I’m sorry! I need a little color in my life.
Bottled Water (media by JC)
There is no doubt in my mind that drinking the amount of diet soda I do will have long-lasting effects. (This will be more fodder for a future article.) What can I say? I like my Diet and Zero flavored pop (As we say it in Michigan)?
What I can’t bring myself to drink consistently is water? Sure it will do in a pinch, but my tastebuds yearn for more. I get it, water is free from the tap, but most people buy it by the bottle now. If you think about it, it wasn’t that long ago when we as a society scoffed at purchasing water by the bottle. I can hear it now, “who would pay for that?”. Quite a few people, according to Businesswire.com:
To me, bottled water costs at least a dollar to a dollar and a half from the vending machine, and the soda directly adjacent to it looks way more appealing at close to the same price. I love those who buy the water and add their own packaged flavoring. They like the water but only when it tastes like something. These water enhancers add their own additional cost and that one dollar bottled water became substantially more costly.
Flavor Packets (media by JC)
Don’t get me started on the bottles used to package water lately. The latest bottles have reduced the amount of plastic in the overall bottle construction, causing the bottles to wilt during transportation and the weight of other water stacked upon them. Some of this can be attributed to the paneling of the bottles and the temperature changes. Still, you can’t tell me they haven’t tried eliminating as much plastic as possible from the plastic extrusion process. Sure an argument can be made that this reduces the amount of plastic in the environment, but job one was using this as a cost-cutting measure to make bottling water even more profitable.
I get it; water is the way to go when drinking beverages. Science alone has proven it has loads of health benefits. The human body is comprised of 60% water, after all. It’s good for the skin; it helps with weight reduction by filling you up, so to speak, it delivers oxygen throughout the body, and the list goes on.
I find it amusing there are so many conflicting opinions on just how much water a person should drink during a typical day. Ultimately, everyone is different, and this number is based on many factors, although the consensus is 4 to 6 cups daily. The fact is there is no universal number, and drinking any is better than drinking none. For now, I will continue to drink my soda and occasionally drink water when the mood catches me. At least until I write about the negatives of diet soda!
Photo by Noppadon Manadee on Unsplash