/quotes?item=qt1722899

Seriously though, some of the descriptions of culture of drinking soda in this thread make me think of that movie. For last 15 years I had soda maybe 10 times and it was usually like few sips. I just can't phantom a world where soda is what you drink when you are a thirsty or to meals. I don't remember people I eat out with ordering soda to their meals either. It's usually water, tea, coffee, sometimes fruit juice.

I drink far more Coke Vanilla Zero than could possibly be good for someone when at home, and yet when eating out I generally get iced tea with no sweetener. You may know a closet soda addict and not even realize it. :)

OT, but:

> I just can't phantom a world

I think you mean 'fathom' here. It uses the metaphor of something being too deep to measure.

I drink at least 24 fluid ounces of soda every day.

I've changed to Dr Pepper Ten instead of regular Dr Pepper though, so at least it's not as terrible for me.

20 calories vs 500 and 4g sugar vs 128g

My wife and I got a good laugh about this exact thing when I made that comment.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com