[Speedy218]

> but now it is “overmedicating” a vulnerable fraction of the population.

Makes sense, but the intention also is that many people do not brush their teeth, or at least do not brush them as often as they should, and so fluoride is added to drinking water to compensate so people's teeth don't start to fall out at an alarming rate.

[apothegm]

Sadly, an alarming percentage of Americans don't drink water. I’ve spoken to way too many people who think water tastes wrong because it’s not sweet enough.

[singpolyma3]

I've heard this and it doesn't fit in my brain. They never drink water? Ever?

[dwattttt]

Time to buy Brawndo shares

[rl3]

Brawndo's got what plants crave. It's got electrolytes. Water is for toilets, drink Brawndo! The Thirst Mutilator.

You know on a serious note, it occurred to me that Liquid Death's slogan "Murder your thirst" isn't far off. Wonder if it's a not-so-subtle nod.

[TimTheTinker]

Something like 10% of SNAP benefits go towards purchases of soda pop and other sugary drinks made by PepsiCo/etc.

[kacesensitive]

It’s heartbreaking, but not surprising. When you’re dealing with limited resources, constant stress, and often living in areas where healthy options are harder to access or more expensive, sugary drinks can feel like an affordable comfort. Instead of judging SNAP recipients, we should be looking at the systems that make soda more accessible than clean, appealing , and fresh food.

[XorNot]

Another take would also just be that it hardly proves they don't drink water, just that they also like something else.

But the "soda" category these days is also pretty overloaded: full sugar coke vs Coke zero is a very different calory intake.

[apothegm]

Coke zero is still murder on your teeth, though. (And not fluoridated, of course.)

[nozzlegear]

Are SNAP recipients not allowed to enjoy a soda at all? I really don't understand the problem with this. Society acts like signing up for SNAP involves signing a contract to lose 100 pounds and only eat iceberg lettuce or something.

[cratermoon]

Americans seem to love to gatekeep what the poor are allowed to have or not have. They have this image of the Welfare Queen driving a pink Cadillac to cash her welfare checks at the liquor store. It seems that no matter how desperately destitute someone might be, there's a person who will point at something they have, whether it's a tent to sleep in under a bridge (a gift from an organization providing assistance to the houseless), a bicycle that's their only means of transportation, or a garden planted on public property, and say "they can't be that poor if they have that!

[TimTheTinker]

When someone lives off of public benefit, there's a sense in which the public can have an interest in how the money is used -- its use should correlate with its intent.

That's why SNAP money is restricted to particular categories. So caring about how it's spent is already a foregone conclusion, and rightly so.

If someone wants to spend money however they like, they'll have to earn it themselves. Even inherited money carries a sense of obligation to honor the family with how it's used (like not blowing it all in a week of lavish partying in Vegas, as an extreme example).

[dullcrisp]

No, but I think spending 10% of your food budget on soda is unfortunate regardless. Of course they have a right to it.

[jrflowers]

If an individual spends 10% of their SNAP benefits on soda, they’ve spent about ~$30 over a month on it, which is ten 20fl oz drinks. People drinking a bit more than a gallon of soda per month only supports the notion that they can subsist on that without any water if you believe that they categorically have some sort of exceptional unhuman biology.

[thaumasiotes]

I wouldn't find that unusual. I hardly ever drink water; if it's available, I drink milk. Why would you drink water?

[kelnos]

If I replaced my water intake with milk it would probably make me sick.

Water has zero calories, is reasonably filling, neutral-tasting, and gives me what my body needs, without any other junk. What's not to like?

[thaumasiotes]

Well, it's true that water has zero calories and is neutral tasting. It's not filling to any degree, and milk will give you a lot more of what your body needs.

[singpolyma3]

Milk is water sugar and fat. Hardly a good source of things your body needs (except the water, which you can get from water)

[seanmcdirmid]

Water is great for hydration without filling you otherwise. Like, say you need to drink a lot of fluid because you are really active, you would probably get sick of milk pretty quickly.

[thaumasiotes]

> say you need to drink a lot of fluid because you are really active

If you're replacing sweat, wouldn't you want sports drinks?

https://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/1969/03/27

But anyway, in most cases, the fact that drinking milk doubles as a source of food is clearly a benefit. It's hard to explain a common behavior by reference to a rare circumstance.

[seanmcdirmid]

Sports drinks aren’t really good for you, but you definitely can drink a lot more of them than you can milk.

[mjevans]

Particularly when traveling, I don't enjoy the taste of tap water. Filtered or (factory filtered then) bottled... and I'm not alone in that viewpoint.

[jorvi]

Probably because the overwhelming majority of countries chlorinates their water to various degrees because they don't have the exceptional plumbing quality needed to otherwise guarantee potability.

Countries where the tap water is drinkable without chlorination have quality that exceeds bottled water, and it might even be sourced from the same aquifers.

[loopdoend]

The best tap water on earth is in Iceland. Volcanic filtered and so clean tasting... one of the joys of being in the country.

[viraptor]

Once you get over the sulfur smell anyway... (or was that only the northern thing?)

[viraptor]

When travelling where? The blanket statement here just doesn't work. Every major area has very different water in the tap. A lot of the bottled water is just tap water from another region.

[roland35]

This is one benefit of growing up with awful well water. Literally anywhere tastes pretty darn good by comparison!

[twothamendment]

When traveling by vehicle (pickup truck for me) I've thrown in a 5 gallon cooler of water from home. It was so nice to want to drink water because it was my own good well water that tastes like I'm used to.

When I had to fly to NY for work I felt like I couldn't get water anywhere that was worth drinking.

[dcrazy]

Where in New York? If NYC, this sounds insane to me, because New York municipal water is objectively speaking among the purest (if not the purest) in the country.

[muglug]

NYC tap water has spoiled all other tap water for me

[dcrazy]

San Francisco tap water is almost as good. It was better before they started mixing reclaimed water into it, though I’ve either gotten used to the new taste or they’ve fixed the treatment process.

[rangestransform]

Vancouver winter water (summer water tastes more off) >>>>>> NYC tap water and I will die on this hill

[nobodyandproud]

I question this as a bad take or a data-point of one, because NYC water is the best of Upstate water.

I’ve travelled and lived across the country during my high school and college years; and I’ve travelled my extensively within Upstate very (Adirondacks, Catskills, and Finger Lakes) and the taste of local water is the first thing I notice.

Bad building pipes aside, I have not tasted any water that exceeds NYC’s tap water in taste.

I’m not the only person who’s expressed this, and guests from other regions have also admitted the same consistently over the years.

[UltraSane]

Wisconsin tap water tastes fine. Waco, Texas tap water is really nasty.

[nozzlegear]

It can vary much more closely than that. I moved from one town to another 12 miles away, and the tap water in the new town tasted horrible compared to my old town's tap.

[thayne]

I bet those people drink fountain drinks, cofee, tea, etc. made from tapwater.

[freehorse]

Maybe instead of removing fluoride from the water they should add sweetener in there along with it /s

[kelnos]

I'm pretty sure that no amount of fluoridated water is going to save you if you do not brush your teeth.

Even if the fluoride somehow manages to overcome all that and prevent you from getting cavities, the gum disease will eventually cause all your teeth to fall out.

[floriannn]

> many people do not brush their teeth

many? (!!!)

Googling it all I found was one dentist website that said 2%, but didn't seem that reliable

[Speedy218]

Important sentence is "..or at least not as often as they should" :)

I have no doubt most people brush their teeth in one capacity or another, but do you really think 98% of people brush them regularly and sufficiently? I reckon that drops down quite a few double digits at that point, and since we're talking about populations here that's quite a lot of people.

[kelnos]

If that figure is for the US, then that's ~7M people. Feels like "many" to me.

[dullcrisp]

2% is definitely many