The Daily Dish: Bottled Water To Outsell Soda For First Time
Bottled Water to Outsell Soda for First Time
For the first time ever, sales of bottled water are outpacing sales of soda in the U.S. Since 2001, soft drink sales have fallen by a third, and per capita consumption of bottle water now exceeds that of soda by 1.2 gallons a year. The soft drink decline may be due partly to the rise of health-consciousness in America, but problems with municipal drinking water have apparently played a part in the rise of bottled water. Big bottled-water companies like Nestlé Waters, Coca-Cola Co., PepsiCo, Inc. and the Dr Pepper Snapple Group speculate that crumbling infrastructure — specifically that involving water distribution systems, as in Newark, New Jersey, and Flint, Michigan — has turned many consumers towards a safe, sealed water source.
ATM Dispenses Pizza
A Pizza ATM — a phrase that should bring unequivocal joy to Americans everywhere — will debut at Xavier University in Cincinnati next month. The university partnered with Paline, a French company, to bring the technology to the United States. Paline operates about 300 machines throughout Europe and has been doing so for the past 13 years. The ATM will be stocked with 70 pizzas at a time, handmade by dining hall staff who were trained by French chefs. The pizzas will cost between $9 and $10, but the ATM will offer discounts if it's overstocked late in the day.
Barrel-Aged Beer Debuts
In a whole new take on craft beer, South Australian beer makers Pirate Life Brewing will launch a line of beers aged in wine barrels, in collaboration with Tomfoolery wines. The process of aging beer results in a taste unlike anything previously brewed by Pirate Life, explained the company's chief executive, Mick Cameron. The beers will be sold in bottles, a notable shift for a company that to date has only sold beer in cans.
What Wine Gives You the Worst Hangover?
Scientists have studied hangovers for years, but unfortunately we still don't have an instant cure to the day-after blues. However, we're a little bit closer to understanding what causes hangovers — at least if you're a wine-drinker. Steve Allsop, a scientist at the National Drug Research Institute in Perth, Australia, recently confirmed that hangovers are caused by congeners, "toxic byproduct of the fermenting process," and that red wine has more congeners than white wine. So if you're slinging back glasses of cabernet, you're more likely to feel it the next day, as opposed to indulging in multiple glasses of chardonnay.
Big Alcohol Working Against Marijuana
It's only natural that the alcohol business is dead-set against the legalization of marijuana; for Big Booze, America is one of those Wild West towns that's only got room for one legal intosicant, and they're doing their utmost to make sure that it continues to be alcohol. But new emails from WikiLeaks show just how deeply the alcohol industry is involved in the regulation of marijuana. Tom Angell, chairman of the national cannabis reform group Marijuana Majority, found evidence in the DNC's leaked emails to a massive marketing campaign by the alcohol industry to pressure federal lawmakers into creating legislation aimed at driving while under the influence of marijuana.