Sparkling Water

In an effort to control as much market share as possible, Coke extended its aggressive marketing to especially poor or vulnerable areas of the U.S., like New Orleans — where people were drinking wice as much Coke as the national average — or Rome, Ga., where the per capita intake was nearly three Cokes a day. In Coke’s headquarters in Atlanta, the biggest consumers were referred to as “heavy sers.” “The other model we use was called ‘drinks and drinkers,’ ” Dunn said. “How many drinkers do I have? And how many drinks do they drink? If you lost one of those heavy users, if somebody just decided to stop drinking Coke, how many drinkers would you have to get, at low velocity, to make up for that heavy user? The answer is a lot. It’s more efficient to get my existing users to drink more.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.html?pagewanted=all)

That was me.

I easily drank 6-8 diet cokes a day while studying for the bar exam.

This was not that far off my normal consumption from age 13 - 30.  Maybe only 2 cans a day less than average.

Scary.

And, oddly, I have the country of Argentina and their commitment to sparkling water to thank for my easy replacement of diet coke with water and sparkling water.  It was there I learned I really only cared about the bubbles and the liquid.

Gracias!