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“And then we looked them dead in the eye and said, “Inflation is only 5% year-on-year”, and they actually nodded along like we were reading them a bedtime story.”
Hot take - soda is priced correctly in 2026. It’s a luxury and is quite bad for your health.
I just wish the reason would be a tax on sugar which is then used to subsidise more healthy options. But I don’t believe that to be the case here. :(
That’s not a bad idea. It is addictive. Tax it like alcohol and tobacco. I’ve watched a subset of diabetics scream that they need sugar no matter what healthcare tries to say about it. Tears. More often, anger and spiteful overconsumption in reaction to being told no. (A subset, not all.)
If a diabetic has low blood sugar, then they literally DO need sugar, and fast!
Which is true, and a good argument in favor of diabetics having easy access to sugary things – not having them when they’re needed can literally be life-threatening. It is not, however, am argument for everyone having easy access to them – corporations bet on people getting addicted to them, and sugary drinks in particular give a sharp increase in risk for developing diabetes (according to one study, 25% increase in risk per 16oz sugary drink per day).
There’s no question that sugar is bad for you. I just wanted to point out that the person I was replying to was VERY wrong about what diabetes is and how it works.
I was one of those people who knew my lifestyle was unhealthy, and turning it around was always just one week away. The diagnosis of type II felt like a loss of agency. Like it was no longer my choice to cut back on, or to cut out sugar.
Once the initial shock of diagnosis and grief over all the foods I’d lost settled down, the truth was clear. I had made the choice. The choice to open every single one of those sodas, the choice to go with convenience over health. The choice to kick the can down the road, and I still had the choice to diet, or die slowly.
Not gonna lie and say my diet is perfect now but, according to my NP, my labs paint the picture of someone successfully managing diabetes. I know I still have some work to do though.
Not easy, you’ve done well.
Thanks!
That’s what we are doing in Finland. Sugar free drinks are taxed at 20c/l but other drinks can go up to 59c/l depending on the sugar amount
Just checked prices from one grocery store and coke zero 24-pack is 15.50€ while the regular one is 19.50€
Overall, Coke is most affordable compared with minimum wage in England, especially when Coke Zero is on offer, then Helsinki; in the US it takes the most minimum-wage work to buy a litre, and because regular and sugar-free cost exactly the same, there’s no price incentive at all to choose the sugar-free one.
In England for a 24 pack (330ml?), sugar is £15 (€17.5, $20 USD), sugar free is £12 with a deal for £8.50 (€10, $11.5 USD), no deals for the sugar one! £12.71 is minimum wage here (€14.86, $17.21 USD). In US Walmart I see 24 pack of sugar and non sugar for $15.37 USD (12 OZx24) and US minimum wage is $7.25 USD (£5.40, €6.30).
Location and drink EUR per litre GBP per litre USD per litre Helsinki — regular Coke €2.46 £2.10 $2.85 Helsinki — Coke Zero €1.96 £1.67 $2.26 England — regular Coke €2.22 £1.89 $2.56 England — Coke Zero, normal price €1.77 £1.52 $2.05 England — Coke Zero, offer price €1.26 £1.07 $1.45 US Walmart — regular Coke €1.56 £1.33 $1.80 US Walmart — Coke Zero €1.56 £1.33 $1.80 Location and wage benchmark EUR/hour GBP/hour USD/hour Work for 1 litre of regular Coke Work for 1 litre of Coke Zero Helsinki — first-year supermarket minimum €11.61 £9.92 $13.43 12.7 minutes 10.1 minutes UK — adult minimum wage €14.87 £12.71 $17.20 8.9 minutes 7.2 minutes normally; 5.1 on offer US — federal minimum wage €6.27 £5.36 $7.25 14.9 minutes 14.9 minutes Sugar free drinks are taxed at 20c/l
Does that include artificial sweeteners? I have some sort of prejudice against them that I couldn’t substantiate with research, but one thing is certain: none of them felt good to me.
I am much happier with drinking less sweet beverages overall, but made with regular sugar. Actually tend to spend less that way, even if I pay more for less - I just happen to be buying that much less frequently that way.
Random story: I saw a diabetic refuse to have his gangrenous “pinky toe” removed to save his life. Not even a foot, just the one smallest toe. I think about him sometimes.
I think it’s been proven sugar is literally an addictive substance; it’s hard to say no when it’s not your rational mind in control. I have "pre"diabetes even though I never ate sugar; but I ate lots of other carbs and got unlucky. Rice and pasta and (non-American) bread every day sort of thing.
I come from an ethnicity of starvation and poverty, and there’s growing research showing that diabetes actually used to be a protective adaptation. The idea is that, if you didn’t have many carbs per day, just stretch out that 1 carrot for the whole day. It makes sense in that lens.
Then, overnight, society changed, and we’re eating 30 carrots worth of carbs every day. Body didn’t get the memo and makes those carbs last as long as possible, as it used to, but now it’s a bad thing and causes high blood sugar.
I think it’s been proven sugar is literally an addictive substance; it’s hard to say no when it’s not your rational mind in control.
A coworker at my previous work laughed when I said I’m addicted to sugar in the similar way he’s addicted to cigarettes. Most people seem to be ignorant about it.
I come from an ethnicity of starvation and poverty, and there’s growing research showing that diabetes actually used to be a protective adaptation.
In a similar vein this is why island nations have the highest rate of obesity. Their metabolism adapted to scarcity. But some people want to convince everyone that it’s as simple as calories-in-calories-out, as if every body works the same…
People should try a month of avoiding sugar. Most won’t make it a day.
I used to get irritated at the “It’s just as simple as ci;co” attitude on r/loseit. For a different reason though.
It’s more than calories in, calories out. It’s shopping, and prepping, and cooking, and cleaning, and more prepping, and dishes, and…
And having the spoons to do all of that consistently. 😮💨
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UK introduced a tax on high sugar drinks a few years ago. Most drinks changed their recipe to be under the threshold and taste weird now. Coca Cola was the only one that didn’t. I just looked and a 24 pack of cans is £15.25 for original where diet and zero are on sale at £8.50. The tax is only about £2 on that though so no idea why it’s so much more.
I pretty much entirely stopped drinking all of them though because I can’t stand the taste now so I guess the tax worked. They are lowering the sugar threshold again in a couple years so I imagine more recipe changes are coming.
You’re not wrong. But by that logic water based products would be cheaper. Which it sadly isn’t. Often the contrary.
The US very rarely uses price to incentivize good practices and vice versa.
That’s definitely one take on unfettered corporate greed.
I would agree with you If those prices weren’t being set by corporations raking in record profits.
Average American drinks 45 gallons of soda a year. Most don’t even drink water any more.
But microplastics now cause everything.
Most don’t even drink water any more.
Do you have a source for that or even honestly believe it yourself?
We teach our students on family medicine interview to ask if patients ever drink a glass of water. Most students are shocked to hear how many people never drink beverages that aren’t sweetened. This is a North American phenomenon. Then, those patients are in clinic with obesity and eventually type 2 DM. In Europe , water is served with every meal.
If you want to be a FIGJAM, research it yourself.
Most countries teach children in schools how to eat healthy. For years, the FDA has called burger, fries Coke a balanced meal because corporate interests infiltrated government and universities. Harvard told us for decades sugar diets were better than high fat diets, because they were paid to. Candy bars were being sold as low fat healthy options , now people call them sports energy protein bars.
I looked it up before making my comment and couldn’t find any info about what % of Americans drink water, only info about average volume of water consumption and average volume of soft drink consumption.
You are right that there is a problem in North America with soft drink vs water consumption and it sounds like you know more about it than I do. I only called out your original statement that “most don’t even drink water” because it seems like a huge stretch beyond what the research I was able to find can actually support. The idea that >50% of people in America don’t drink water regularly or ever still seems absurd to me. I struggle to think you even believe it yourself.
No it’s fairly common when you include coffee and water in food for people to get by with rarely having just drink a glass of pure water.
If we only drink soda, 45 gallons sounds disastrously small. Since we’re supposed to drink at least 64 Oz of water a day (or a gallon). We can’t possibly be that dehydrated.
64oz a day hydration is junk science debunked years ago. Drink water when thirsty.
JFC! No wonder my doctor is surprised I don’t have type 2 despite a family history. Mfers need
Jesusto hydrate.
Explain seltzer
The cost of my CO2 cylinders for my fish tank haven’t gone up nearly as much as sodas and seltzer.
Seltzer, or carbonated water, is water infused with carbon dioxide, creating bubbles. It can aid digestion and serve as a low-calorie alternative to sugary drinks, but excessive consumption may lead to gas, bloating, or exacerbate acid reflux in some individuals.
AI ass response
So is doom scrolling on Lemmy 🙄
It’s like you want to lose elections and make sure fascism is king.
Just mind your own business, Jesus Christ.
This comparison is so ridiculous that in the end I decided not to argue against it. I can’t believe some people.
Yes, social media has never ever made anybody believe shitty things or make shitty decisions.
But I know, taxing social media use is unfathomable because it would cost you money despite the obvious social rand mental health risks.
No, Facebook, tiktok, Reddit, fediverse, blue sky, all without consequences or effects at the personal or socialital levels.
Incoming triade about how fediverse algorithms are unique because they only follow easily exploitable hottest and popular models and this place definitely isn’t just the most displaced small populations of progressives, anarchists, and trans community members with their own biases and immediate fuck you’s to anyone who doesn’t wholly agree with their objectives.
Pick your battles. I very much think having a megaphone to the Internet has been more problematic to my life than fucking Coke.
👌👍
He’s addicted to soda. His diabetes and obesity are gEnEtIc mIcROpLaStIcS.
175 , mostly lean. I’ll do 260w on the bike in an hour and this afternoon I’ll do 14k lifting.
I’ll beat most nearly every one of my peers in age and I’d be more than happy to put up a nice bet, based on my odds here on charity that I’d outperform your mouthy body in a general athletics competition.
But alas, permanently online fatty and scrawny nerds get to hide anonymously, screeching at anybody who makes any unoptimized decisions never having to admit they are unpopular and making it easy to usher in shitty over zealous policy.
Increasing the price of soda was unpopular 10 years ago as it would be today. It’s stupid policy and not worth dying on that hill.
If only they were able to create soda with zero sugar…
Hotter take - Diet soda is even more of a luxury because it has practically zero nutritional value. There are some people who benefit from the sugar in soda as it’s calories that sustain life. Of course that’s not most people.
Ehh, it’s still liquid at the end of the day. We going to call beef a luxury because chicken or tofu has more nutritional value (I do not know if this is true. This is just a random theoretical).
Yes. Agreed
Yeah but what about corn subsidies?
Funny story, here (Denmark) it’s actually cheaper than in 2017, because people have stopped buying Pepsi and Coca-Cola, so they are almost constantly on sale at prices way lower than before Trump became president for his 2nd term.
Coca Cola and Pepsi need to have lower prices now than local brands to sell!
Personally I still buy a local brand, even when it’s 50% more expensive than American brands.Because fuck USA for electing Trump.
As an American, I wish I could buy your brand for the same reasons
Yes I know there are many Americans that are very unhappy Trump became President.
And I really really wish you luck next time. But for now your country is unfortunately represented by madness.
Thats amazing. I wish the entire country here in Canada was boycotting as much as some of us. We also seriously need way more local brands that compete with coke
In Canada, flavored unsweetened sodas are the biggest sales growth. Sugar sodas are dying, finally.
Yeah I like Cove but I’m looking for some more alternatives for like mixing with. Cove isn’t really ideal for it to me but its not bad
Fuck USA companies and the USA super hard right now.
Plus, Jolly Cola and Sport Cola are pretty dang good.
12.45€ for 15 cans here at this moment
I’ve started drinking more water which is honestly better for me. It’s hard to beat pennies per liter.
You ever notice how graphic design is done moving? 1987, 1997, 2007, and 2017 all would’ve had different designs for everything, at least the Walmart sign.
Change the price and you could convince me you took this picture yesterday.
Only exception might be the sprite logo.
When the logo is do iconic it doesn’t need to be rebranded or redesigned every 10 years
Is it that, or is it that they don’t want to pay for graphic designers anymore?
mexican cola better than usa cola if you want the taste.(cane sugar vs high fructose corn syrup.)
So $4,194,304?
In the US, cents would be written similar to a fraction. A small number with a line under. The “100” under the line being implied. Eventually the line just fell off, and it became commonplace that cents are either after a decimal, or the smaller number.
I’m going to stick with the exponent interpretation because it’s funnier.
tbf, a common price for coke and pepsi 12pks was $2 going as far back as the mid 1980s. it was due to get ‘adjusted’ some in that time. what is ridiculous, though, is the $8-9+ they’re asking for today, when the price of store brands has only doubled (or less) in that same forty years.
I want Aldi to sell the syrup for their own versions, just think how cheap it could be!
I’m happy I never developed a soda habit.
I pretty much only buy snacks and junks for parties. A normal sized bag of chips was like $7 yesterday. The smaller tostitos were labeled like $5.50.
I’d love to see some sort of general strike or mass boycott, but there’s not enough organization, and things aren’t bad enough for it to happen en masse spontaneously.
I’d love to see some sort of general strike
Same. That’s part of why we’re 50 fiefdoms instead of a single country. Makes it way harder to organize as a people and much easier to divide.
Luckily I’ve kicked soda before, so kicking it when prices ratchet up wasn’t hard. It’s just a matter of halving your consumption for two weeks straight, after which point you don’t have any withdrawal symptoms and if it’s not in your house there’s no real temptation to drink it.
I don’t think the US being one country would change anything. I have long held the belief that there is a population limit, not a geographic limit, to people’s ability to care that seems to hover at around 10 million.
Fuck Pepsi. The other tortilla chip brands that are half the price are better anyway.
When I was a freshman in college the bohemian vegan thing was super popular and the cool thing to do was to quit drinking soda. That’s probably the closest thing i have ever seen to some sort of mass boycott. So i guess we just need to get all the objectively attractive people to quit drinking soda and then we can peer pressure everyone else.
My problem is that anytime I buy soda for a party, everyone just drinks the beer and seltzer, except for the one or two kids who end up there for some reason, which means I’ll have literally lifetime worth of soda left over because I don’t know anyone older than 13 who drinks it.
20 cents a can. Not bad.
The real crime is in pre-chilled drinks. A 20oz Gatorade is about $4 here now. Minimum wage is still $7.25 per hour.
I used to sell soda at work. We’d go buy cases when it went on sale and sell it to the people.
A sale in 2000/2001 would cost you ~ $0.20 a can. Stuff not on sale would be a touch over a quarter, so we sold the soda for a quarter. Never made any money, we just didn’t feel like paying $0.75 a can when the company stopped giving out free soda and put in a vending machine.
For the next few years, the sales would be closer to a quarter a can with an occasional sale being closer to 20 cents.
Costco is currently around $0.61 for Diet coke.
How much is it now?
Regular prices for my location in the US Midwest are around $11 for a 12-pack of Coca-Cola products — that’s twelve 12oz cans. Sales are frequently run for “buy 3 (12-packs), get 3 free”.
You can get roughly the same per-can sale price by buying flats of 35 cans from warehouse clubs like Costco every day without waiting for a sale, but the warehouse clubs don’t carry every Coca-Cola product, usually just Coke, Coke Zero Sugar, Diet Coke, and Sprite.
Pepsi products cost roughly the same.
Yeah, for a very long time I refused to pay more than $3/12 pack. Now I consider it around $5-6.
12oz can is 355ml very close to the 33 cl or 330ml or 1/3 liter in Europe.
The price you state is almost $1 per can.
Here (Denmark) we get 1 can for $0.30 when on sale, which they almost always are now, because they’ve lost sales to local brands.When I see people buy these at the cheap, I sometimes comment in a very soft overbearing voice: Nonono we aren’t buying American, like gently correcting a small child.
Edit PS:
The price in Denmark includes 25% sales tax.So that’d be $33 for 6 12-packs roughly $5,50 per pack or like 250% of the price in the image?
In the states, $5.50 is considered a good sale now. I have seen single 12pks go for $12 not on sale.
soda is practically overpriced now per can/oz. even in discount stores its expensive. sparkling water is cheap though, it is the price that soda had been in the past. and many mini can 12 packs are around 7-9$
Those are 12 packs which is $8.57 right now.That’s almost 400% increase, I would not consider that mildly infuriating. Yikes.
And how much is it in OPs picture? Is that the price per can, and how much was a can then?
That looks to me to be a 24 pack. The normal price for a 24 pack was NOT $2.22. That was not a normal sale price.
Around 2008-2015ish, in the Florida panhandle at Walmart, 12 packs of cans were usually around $3.50-$4.50 or so. I certinly wouldn’t buy them over $4.50. And soda has always had cyclical sales where you could find them advertised at many grocery stores for 4/$12. That was the price I’d stock up.
Those were the days that 2L would usually be $1.25-$1.50 and when they’d drop to $1, I’d stock up a bit.
Interestingly, Walmart has recently dropped Coke Zero 24pk to $10, and since the normal 12pk is now around $7.50-$8.00, I get the 24pk. That’s supposedly a permanent (or at least long term) price. Has been there for a month or so already. I remember stumbling across a news article about it. heh.
So while soda has gotten a lot pricier, it’s not nearly like OP’s pic suggests. To the point where I’m thinking that pricing sign must surely not be for that soda.
You’re focused too much on msrp for this category that was perpetually “on sale”. While I agree that a 24 pack likely wasn’t this price, a 12 pack was functionally $1.50 - $2 each IME. 3 for 5, 4 for 8 kind of things. Typically dependent on meeting quantity to trigger sale price though.
You lived in a very different place than I did, or are talking further back in time :)
I remember 5/$10 sales, but that goes back into the late 90s and maybe very early 2000s.
I still wait for those sales to come back.
I don’t know who in their right mind pays current prices, it’s insane. Over a dollar a can? You gotta be kidding me. I still remember at a local grocery store before I moved out, it was 5/$5 12-packs. I only saw that once or twice, and have been holding out ever since.
After I moved out, I remember being the kid in line with like 50 of the store brand 2L that were like $1 or less. Keep in mind, the 20oz bottles were already over a dollar at that point, so under a dollar for a 2L was hilarious to me. High value, but super embarrassing to actually buy that much and bag it all and walk out looking like a fiend.
The picture is quite obviously 12 packs, and around $2.50 / 12 pack was common south of Chicago around that time, too
As an Australian, these prices are insane to me. a 24 pack here runs you $30 commonly, and yes our dollar isn’t as strong but that’s still twice the price even after you take that into account. Everyone here is talking about $4 USD a 12 pack like it’s expensive, but that would be nothing to pay here
This is a 2017 ad for a sale price, 20 cans, $4.99.
This is the first 20 can pack I found at today’s price. Might cost a little more than regular coke because sugar free, but it costs a shitload more than the 2017 price.
How did you even find a 20 pack of Coke? All I can find are 10, 12, and 24 packs.
20 was a fairly common size at Walmart and some grocery stores, it was usually cheaper and there was only a few types.
12 pack at the Smiths here is 11.99. WinCo is 8.98. no clue what Walmart is because I rarely shop there. The sale at Smith’s is buy 2 get 1 free. So makes it 7.99 a 12 pack.
That is from Walmart. No idea why the price is so high.
When you look at the Walmart app, after you search for something you need to pick either the “in-store” option or double check the seller. Walmart runs an online marketplace where you can get things from sellers other than Walmart. That’s why the soda is so expensive.
That would be an online delivery not from Walmart in their app I would imagine. Unless it’s in line yuan or something.
Genuine question from European: do you consider $1 per can outrageous?!
20 cans for $5 is absurdly cheap for me
Americans replace water with sodas. People literally avoid drinking water.
For a 12 oz/300ml? Yeah, that gets into crazy territory.
But we’re in crazy land right now. My local Walmart? 8.50 for a 12 pack. 70 cents a can, so not full loony. But a far cry from this picture a decade ago with under 20 cents a can.
That’s crazy lol, no wonder diabetes is so wide spread
Part of that is the power of government subsidized high fructose corn syrup, yeah. It’s in a lot of American food and makes a huge difference in pricing healthy vs highly processed foods.
Awful food quality, too much of it, along with lack of exercise.
Wtf. My local store sells 12 packs for $9, $7 on sale (US, Ohio)
That’s fucking crazy. I think my 18 pack of Celsius is cheaper than that (per can) by quite a bit. I haven’t bought soda in a while but I always remember it being under $5 for a case. It’s mostly water.
Imagine being mad at something like that. Deffo not a hydrohomie
I hate Reddit censorship, so instead of hydrohomie I prefer the original waternigga
Soda is not water.
