ZME Science reports the results of a new paper by Laura Lara-Castor of Tufts’s School of Nutrition Science and Policy on the geographical distribution of beverage preferences:
Some results were pretty intuitive. For instance, consumption of milk was highest in northern Europe — high-income areas in which dairy has traditionally played an important role in the diet, and where a large percentage of the population isn’t lactose intolerant. Juice consumption was highest in Latin America, especially in Colombia (where adults drink an average of 1.4 cups per day) and the Dominican Republic (1.3 cups per day).
Other things, however, left more room for discussion.
Researchers were particularly interested in a particular set of drinks, one which is increasingly being considered a health hazard: sweetened drinks. Intriguingly, Latin America also had the highest consumption of this sort of beverage, with the average Mexican adult drinking 2.5 cups per day, followed by Suriname and Jamaica at 1.8 cups per day. The lowest intake was in China, Indonesia, and Burkina Faso.
Unfortunately, the article doesn’t link to the paper itself, have much more in the way of details, or include a map showing the distribution of beverage preferences. That Latin America has considerable consumption of sweetened beverages doesn’t surprise me. The prevalance of obesity is pretty high there, too.
You should visit a Mexican grocery, try a soda, man they are sweet.
Too sweet for me.
Don’t need to. They carry Mexican soda at my local grocery.
Then of course there is Kentucky…………and bourbon.