starsville, there is nothing in your post that states that the ICE GOES INTO THE COKE. You can drink an ice-cold beverage without putting ice in it.

I have seen ads for Coke from the 40's with people sipping Coke out of the bottle through a straw. Are you telling me that people put little chips of ice in a Coke bottle years ago before they drank it? I think NOT.

>>Coke is supposed to be served ice cold - ON ice if possible!<<

Oh, no, now we have the "ice" police. If my soda comes right out of the refrigerator, I prefer not a lot of ice in it because like it's been said before it's deluded and you end up with a cup of ice. My sister is the same way... I guess we weren't given the rules.

Folks, lighten up. Just thought Coke's marketing might be interesting - and shed some light on why some of us enjoy Coke on ice.

Did no one else note the move from "ice cold" to "on ice" along the timeline when chipped ice (and then cubes) became available? Hmmmm... maybe about the time the ice moved from the "icebox" coolant to chips then cubes served in the glass?

Dang! Y'all are grouchy today.

And I just HATE "deluded" Cokes. It is after all just a soft drink!

If this heatwave keeps up, it won't be ice that's a problem. It will be our water reserves. Some places in the alps are already short on water.

Now back to my Birchermüsli, ice cold out of the fridge.

That was cute, Patrick!

Starrsville-I'm glad to see you found and posted those early adverts. for Coke-that is exactly what I had in mind way back up on this thread-Coke has always, since its product inception in the very early 20th century, advertised and INTENDED this product to be served ICE cold-ICE COLD COKE (not necessarily with ice).

It is the Europeans who have got it all wrong, (I think for the most part deliberately as well) and you simply do not get the same taste when someone hands you a can of room temp. Coke-it is not even the same bloody drink!

And btw, AnthonyGA-although I rarely agree with you on other matters, you are absolutely dead on accurate with your assessment of
Europeans and their so-called energy conservation. I know what you are saying is true, because I've experienced/observed all of that while living and staying with Europeans in their overheated, yet windows wide open at night in 20 degree weather homes through the decades. They haven't got a CLUE as to true energy conservation, much as it suits them at every turn to point the condescending finger at the Americans and their alleged wasteful habits. But tell me the last time you saw leaded gas in this country-30-plus years ago maybe? And how recently has unleaded gas come to be the law in Europe-the last few years? I think it still may be available some places.

Okay, I'm finished with my European rant of the day- in sum, I do have to confess that I STILL don't effectively miss anything at all when I'm in Europe and not here in the US......'cuz I rent apartments and get my OWN ice cold diet Coke with ice-and horrors! even put ice in my white wine so I can sip on it longer!

P.S. True story. Last August, in a Roman restaurant I like, La Scalinata, near Trevi Fountain, I asked for some ice, because my red wine was too HOT-red wine should be COOL not HOT. The waiter joked with me a bit about it (it helped considerably that I spoke Italian while asking) and I got a whole glass of ice, which I used to plunk into my red wine to make it cooler-and they didn't care a bit!

>ice in my white wine
Up to that point your shifted view of reality was tolerated, ;-) but this is just to much! This is utterly disgusting!

GF puts ice in her wine - but as half her family is South American, I think that can be forgiven

"It is the Europeans who have got it all wrong, (I think for the most part deliberately as well) and you simply do not get the same taste when someone hands you a can of room temp. Coke-it is not even the same bloody drink!" Someone's obviously not being objective here. If you're used to drinks being served ice cold and then diluted when the ice melts, of course it's not the same taste when it's served at room temperature! Just like when you're used to tasting only the beverage, undiluted by water, too much ice makes it taste differently.

Our cokes on ice don't get diluted by melted ice. We drink them before the ice melts - and get free refills of fresh, undiluted coke.

Logos-I guess the "white wine spritzer" has not yet made it to Germany....

Water not (never!!!!) ice

So your drinking style is as kamikaze as your feeding binge? Remember, Americans are also known to eat too quickly, not fully enjoying their meals.

Back into the cold...
Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine practitioners will say that this whole “no cold drink” thing does make sense.

Not to say that ALL people who drink cold fluids will get ill. BUT, if you have a tendency to stomach problems, cold fluids will definitely mess with your digestion. (if you don’t believe me, and you have stomach problems, try NOT drinking cold fluids for 2 weeks. Drink either room temp, or hot. Then go back to your cold fluids and you will understand what I’m talking about)

Also, cold, as in cold winds and drafts can definately help to bring on a cold. Notice, especially in the fall and spring, if there is a big wind storm, in the next 3-4 days you will notice an increase in people with the common cold.

Another example- women who have painful periods can usually make them better by applying heat and drinking warm drinks and worse by applying cold and voila, drinking cold drinks. Cold drinks often make phlegm worse, and coughs as well.

Lastly many athletes are made to drink room temperature water, and warm is even better. Since your body temp. is 98.6 degrees, if you drink or eat anything colder your body will use energy to convert whatever you’ve ingested to the proper temperature. I’ve drunk ice water after playing sports, and it makes my gut hurt. Like brain freeze but in your belly.

But crappy food goes best with cold drinks, esp sodas (sugar), anyway.. so drink up!

Actually, I thought someone said IOC and handmaiden and TG were all the same. I don't know. I know I enjoyed TG's posts in the past. I hope IOC is not the latest incarnation of the very funny - and usually civil - TG.

I have enjoyed handmaidens tag lines.

IOC is on the attack today and for some reason I'm on his firing line. Not sure why. Don't care. It will be good if it stops.

You guys still don't get it. It is not a question of what do you personally prefer but a question of 'culture' or 'practice'. You don't get ice in your beverage in Europe just like there are no coffee cup holders in European cars sold and bought in Europe. You don't take take out coffee. You are to enjoy your coffee at a table and converse and people watch...not gulp on the run. So enjoy your soda don't worry about ice.

The *general* American preference for ice in drinks is an old one...it was the opening wedge in Dorothy Parker's great short story, Solders of the Republic, written in 1938. (But a preference is just that, a preference, not to be mistaken for an insistence.)

Along those lines, those of you who like to browse used bookstores/stands, if you ever run across a copy of Short Stories from the New Yorker, the edition published in 1940, don't hesitate for a second to buy it! It contains some of the best short stories of the 20th century, and many relate to hot summers and summer travel, like The Girls in their Summer Dresses (Irwin Shaw), Tourist Home (Benedict Thicken), Such a Pretty Day (Dawn Powell), and dozens of classics like The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (James Thurber).
Several web sites have copies for sale, prices starting at as little as $5.00

Thanks for the tip BTilke. I just bought the book.

...and some of you seem to consider a country's cultural practices illogical or just not correct because you think they're less technologically advanced! Sweating a little when it's hot and then feeling cold when it's cold- wow, what a concept!

Good Lord!!!!!! All this over a simple question. Who cares for heavens sake. Why can't people just get their drinks the way they want them, with or without? Of course I understand the argument that some restaurants may not have a huge ice making capability..so that makes sense but I fail to see why anyone cares whether it's a French person in America requesting no ice, or an American in Paris asking FOR ice..so what. Unbelievable.

BTilke

You might enjoy Gavin Weightman's "The Frozen Water Trade" (2003) which credits New Englander Frederic Tudor with starting ice exports from Massachussetts in 1806. The initial application was supposedly to keep food fresh - but the idea was slow to catch on. Tudor found to keep his shirt he had to build up the market. This he did by selling customers insulated boxes in which to keep the stuff (up until then nobody had a place to keep ice) - AND by promoting ice-cold drinks. (His first export target, btw, was the West Indies, not the American South - but he did his best business in the latter.)

The book suggests that the availability of ice revolutionized the way Americans did business - not just in cold drinks, but in the ability to ship seafood, fresh produce, and meat from ever more distant farmlands to American cities in which the population was increasing exponentially.

As for ice harvesters, not to mention the iceman who delivered blocks of ice to neighbourhoods, they were both victims of the success of ice. Industrialists, according to Weightman, wanted to have a more reliable means of both making ice and refrigerating shipments of food. Hence the beginning of electrified refrigerators, while the iceman leaveth (apologies to Eugene O'Neill.)

Sue, you comment about about how ice revolutionized.... made my think about an very interesting book - Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World.

Here's an exerpt from a review on Amazon -
Mark Kurlansky has written a fabulous book--well worth your time--about a fish that probably has mattered more in human history than any other. The cod helped inspire the discovery and exploration of North America. It had a profound impact upon the economic development of New England and eastern Canada from the earliest times.

A book I've not read, but want to based on the review is Sweet and Low: A Family History. The authors grandfather "worked as a short-order cook during the Depression and conceived of but failed to patent the sugar packet before he and his son Marvin hit pay dirt in the 1950s with the saccharin formula for Sweet'N Low." The book follows the family fortune and misfortunes.