![]() It wasn’t until 1995, when the infamous food pyramid was introduced, that the government first advised consuming sugar “sparingly.” Sugar was only mentioned as bad for your teeth. When the United States issued its first dietary guidelines in 1980-the year the first Millennials were born-it declared fats and cholesterol the enemy, which physiologist Ancel Keys had hypothesized were the leading cause of cardiovascular disease. Nutritionists who had tried to sound the alarm about the increasing amounts of sugar in the standard American diet had found their work quickly buried. Our parents weren’t scared of sugar it was steak and butter that freaked them out. And they’re right-each generation has a unique journey with H20, defined as much by politics, pollution, and pop culture as it is our thirst. No one had to tell us to drink water when we were thirsty. I can hear the protests from the older generations. “For the record, I don’t remember denying you water,” my Boomer-generation father said, when I went straight to the source, asking him what happened. For the most evangelical followers of the National Dairy Council, it even came with dinner. Although dairy consumption had been slowly declining since 1970, per capita consumption in 1980 was still a hefty 273 pounds of fluid milk-the same year the budget for a government-subsidized school milk program ballooned to a record $145 million. When Will Ferrell declared milk a bad choice in the 2003 film Anchorman, it was a rallying cry for a generation that had been served too much. No matter-it was a hallmark of American Motherhood in the 1990s to pass on the burden and lifelong addiction of Diet Coke to the next generation.Īnd then there was milk. Generic store-brand and Shasta were our lesser Gods. Coke, Pepsi, and Sprite were the Holy Trinity. We chugged down 24-ounce AriZona iced teas like we were frat boys pounding Natty Daddys. In June, as the heat domes began to form over portions of the country, I discovered this was a common experience among my older millennial and younger Gen X peers after I joked on Twitter that our parents didn’t give us water. ![]() For the first half of our lives, we never drank it, and then suddenly it was all we drank. ![]() Millennials have a weird relationship with H20. Am I supposed to step in front of my sink eight times, fill a glass to the brim, and reckon with my electrolyte levels for the rest of my life? Do I keep a vacuum-insulated bottle of water at my side forever, religiously taking sips until my cells run like V8 engines of digestion and absorption? No wonder drinking water still fills me with a sense of dread, as though it's a duty I must perform. I used to survive all day on a single ration of Capri Sun, and maybe a rushed sip of water from the water fountain in the playground or the hallway at school-warm, metallic, and just barely functioning. Hydration never used to feel this important. I’m amazed as I watch them stagger off the playground, red-faced and panting, gulping freely from their leak proof, BPA-free personal storage containers. I feel like a terrible parent if I take my children anywhere without their 32 ounces of ice-cold water. We buy bottles of H20 like they’re potions with power-up abilities: alkaline water for our cells, mineral water for our digestion, and approximately 50000 varieties of flavored water for our embattled souls. Americans bought fifteen billion gallons of bottled water in 2020.
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