August 12, 2011
Why Don’t Other Countries Use Ice Cubes?
Why do Americans love ice cubes? Image courtesy of Flickr user wintersoul1
Last week Alina Simone wrote an amusing piece on the New York Times Opinionator blog about why Russians don’t put ice in their drinks. Any American who has traveled in Europe has probably wondered the same thing in many of those countries, where you might be served a few cubes of ice floating in your soda but rarely the glassful we’ve come to expect here. A better question might be, why do Americans love ice so much?
The answers Simone heard from older family members and from strangers in New York’s Russian immigrant–dominated Brighton Beach were all over the place: A Chechen antiques dealer said, “Who knows where that ice came from? It’s probably dirty.” A bar patron posited that ice dilutes a drink, but had no answer for why, then, it shouldn’t be used in water. A Siberian friend pointed out that they are already surrounded by ice for most of the year, and another said maybe it was because they have bad teeth that were sensitive to the cold.
One explanation I’ve heard elsewhere, and which may hold some truth, is that Europeans see ice as taking up valuable real estate in the glass, so that they would feel cheated if they got too much ice and too little beverage. This theory has two problems: It doesn’t explain, again, why water shouldn’t be served with ice, and it doesn’t take into account the fact that one is often served a whole can or bottle of soda, which could then be used to refill the glass. My guess on the first issue is that drinking water with a meal is (or at least was) less common in Europe than here—a Parisian waiter once sarcastically presented my requested water as “Champagne”—and since no one had become accustomed to ice in drinks the preference carried over to water.
The answer that Simone heard that was closest to the truth, I suspect, came from a waitress in a Russian restaurant: “That’s just how it’s always been.” With a question that could never be answered definitively, that seems as good a response as any.
As for the reverse question—why Americans use so much ice in their drinks—my theory is that it has to do with our “more is more” mentality. Because somewhere along the line free drink refills became the norm, giving customers lots of ice was actually seen as adding rather than subtracting value. It’s like the giant slab of cream cheese many delis slap on your bagel, when a light schmear would do nicely. Personally, I think they sometimes go overboard with the ice; I like my drink chilled, but not glacial.
At the other extreme, in some countries—Turkey, for instance—hot beverages, like tea, are preferred in warm weather. The theory is that they cause you to sweat, which cools you down, while your body will have to work harder to warm a cold drink to your internal temperature, thereby making you even hotter. But, as Dean Edell points out, this theory doesn’t hold water: Neither a hot nor a cold drink in anything but an enormous amount can raise or lower overall body temperature. It’s “like throwing an ice cube into a tub of hot water,” he says. Any difference felt is an illusion.
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The US doesn’t have a problem using energy to make ice, not so much in Europe and other places. In the US most refrigerator/freezers come with an ice maker. The ice maker is probably the most expensive thing to run on the unit.
Also, drinking iced drinks paralyzes the digestive system and might interfere with the digestion of food. That might be something that contributes to obesity in the US.
You know, North America is blessed with the biggest bounty of fresh water in the world. I mean water you can drink, bath in, etc. However, we are squandering this bounty. Fracking for gas exploration is destroying this resource. I can still drink from my faucet the water in my well. So many can’t say that today and are drinking bottled water (in some places is more expensive than gasoline).
I am a American born and raised, but dislike ice in my drinks. Wait staff can’t seem to remember not to put ice in my water. Most can remember for the first glass but rarely for the second. Thank God for the Serenity Prayer. “Accept the things I can not change.”
In my family we never put ice in drinks. Whether that’s because we’re from a European background is debatable. I simply prefer my cold drinks without ice. As the article said, it dilutes the drink. I prefer tasting what I’m drinking. Not water!
A fun post, I guess, but also a bunch of “Whoo-Haa.” Lie Many from North Amerika, I too enjoy a COLD beverage when eating. I’ve enjoyed the usual, suspect second glances in Europe, especially during the late 60s and through the 70s. I suspect, but I cannot prove this: Until very recent years, ice was probably not used in Europe because it was made from unknown water sources and thus considered unclean. It has become their habit and they still don’t often use it. I quickly adapted and learned to accept a ‘cold’ bottle of water or carbonated beverage as-is. I still drink those items without ice today. The one exception, for my taste is the simple glass of good Scotch. I like it cool. Many Scots and other Europeans add a splash of water to their whisky, but I like the benefits of a little water and some cooling. In the end, I suspect that the unknown origin of the ice was a major contributor to the non-Amerikan practices. Unclean ice is not longer the potential issue that it once was, but those folks (like us) are slow to change their ways. If a soda or a bottle of sparkling/sill water is already chilled, I’ll gladly drink it as-is. The one argument that I won’t buy is the (French?) idea that drinking water, as opposed to wine, is just cheap. Some folks do not like wine, or for other reasons cannot drink it. Some form of liquid is necessary with any meal. Let’s move on…
Actually, ice in water does rob you of water. Water is one of the few materials that expands when it freezes, thus a cup filled with ice has less water in it than one with liquid water.
As to your full can line of reasoning, the can is often warm so the ice will melt before cooling the drink, thus diluting your drink. Some would prefer a warm proper drink to a cool weak one.
It’s a funny coincidence that I happen across this article right as I develop a taste for Coke versus Pepsi and other colas. The reason? To me Coke tastes much, much better when it is ice cold versus simply cold. Why? I have no idea.
This is coming from a guy who could eat cold pizza and warm beer without a care in the world. I always thought it odd or a little pretentious when I saw people complain about their food temperature in restaurants.
I am from Germany and I like ice in my drink.Most restaurants also put ice in the cold drinks they offer. But I have never seen someone put ice in his/hers water, maybe because most people drink sparkling water here.
My most reasonable guess for why “it’s always been that way” is that the American/Canadian ice industries developed earlier and involved less long-distance transport (and, thus, had cheaper, fresher, and more widely available ice) than the industrial-scale ice harvesting in Europe. While fancy folks in London or Paris (and those that’d want to be like them) had to ship in their ice from Norway, genteel elites in New York or Philadelphia just had to get theirs from ponds upstate–and if you wanted a proper julep in Charleston or New Orleans, it’s entirely a sea journey from the ponds around Boston to their ports, rather than a sloow boat trip up the Siene.
In Spain we’ve been used to serve drinks just “cold”, not chilly (from a fridge but not with ice) in regular situations (of course you need icecubes if you want your alcohol on the rocks!) because too much cold can make you have a “corte de digestión” (can be translated as digestion cut). It happens if your stomach is very busy warming drinks or digesting food and then you go in a cold environment or working hard.
The botijo is also important in that, because it keeps water cold without ice nor energy; the temperature of the botijo water is always refreshing but doesn’t give you a headache.
i think it is because Americans have huge freezers and make ice at home, so they also order it when out. Europeans have tiny fridges with ice boxes the size of loaf of bread or smaller, a lot of them have no fridges. They don’t often eat frozen veggies either.
Fast food restaurants put ice to give less of the beverage, and don’t like it when you ask for no to much ice or no ice at all.
I enjoyed this article but I’m compelled to quibble with the implication that drinking cold liquids doesn’t cool you off. It’s overly simplistic to think of humans having a single overall body temperature. Just because we have a thermal regulatory system doesn’t mean that our temperature doesn’t vary significantly locally. It is a fact of thermodynamics that drinking cold liquids is a very effective way to cool us locally from our core outward. On a hot day, that means our thermal regulatory system doesn’t have to work as hard. On a very hot day, when our thermal regulatory system is taxed to the limit, having a big cold glass of Gatorade can be the difference between being comfortable and passing out.
I’d bet that the most likely answer is very American: Conspicuous Consumption. When ice was hard to get or make, only the elite could have it, so everyone wanted it. If you could waste it, you had more than your neighbor. (I call it the Dallas Syndrome. Does that date me?)
Now, we just expect it, and if we don’t get it, we feel deprived.
Anyone who worked in the American fast food industry, before the time of self-serve and free refills, can tell you that the prevailing thought process was: more ice, less soda. Ridiculous middle-management penny-pinching theories, but this was an enforced rule to “save money” — we had to fill the cups to a certain level with ice or face reprimand for “wasting” fountain drinks.