No, I'm not talking about pie.
Let's take a break here and talk for a second about drinks.
I just came from Japan, where tea and coffee are king. You can go to any vending machine and get a variety of teas or coffees in bottles and cans, with a few soft drinks or other beverages like sports drinks and soda alongside. It's something I miss in America, because not only are there so few vending machines and convenience stores compared to Tokyo, but also because the variety of beverages ... well ... sucks.
Coming back to the US I'm figuring out why people get fat. If you're ingesting a third of your RDA of calories in beverages ... yeah, that's bad. And even if it's 0 calories with fakeyfake sugar, it's still not good for you. Possibly worse.
What is wrong with unsweetened beverages?? The only one I can seem to find is water. Every variety of tea here, with the exception of the few overpriced bottles of Ito-en green or jasmine (sometimes oolong) you can find here and there, is full of crap. I only like sweet tea if it's milky. I can't stand sugar or flavoring in tea. To me, it tastes like some kind of bathroom cleaner or air freshener or candle or something.
I'm going a bit nuts. I boil my own tea, but now finding that the water's full of hexavalent chromium has me concerned. Also, hot tea in Hawaii = not so great in the middle of the day. So I'm drinking big bottles of water. I occasionally drink something else--Nesquik (I do enjoy Nesquik) or a bit of gatorade or some kind of organic fruit beverage--but as a small female person nearing 30, I can't afford to give up so many calories per day to drinks.
I really wish that more people in the US would become tea drinkers. Not sweet-sugar-crappy tea drinkers, but straight tea drinkers. I want more tea! Cheaper tea! Until then I guess I'll just be lugging as many 1.5L bottles of water home as possible. Hopefully that stuff isn't full of chromium ...
