Pop Culture
Last night I found myself talking to a bunch of food-focused friends about the cocktail competition going on over at Steve’s Table Hopping blog. Wait, don’t go anywhere, I promise today isn’t another mid-week cocktail post.
However, since we are on the subject of yesterday’s call to action, if you haven’t voted for the #1 New York State of Mind yet the polls are open until 5pm today.
Anyhow, I was getting irrationally angry about just how sweet most the cocktails were. The more I spoke, the shriller my tone, the louder my voice and the more animated my gestures. It wouldn’t surprise me if I started to foam around the corners of my mouth, just a little bit. And that’s when I blurted it out.
THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE LIVE IN A SODA CULTURE!
And much like in psychotherapy, sometimes words just seem to fall out of your mouth. But when you hear them spoken for the first time, they stop you in your tracks. You realize that you’ve articulated a problem that’s been bothering you for a while, and just perhaps you might have stumbled on something significant.
Why the heck is everything so sweet? It’s not just the cocktails submitted to Steve’s contest. Take a look at the yogurt aisle in the supermarket. Then check out the breakfast cereals, not the kid ones either, but the adult ones like Smart Start.
If you are in Albany, you can look at restaurant menus too. I’m constantly amazed at how many dishes at nice restaurants contain some kind of sticky sweet element like a fruit sauce, balsamic reduction or gastrique.
Sure, we are physiologically pre-programmed to like sweets.
#idonthavethefactstobackthisup but I’m pretty sure we’ve simply become numb to it all. When soda is everywhere and its quantities are seemingly infinite, sugar water becomes the new water. And many people who turn away from all the sugar in soda choose to replace it with diet soda, which is equally sweet.
Soda sales may be declining, but sales of sweet water-based beverages and sweet energy drinks are filling those gaps.
Drinking water is a radical move.
Not only that, but it’s largely shunned. You want proof? Go to a restaurant. The server will ask what people want to drink. The answer generally isn’t, “Could you bring me some ice water please?” No. Listen to yourself, and if not yourself others nearby. The refrain more often sounds like, “I’ll just have water.”
Using words like just or only makes a sensible solution sound almost apologetic.
None of this is to suggest I’m anti-soda. I’m not. Soda in moderation is a fine treat people have been enjoying for over 100 years. But it’s like liquid candy, and one should never forget that. While I enjoy it, I drink precious little of the stuff.
I’m starting to suspect that the majority of people who do drink a lot of soda and other sweetened beverages may not even notice that everything around them is getting increasingly sweet. It’s kind of like going to a concert. After a while you don’t realize how loud it is until you go outside and find your ears to be ringing and your throat to be sore from all the screaming.
Perhaps my campaigns for better cocktails and more balanced menus that eschew sweet sauces for more interesting preparations, should start with a campaign for people to drink more water.
You hear me? Look at what you are drinking. If it contains sugar or artificial sweeteners, put it down and slowly walk away.
You need a hit of sweet in the mid-afternoon? Try some refreshing mint tea.
Don’t like the taste of plain water? Buy a lemon and get some ice cubes.
Need some bubbles? Let me introduce you to your new friend seltzer.
Do you require a pick-me-up? It’s time to learn to love black coffee or Earl Gray.
This isn’t about diet. It’s not about health. It’s about taste. And that’s important too.
FUSSYlittleBLOG 
As I’ve grown older I have a lower tolerance for all things sweet. I will drink a soda from time to time, but it’s a pretty rare occasion. In fact, I used to live for dessert and now I’ll pass most times unless something tart (like citrus) is partnered with the sweet.
I’ve always been a wine and beer kind of gal but I’m starting to enjoy trying new cocktails. When you ask the ingredients or see them on a menu – they never list simple syrup even when it’s present. I’ve learned to ask. There’s a great cocktail up at Max London’s in Saratoga with St. Germain, champagne and gin – half the bartenders put simple syrup in it and half don’t so I always make sure to ask for it without, because the one time they put it in, it was undrinkable. I don’t know how people can tolerate anything so sickly sweet.
I don’t know why anyone would add simple syrup to a drink that already has St. Germain in it. It’s a very sweet (and tasty) liquor to begin with.
It is sweet (and yes, delicious), but if you mix it with good stuff like gin and champagne it’s perfectly balanced and almost tart.
One bartender at the place insists there’s no simple syrup in the drink – which is why I made the mistake of once ordering it without making a gentle inquiry first. Bluh. At least they had 2 for 1 drink specials so the second drink made up for the overly sweet first one!
I am so with you on this one. I drink seltzer, water, milk, and very rarely I have a little juice in the morning, usu orange or grapefruit, but only because I want the citrus flavor, not sugar. And, I definitely do not like sweet cocktails, eek. Or, sugar in the coffee is another one I do not like. Bleh. Think about it, there is a whole aisle dedicated to soda in the supermarkets.
Splenda runs through my veins. Long live sugar!
I don’t like sweet sauces with my savory dishes, though. I think set should just be one delicious sugar high.
You know, it is way too easy to ruffle your feathers.
I wouldn’t say that soda is solely to blame for other foods being sweet (though it probably contributes, especially when people feel like their restaurant entrees need to be sugary). Sweet also works because it helps improve the taste of something that you might not otherwise eat/drink.
For instance, I only drink “girly drinks,” sweet cocktails and the like, because while I want to be able to have an alcoholic drink when I’m at a wedding or some other social occasion, and the sensation of being tipsy can be fun every once in a while, I don’t like the taste of alcohol — it’s an acquired taste, and I’ve never acquired it.
I can say a similar thing about yogurt — for those who don’t like the taste of yogurt but know that it’s good for them and should be eating it, it’s good to have some flavored options that cover up that taste a bit.
On the other hand, I’ve had maybe one soda this year. I found it surprisingly easy to give it up, but if I really want one, I have it (which is really, really rarely).
I agree with you completely. I believe both the obesity and diabetes epidemics are primarily due to SODA!
I generally ask for “just water” and keep a couple of bucks in my pocket (restaurant beverages being the worst value on the menu) unless they have Saratoga Water in the elegant blue bottle in which case I am happy to support my local business. One day, I hope they will do a national market push. Why drink French water or Fiji water when you can get snobby water from the USA?
Amen, brother.
I am disinclined to try most cocktails because I know In advance they’ll be too sweet for my palate. Though I’m mostly a wine and beer guy, when I do have a drink it’s either a premeal martini — Hendrick’s or Sapphire, dry, up, olives — or a postprandial bourbon or rye with one big icecube.
I guzzle SodaStream seltzer by the liter with only fresh lime slices. Soda? No more than a few bottles per year.
We see it at the distillery every day. People ask what is the sweetest… they don’t have a taste for anything but. We are working on a peach infused Applejack to fill that in but we are still trying to keep it pulled back.. we’ll see how that turns out.
I agree, too, that so many things are way too sweet, and have gotten sweeter over the years.
This week on WAMC they had an interview with a wine guy from the CIA, and Alan Chartock said something about drinking Diet Pepsi all the time and therefore he could not distinguish flavors in wine very well. So true.
Once I was hanging out with a chef friend in his restaurant kitchen and watched the prep chef toss a fresh fruit cup with simple syrup before it was served. I was shocked, and was told that “that’s how people like it.” No wonder the melon, strawberries, etc in restaurants are always so tasty (aka sweet). It’s not disclosed on the menu that the fruit is sweetened.
I’ll go one step further and say we live in a refined corn culture. Because, well, corn kind of grows like a weed in the US.
HFCS is far sweeter and more concentrated than cane sugar, and it is less expensive to produce than cane sugar is to harvest. And EVERYTHING is made with it.
Think about it – a soda or a juice sweetened with cane sugar has a much more balanced, even sometimes a bit tart, flavor than something sweetened with HFCS. And we’re conditioned to it.
My husband and I cut it out of our diets a few years ago, and when it occasionally sneaks it’s way in (it’s so prevalent that an occasional HFCS “contamination” is almost unavoidable), I can taste the difference almost immediately and it usually gives me a dull headache.
Oh my! There are few things that I Iive for and a fountain Pepsi is one of them. Lots of ice and with a straw… yum. Nothing to be ashamed of in my mind.