Soft drink consumption

[jacob]

70% of US males/60% of US females between age 2 and 19 drink soda daily. These numbers are 2-10 times higher than other countries.

Anyone here drink regularly?

[daylen]

Wow, that is a lot! I had no idea...

I might drink a Dr pepper if offered on rare occasion, but I never buy it.

[Tyler9000]

I love the stuff and have consumed it my entire life. That said, I severely cut back this year to where it's an occasional indulgence rather than a daily habit. I'm happy I finally managed to make the switch.

[jennypenny]

Does it count if it's only used as a mixer?

[Bankai]

I used to drink quite a lot of this, sometimes up to 3 cans a day, up to 3-4 times a week. Now I only have it on rare occasions, maybe once every couple of months or so. Both at home and at work I prefer tea/coffee/water instead.

[C40]

I drank a lot of Mountain Dew when I was a teenager but stopped at age 15 when I realized caffeine addiction was causing the headaches I'd get each afternoon around the time school ends and my body was expecting it's fix.

I do drink coke with rum in it.

I also discovered that coke tastes like the best thing in the world when you've exercised very intensely and depleted your muscle glycogen (and maybe blood sugar some ?). It's also sort of good for you at that time to help speed recovery, but I only drank it a few times when it happened to be around, just because it tasted so good.

I'm still guilty of drinking coke with rum in it. Though I've transitioned to drinking very little and, in phases, to mixing with plain or soda water.

[vexed87]

I used to drink a lot of diet coke, mainly before discovering ERE, but I went cold turkey and cut it out altogether a couple of years ago. I have had the odd relapse and occasionally indulge in a 2L bottle every now and then! I was definitely habituated to the caffeine.

Now its a rare treat. I have always avoided full sugar soda though.

[cmonkey]

We will buy a 2 liter or two when its on sale for 50-70 cents each. Might happen once a month. Definitely NOT on a daily basis here. My only daily drinks are coffee and water.

[chenda]

Almost never, never have. Except a occasionally as a vodka and coke or something.

Lots of sparkling water though

[steveo73]

I have never really drank soft drinks. I don't like it.

[Solvent]

Considering myself a pretty healthy person, these sort of statistics baffled me for some time.

But then, a recent conversation with my sister dredged up memories. She mentioned more frequent disagreements with her partner's children about how often they should be drinking soft drinks. And I recalled...

Actually, between about the ages of 14-18, I did drink a lot of soft drink. Maybe not every day, but probably a 5 times a week. I managed to sort of erase this from my memory until recently. I was living at home, and for some reason, my mum started buying cartons (24 cans) of soft drink to keep in the spare fridge. I guess the price fell, or something..?

Anyway, eventually, Mum stopped buying it, or I moved out, whatever, I stopped drinking much soft drink. As mentioned, until very recently I thought it pretty strange that you could drink soft drink every day but I actually did get pretty close to that at a certain point. Now, that said, it doesn't seem to have affected my health or the health of either of my siblings who had the same habit at roughly the same ages. A teenager's metabolism is different to that of a 30-year-old's, though, so I'm glad I don't consume that much anymore. Now it's rare for me to drink soft drink, but then again I probably easily make up for it in beer or wine consumption.

[OTCW]

Very rarely drink them. Should be never because they are nothing but empty calories and spike blood sugar, but I drink one occasionally. 12 servings a year maybe.

[vanishingpoint76]

I used to drink 2 cans of diet daily up until about 8 years ago. Now never. My kids drink about 1 can every week usually as a 'treat'. I do drink a lot of club soda...I bought a soda stream machine for just this purpose.

[CactusSurfer]

Well, up until my late 20's I was part of Jacob's 70%. I'd have soda almost daily, sometimes 2-3 times a day. After that, I basically quit cold turkey--I only indulge maybe 4-5x per year at social events where everyone else is drinking soda.

[Sclass]

As a minor my family would order it as a treat with pizza.

Once I went out on my own I was too stingy to fork over the 25c or more as time went on. I just had water out of cheapness.

As my family members came down with diabetes I realized I'd made a good choice. Gross high fructose corn syrup in coke now.

At my last workplace only the assemblers drank that trash.

[IlliniDave]

Over the last 8 or so years I average probably 2 2-litre bottles of soda per year purchased for my home. I might also have some sort of soft drink with dinner 3-4 times a year at a restaurant. That's about it.

[Did]

I'm addicted, and have given it up a number of times. I'm currently not drinking it as the habit was broken during my recent incapacitation (silver lining and all that). I'm mobile again, but have so far resisted the siren call.... There is definitely some seriously addictive stuff in Coke Zero and the like. Not just sweetness or caffeine. My whole brain says Yes! when I drink it, and, when I'm on a roll, I think about it if a day has passed.

[RealPerson]

Zero servings any day of the year. Nasty stuff and terrible for you. It tastes like drinking something from the chem lab. I did not grow up drinking it and never bought it. It is definitely an acquired taste in my view.

[BRUTE]

not for over a year

[J_]

Since decades never.