Earth to Mayor Bloomberg. Come in, please.
The AP reports:
For more than two decades, soda was the No. 1 drink in the U.S. with per capita 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.
Personally, I prefer coffee and iced tea — dislike nearly all carbonated beverages.
54 gallons of soda a year works out to, say, two 2-liter bottles per week. Leaving out those who don’t use soda, let’s say those who drank soda were drinking about three 2-liter jobs per week. Sounds reasonable to me. The current level is rather lower. It could be driven by those who have stopped using soda, those who use less soda, or likely a combination of the two.
So a soda “habit” that is, for most users, quite responsible has become even less use. Could the nannies please butt out? Who am I kidding?