Oldtimer here. Soda was a rare treat when I was growing up in the 50s. We kids always had a glass of milk with a meal, OJ from concentrate at breakfast. In between, there was water. In summer we were allowed a glass of home-made ice tea after we finished our milk. Summer evenings sometimes we were allowed to have a glass of Coke. In high school one of my friends had a case – a CASE!!! – of soda in the garage. Wow! Luxury! I had never heard of such a thing.
Part of the reason was that my parents were very frugal, and my mom was practically compulsive about proper nutrition.
I grew up in the 30s and 40s, and seldom drank soda pop (as we called it). First, it was the Depression and few people would waste precious money on that. Second, mostly we drank water, and a lot of it, as we were extremely active as kids then. Biking and walking everywhere, as not many had cars, and tires and gas were rationed, so the way to go was by shank’s mare.
Even after I grew up, never really cared for Coke, etc. Maybe due to not having it when young, or just because I don’t care for sweet drinks when good old water is available.
When I as a marathon and long distance runner, I knew that sugar drinks actually inhibited the absorption of liquid into the system. This was before sports drinks, so water was the only thing available along the courses.
And during my youth, is was really very rare to see any fat kid. The very few who were, were invariably called “Fatty.”
I grew up in the 50s. We never had any carbonated drinks in the house, with the exception of ginger ale or 7-up when we were sick (for some reason they though belching quickened recovery). And I don’t recall having them at school either. But we drank a wide variety of other things: water, milk, juice, lemonade, Kool-Aid. Everything was made from real sugar back then, and we probably had more sugar in a day than we should have had in a week.
I remember Coke machines outside grocery stores and gas stations, but I don’t remember using them.
And I have two memories of milk: One is the little half-pint containers that we got in school at lunch time. The other is my mother putting vitamins in my milk. She got small blue bottles of vitamins with an eye dropper attached to the lid. It made the milk taste rather gross.
I grew up in the 40s and we basically never had soda in the house (except for birthday parties and the like). We drank milk with meals generally. Except dinner was always begun with a large glass of tomato juice. We also never had Kool-Aid. In the summer, there was always a bottle of water in the fridge.
When I got home from school, my school bag went in the house, but I didn’t. We spent the time till dinner or dark playing outside. A baseball family game called boxball (that no one else has ever heard of) all spring and summer and touch football fall and winter (weather permitting). All played in the streets there being very few cars on side streets in those days. By 1950, the year I went to HS, this culture had ended, destroyed by the car.
I was envious of one family of cousins. Because they kept kosher, they were not permitted milk with dinner and so always drank soda.
Heh. I keep two half gallon containers of tap water in the fridge at all times, and rotate them, so I drink from the older, colder bottle. And it does taste better than water straight from the tap. During the summer, tap water is either lukewarm or just plain warm around here.
We were given FLAT soda when we were sick. Apparently my mother thought that it was less likely to make us throw up, or something. I remember getting flat 7 Up and saltines when I was sick.
Sad to think I must be starting to qualify as older. Grew up in the 60’s 70’s.
The only time we got pop with meals at home was when we had liver. We had to eat the liver before we could drink the pop. We got a soda when we ate out (rare) because it was cheaper than milk.
We would have pop at other times as a treat or a snack. One 12oz bottle shared between my brother and I. The one that didn’t pour got to choose the glass.
I was born in 1960. I think my folks bought a carton of soda once a week (8 packs of 16 ounce bottles. They were glass deposit bottles that you had to lug back to the store). We had an “open refrigerator” policy at home. We could eat/drink whatever we wanted whenever. So whomever got to that soda first got it. Losers weepers.
I don’t recall any of us drinking more than 2 bottles a week. There was always a pitcher of Kool Aid or Funny Face made that we drank instead, on top of the gallons of water we drank.
I was well out of college in the 1980’s before I started drinking soda on a daily basis.
I was born in 1957. Soda was a definite ‘treat’ and something that needed special permission to get. We didn’t keep much at home, water and milk being the drinks of choice. So maybe once or twice a week in the warmer months, I got soda.
Oddly enough, Hi-C was seen as a healthy alternative by the time I reached high school, so Mom stocked up on that. I guzzled that down like water. Bad move in retrospect.
Massive consumption didn’t take place until college, when I and the guys I lived with went to a soda wholesaler to buy it in huge bottles by the case, to guzzle.
I was born in '66. Soda was a rare treat for us. We basically drank a lot of milk, sometimes juice or Kool-Aid. My parents never bought soda as a regular thing. It was for stuff like birthday parties.
We have pretty much the same policy with our kids. They drink milk or juice with meals. Soda is an occasional treat. Even when we go to restaurants, we don’t allow them to order pop.
When I was a kid, it was a rare treat for my Dad to get a 6 pack of Coke or 7 Up and let me have half a bottle. He would then put a stopper on top of the bottle and put it in the refrigerator for later.
Diet soda came along later. When I was a kid, there were essentially two diet sodas - Tab and Fresca. And neither was popular. People who didn’t want to drink regular soda generally drank water instead.
I don’t think nutritional science is quite there yet, but there’s about enough circumstantial evidence to convict diet soda of being just as bad as regular. Some say it’s worse.
Carbonated beverages, for some strange reason, were not allowed in my family’s house. I think it had something to do with the puritan ethic – if it tastes good, it must be bad for you and the Devil is always watching for transgressors.
So I never had the opportunity to taste soda until 7th grade, when I was given a tiny, 7 oz bottle of Coke as a reward for helping a teacher at school. I was grateful for the gesture, but I was unable to swallow the whole bottle since I wasn’t used to the fizz.
I’m not sure why milk seems unlikely, except against current fads that contend it’s bad for you and against current trends where kids drink pop with meals. We (born in 1943) drank milk with every meal and we also drank milk when we were thirsty. I still can remember the refreshing sense of a cold glass of milk after coming home after a hot morning or afternoon of playing ball or running around or riding bikes or whatever. We occasionally would have some lemonade in the refrigerator. My dad was in the water filter business (Jeez, if he had kept that one, we’d be owning Bill Gates right now), and we drank a lot of cold, filtered water, too. As someone above has mentioned, Cokes were treats you got from a machine or at a soda fountain. When I caddied, I walked home past a store where I could buy a root beer in a frosted mug. That was a treat. We certainly didn’t have that at home.
And, of course, we walked 8 miles to school, uphill both ways.
Until Aspartame came along in the 80’s diet soda was absolutely hideous! Most used saccharin as a sweetener and it had a terrible aftertaste. Cyclamates were used in diet soda and Funny face drink mix, and they didn’t taste too bad. But it was banned after they discovered giving five million tons of it to a 3 pound rat caused cancer. Someday they’ll find a cure for cancer. But it will only work on rats.
In the 60’s/70’s Diet Rite was among the worst of the worst. The aftertaste caused ones face to suck down into his neck and asshole puckering. This is ironic because now that they use Splenda IMHO Diet Rite is the best tasting of diet sodas.
Grew up in the 60’s and 70’s, (born 1960), and soda was indeed a rare treat then. I don’t think this was due to any particular health-consiousness on the parents part but mostly due to frugality. The beverage of choice was always milk…which is hardly surprising as my parents were dairy farmers. We had the stuff in mass quantities - whole, fresh, raw, chilled directly from the cow, and delicious. Also pretty high-calorie. In my mid teens I started to become quite chunky. The first thing I did when I decided to drop the weight was to cut out milk drinking.
I don’t recall my friends having a lot of soda back then either. Most of them kept a large pitcher of iced tea in the fridge and drank that incessantly. I never did acquire a taste for tea until adulthood.
I can attest to this. Back in the day, the females in my family were always on diets so we drank Tab and Fresca. Tab was absolutely disgusting, so that was out. Fresca was a citrus based carbonated drink, so the aftertaste was not as bad; I grew accustomed to the taste and now Coke Zero tastes too syrupy and sweet for my liking.
Most kids in the South grew up drinking sweet tea, so they were getting plenty of sugar even back in the day. Yet, the kids weren’t obese to the extent they are today.
My own opinion is that current obesity levels owe more to lack of exercise than to diet. The lack of physical activity results from at least a couple of factors. First and foremost is the ready availability of sedentary entertainment. Video games and computers and endless TV options. Kids (and adults) today sit for hours on end in these pursuits, when in the past they might have been up and active. Secondly, a lot of kids today seem to be in “lockdown” out of a heightened awareness (/exaggerated fear) of child predators. They don’t get out and explore and play (and burn calories) the way kids used to because parents are afraid to let the kids out of their sight.