I took my daughter to dinner the other night to celebrate her new job. The waitress brought one large Mason jar filled with ice water to the table. I had ordered a beer and my daughter had ordered a coke, so we were confused until the waitress admitted to her mistake. Looking at the jar, which was filled mostly with ice, I recalled how in the past, a glass of water was brought to the table almost the moment you sat down.
These days, when you are taken to a table at a restaurant, you are habitually asked, “What can I get you to drink?” Water, in most places, is no longer brought to you unless you request it. Most of the time it is tap water and it is only the higher end restaurants that add a wedge of lemon to it. Depending on the establishment and the time of day, sodas are the most requested beverage, followed by alcoholic drinks and coffee.
Some people never develop a taste for coffee, so they begin their mornings with PepsiⓇ, Coca ColaⓇ, or Mountain DewⓇ, in order to get the caffeine charge that most of us require. I have observed in many of those people, a tendency to become overweight or obese from the excessive amount of sugar that these beverages contain. I recently decided to try a root beer from the vending machine at work, but I found it to be sickenly sweet and the bottle held about 16 ounces, which was far more than I wanted.
It is not difficult to understand why people who drink several cans of soda in a day, often gain weight and become diabetic. There are a lot of calories in those cans, but nothing of value, nutritionally speaking. When people eat a large meal and drink sodas along with it, it puts their daily calorie intake far above the average requirement.
I have never liked sodas. They do not quench my thirst. If anything, they make me more thirsty (from the added sugar) than I was before I drank them. Like most people, I like carbonation. The bubbly sensation makes my throat feel good and that is probably why I like beer. I like the natural bubbly you get from PerrierⓇ and other carbonated water, with a large wedge of fresh lime added.
When people tell me that they don’t like the taste of water, I know that they are not completely off base. Tap water often tastes gross and if we knew what was in it, we probably wouldn’t drink it at all. I have not drank tap water for 40 years, preferring bottled spring water or filtered water. I miss the fresh, pure water that we dipped from the underground spring, when I was a small girl living high in the Rocky Mountains with my grandmother. Putting all of our likes and dislikes aside, water is vital to our survival. We are running out of water and the underground aquifers are drying up. We should all be giving more consideration to our beverage of choice.
