A report on USAToday indicates that good ole fashion water is America’s favorite drink. I think that says we are becoming more aware of what we are putting in our bodies. Soda, energy drinks, and sugary sweetened drinks have been replaced!
…soda’s run as the nation’s beverage of choice has fizzled.
In its place? A favorite for much of history: Plain old H2O.
For more than two decades, soda was the No. 1 drink in the U.S. with consumption peaking in 1998 at 54 gallons a year, according industry tracker Beverage Digest. Americans drank just 42 gallons a year of water at the time.
But over the years, as soda increasingly came under fire for fueling the nation’s rising obesity rates, water quietly rose to knock it off the top spot.
Americans now drink an average of 44 gallons of soda a year, a 17 percent drop from the peak in 1998. Over the same time, the average amount of water people drink has increased 38 percent to about 58 gallons a year. Bottled water has led that growth, with consumption nearly doubling to 21 gallons a year.
This is great news. Now, if more people would choose to filter their home tap water, and save the environment as well as their health.
This is not so good news from the same post:
The new soft drink-like packaging helped fast-track bottled water’s growth past milk and beer. In fact, the amount of bottled water Americans drink has risen nearly every year for more than two decades, while the estimates of how much tap water people drink has fluctuated up and down during that time. When taken together, water finally overtook soda in 2008, according to Beverage Digest. (It’s difficult to track how much tap water people drink and how much is used for other things like washing dishes, so experts estimate consumption.)
Currently, people drink 21 gallons of bottled water a year. That compares with 37 gallons of other water, which includes tap, sparkling, flavored and enhanced waters such as Coca-Cola’s vitaminwater.
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