Kaja

Hi,
My boyfriend and I just came back after visiting USA. We drove from New Orleans to Los Angeles. We had a wonderful time.
There is one thing we are wondering about. When we got soda at fast food resturants the sodas did not taste like real soda. Actually they tasted really bad. We realize that it is the water in the soda which is purified with chlorine, but we don't understand why americans drink it. Does americans like it that way?
Kaja

Bob Brown

I am assuming that you drove through Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona on your trip. You might have tasted the natural water and not chlorine. Some of the water supplies in that part of the USA have many minerals in them, not all of which give the water a pleasent taste.
There is not much choice in West Texas when it comes to the water supply.
Some of it is "alkalai water", which can be quite tasty, or distasteful depending upon the point of view. I don't know for sure what you tasted. What were you drinking? Pepsi, Coke, Sprite?
Why would people tolerate it? Nothing else is available, and if you grew up with it, you don't think much about it.
I lived for 5 years as a child in a little town that had "sulphur water", because the water had heavy mineral content. At the time, I didn't know any better; I thought it what water tasted like. And I didn't have much choice.

Ruth

Kaja, If you're truly talking about a chlorine taste, only occasionally have I gotten a drink that tasted that way in about 50 years of living on the East Coast. When I do, I send it back and ask for something else - usually, the water in that particular restaurant has been "over-chlorinated" that day (at least, that's what I've been told by a waiter.) But I rarely find the problem -

BobbyB

I have lieved and traveled throughout the USA. Rarely have I had a soda that tasted bad ( except for McDonalds ). If I don't like it, then I simpy give it back and get something else or at least get a refund. My question to you is the same as yours. Why did you drink the sodas? Why not buy cans or bottles of soda at the convenience stores or juice at the fast food joints.

Owen O'Neill

I agree with the previous posters that the problem may be less pervasive than you think. The quality of municipal drinking water is far better in the northern states than in parts of the South and Southwest. A person who has become accustomed to a subtle aftertaste in their regular drinking water is unlikely to notice that same characteristic in a fountain soda. I only recently began drinking bottled spring water regularly and now find it far easier to notice an aftertaste in regular tap water (and the water in my area is considered fairly good). Another point to consider is the fact that many, many Americans (I'm among them) never eat at fast food places, don't drink fountain soda and in many cases don't even drink soda. One might ask why Americans like MTV or sitcoms yet once again there are many of us who never watch, much less enjoy. My point is simply that we are a far more diverse group of people than many other groups assume that we are.

Cheryl Z.

Kaja, consider this too: surely the water in Norway tastes different (and has different minerals, different processing etc) from the water in Italy or Portugal and so forth. The same here - my water here in the Pacific Northwest is entirely different (and better, to me!) from the water in the Southeast (New Orleans etc.), the Northeast (Newark etc.), and from what I grew up with - North Dakota and then California.