Juice

In Japan, everyone drinks tea. My daughters love tea. They drink it everyday. However, when I was a kid, growing up in America, no one ever drank tea. Now that I think about it... what did I drink? I remember drinking water from the hose outside. When I grew up, there was no concept of bottled water. We always drank tap water. I still do!

We often made juice. The juice came frozen in a can-shaped package. You open one side, dump the frozen juice concentrate into a pitcher, then add a couple cans of water. Mix it up and you have juice. This was always great for summer since it was cold as soon as you made it. Like all juice, it was full of sugar, so it tasted great. Although, it was definitely no fresh squeezed orange.

Later, when I was in middle school or so, we started drinking Crystal Light. It is another type of juice that is still around today. It is a highly concentrated powder that you mix into water. A small amount, perhaps a tablespoon, of the powder is enough to flavor a pitcher of water. A tablespoon of sugar in a pitcher of water is not enough so this uses some artificial sweeteners, like aspartame. It is sweet for sure. Not sure if it is better or worse than normal sugar...

Finally, about the time I was in high school, I drank a lot of soda. Specifically, Pepsi (In America there are a lot of people who argue about which is better: Pepsi or Coke. My tongue is not sensitive enough to care either way...). By the way, in America, soda is not considered a 'juice'. Juice is made from fruit. Also in America, soda is not just for pizza or KFC. Americans like soda ALL the time.

Every other month or so, my mom and dad would go to the local casino for a fun night out. They would play the nickel slots and, instead of winning money, they somehow won cases of soda. The often brought home 5 or 6 cases of soda, each with 24 cans. This was really unhealthy as I could grab a can of soda anytime. I drank many cans of soda a day.

After high school, I realized I was wasting all of my money on fast food. I resolved to stop eating fast food, and drinking soda, from that point on. I am quite stubborn and somehow it worked. It was all about saving money but, now that I'm getting older, I am really happy I did it for my health as well. Nowadays, I still don't drink much juice or soda. In fact, I don't like carbonated drinks at all.

I think a culture of drinking tea, like Japan, would be a great improvement for America. But, realistically, that will never happen. People love soda too much.