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.
Sign up for our free email newsletter and receive the best stories from Smithsonian.com each week.
[...] In soup. Most Americans give hot liquids a rest in summer, but fresh corn soup is worth making an exception for, or saving for a cool late-season [...]
I can kind of agree with most of the comments here about “more ice is less drink so it saves money” but in turn, most sit down places will allow free refills and yet still will fill the drinks to the brim with ice.
I think the roots of America’s love of ice go back to the 19th century — even then European travelers commented on Americans’ fondness for ice water. I believe that back then, when all ice had to be cut from freshwater lakes, America simply had greater access to fresh ice than any other country. So Americans developed a taste for ice and Europeans didn’t.
Ice as a commodity is something of an American invention – when Frederick Tudor started shipping ice around the world from the kettle ponds of eastern Massachusetts in the early 19th century, not only was modern refrigerated shipping anticipated, but the American love of cold fluids was whetted. It’s very American to love iced things. Our climate is more continental than that of Western Europe, so it would not surprise me that the love/need for iced things was less in Western Europe.
I’m so ice-addicted I drink orange juice over ice (trust me, it tastes amazing), but I think another reason for the popularity of ice is the numbing factor. The colder a drink is, the more it numbs the taste buds, which improves a lot of drinks. I find most sodas cloyingly sweet (try drinking a warm coke sometime!) and acidic, but the dilution and numbing effect from ice takes most of the edge off. Also, the goal of water is NOT to have any taste, and the coldness of ice can be a useful tool in combatting the funky tastes you get from some coastal area tapwater and certain bottled waters.
Also, I’ve found that American sit-down restaurants will almost invariably happily refill your non-alcoholic drink for free, a privilege you won’t always get in Europe. So the ice doesn’t really diminish the amount you have to drink, because you can get as many refills as you want.
@9 – Stacey. I’m not sure who told you that Italians think it’s not good to bathe more than every 3 or 4 days. I lived in Italy for 12 years and my friends showered every day and sometimes twice a day if it were hot or they had worked hard physically. They might not smear or spray deodorant on their bodies to the same extent Americans do, but they do use deodorant and they do shower daily.
As far as ice is concerned, to Italians ice and air conditioning cause every illness known to man from the common cold to gangrene. (That was an exaggeration).
In Germany you now usually (but there are exceptions) get free tab water with your coffee and your red wine without asking for it – and if you’re asking for it with any other order. This water comes without ice if you don’t ask for it. I don’t seem to remember that from my childhood days even though tab water was already of very good quality then. – In France they usually bring a carafe of tab water as soon a s you sit down in a restaurant. But again without ice. On the other hand everywhere in Europe people drink Caipirinhas and Mojitos which come with a lot of ice.
So generally I think it’s not about the quality of the tab water but more about liking or not liking certain kinds of drinks very cold. And that might just be a cultural habit that developed over decades.
I personally don’t like tab water – and ice made from it – in restaurants very much because of the chloridic taste it has in most cities.
I’m a Californian who has been visiting Russia since 1986, and I’ve lived there for 11 years in various places, from Leningrad to Sakhalin, and I have two Russian children. While Alina Simone’s piece was indeed amusing and insightful, she missed the #1 overwhelming reason, which I have heard from 99% of Russians whenever this topic arises, which is often: cold drinks give you a sore throat. I’ve argued about this a gazillion times, but we end up at an impasse: Russians insist that cold drinks don’t give Americans sore throats because from early childhood we build up a tolerance. In Russian they use the word закалять (zakaljat’, temper, anneal, condition) for building up a resistance to cold by swimming in, bathing in, or drinking ice-cold water. When my daughter’s mother pours cold water on her after a warm bath, I grit my teeth and say nothing.
My French, German, and Bulgarian friends all say that drinks chilled with ice are bad for the throat.
I hate crunching through ice cubes in most seasons while drinking water. Yuck. And yes, I did not grow up in the US.
My husband is from India and hates ice in his drinks.
I hate ice in my water, as well. It numbs the tongue! How can you enjoy your food with a numb tongue?? I prefer slightly cold (no ice) or room temperature water while eating. If I am just drinking water in between a meal, I don’t mind it cold, but still – no ice.
Now, let’s talk Coca-Cola – that’s a different story completely. :-)
Those clever Americans with their unstoppable will and can-do attitude have come up with all manner of inventions, allowing them to progress past the 18th century state of being that we Europeans prefer. Their whimsical whiz-bangs and mechanical mousetraps that run on things like “electricity”, and do all manner of wonderfully exciting things like – purify water and convert water into its solid state.
What will they think of next? They certainly deserve to be called AmeriCANS, not AmeriCant’s.
[...] via Why Don’t Other Countries Use Ice Cubes? | Food & Think. [...]
[...] in america, we put ice in everything. this is unlike most all other countries, especially those in europe. we even put ice in our coffee now. . .did you know coffee was [...]
One more reason: the colder the drink, the less sensitive our taste is to sugar. In other words, to US-Americans their ice-cold soda tastes only “normally,” or even mildly sweet. Thus they don’t quite realize what an obscenely sugary drink they are consuming, and soda companies can sell their sugar-water as something normal and “refreshing,” since it tastes primarily “cold” rather than primarily “sugary,” which it actually is.
What was the state of refrigeration in Europe in the 1800′s? I suspect as with many things in America this is a trickle down effect of poor people seeing rich people doing something. Ice-boxes and the transportation and the buying of ice all cost a lot of money, allowing the rich to do crazy things like make ice cream in July and keep their vegetables nice and crispy. I think I read somewhere that once this nice shiny clean ice was purchased, the super rich began showing off by icing their drinks, water especially, and whiskey etc. at parties to show that they just had money to throw around on frivolous things like ice. It is completely unnecessary in drinks, but once the rich started doing it the poor people wanted to do it too. I knew an old lady in the south that drank her Dr. Pepper hot, and said that was how they all used to drink it. Also, think about the marketing and all of those nice ice cold drinks you could only buy from soda fountains etc. Most people might have an ice box around, but a lot of people only had cooling boxes that hung outside of their main house to keep things cooler in the fall and winter. It is basically supply and demand, some brilliant person had a nice lake that they took ice out of to keep their meat and tubers fresh long into the summer, and then they realized they could sell it and the only cost to them was transport. Almost pure profit. Next best thing for profit is the shaved ice.
[...] Curiously, ice cubes are not popular in other countries (the theory being that in Europe “it’s just the way it’s always been,” [...]
When I was in Germany a few years ago, my hosts told me the reason they didn’t use ice was because the water quality was so bad for so long after the war. Also, in Germany and Austria, it’s rare to get a “regular” glass of water. They serve it carbonated if you don’t specifically ask for it non-carbonated. And they don’t exactly carry Aquafina–if you don’t get it carbonated, you get tap.
My first sentence in German: “Mineralwasser nein gas, bitte”
Some of my favorite restaurants in Seattle don’t serve ice water. They give you a bottle of cool water instead, or constantly refill my glass with cool water.
I like this. I have a lot of fillings and the ice water is just too cold to drink. If I am thirsty on a hot day I need to be able to down several glasses of water fairly quickly, and I can’t do that with ice water.
[...] All signs point to yes: 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. [...]
[...] Why don’t so many countries use ice cubes? [...]
Part of it is probably that it never gets that hot in Northern Europe. The US is for the most part southwest of Europe, not west. Much of the south is at the same latitude as North Africa. London is at the same latitude as Labrador.
LOL @ Mr. Bateman’s ridiculous, offensive, and just plain wrong jingoism. Being American doesn’t mean you’re better or smarter than the rest of us.
[...] August Smithsonian Magazine article from the excellent Food and Think blog asked the question “Why Don’t Other Countries Use [...]
Yes, we Canadians use just as much ice in our drinks as Americans do, but only ironically.
In Turkey, they believe drinking anything too cold will make you sick. None of their beverages are served very cold, indeed, even their milk sits on a shelf instead of in a refrigerator.
Also, no one drinks tap water there, they order their water in bulk or buy bottled water. Making ice would be a waste of money. I was surprised when I found ice cube trays at a local grocery store.
anybody who needs ICE CUBES around Europe can contact http://www.europeice.com European Packaged Ice Association
Really interesting reading the comments. I grew up in a Chinese-American family and while we always boiled our water, I also appreciated that tap water was also a viable choice. I always drank soda with ice, and I enjoy ice water during the summer as well.
I’ve moved to China, and the opposition to cold food/water just BAFFLES me. (My mom, like many other of my friends’ old school mothers, had some weird food beliefs too, but at least in the U.S. I could get away with ignoring her when it came to that kind of thing.) My female friends won’t eat cold things when they’re on their periods (no ice cream!) and when I ordered a cold coke when I was on my period, they looked as me as if I had grown another head. The reason they gave me was that cold things aren’t good for your digestion, which I frankly think is BS since after a half hour in your stomach, it’s all going to be the same temperature anyway. They also eat extremely spicy food here in the summer, claiming that it will cause you to sweat and cool off, which again, is BS since we don’t live in the desert (in fact, we live in one of the wettest/most humid places on earth). I mean, it’s SO hot and humid –I get that ice cubes aren’t an option since the water here is not clean, but a lot of restaurants here have drink fridges. It’s certainly difficult having to get used to drinking hot tea in stuffy, hot restaurants that have no A/C.
I’m Irish and hate ice in my drinks, firstly because all that ice causes an obstruction when I’m trying to drink, I tilt the glass to my mouth and I can’t get any liquid up for all the ice. And no I won’t use a straw because I’m not 8 years old anymore!
Also, a really cold drink disguises the flavour and I want to be able to actually taste what I’m drinking and enjoy the flavour. It’s for that same reason that mass produced beer is served very cold and better ‘craft’ beers are served warmer, because the really bad quality of the mass produced beer is disguised by the cold but the craft beers which taste so much better need a warmer temperature to that you can fully savour the flavour.
And putting ice in a good whisky? Truely shocking!!!!
I never put ice in my drinks. The drink is already cold, and it’s not going to be around long enough to warm up. Ice in drinks does nothing but waste space and water-down the drink. Ice-laden soda tastes terrible when you get close to the drinking the last few drops. One time a coworker knew I was heading to the store and asked me to refill his 32oz or 48oz mug with soda. I did and put a few cubes of ice in it. He was actually annoyed when I brought it back filled with soda instead of ice!
As a side note, I’ve heard that the icy drinks Americans prefer have the added effect of numbing/loosening the muscles of the stomach, so that we eat more before feeling full. This stuck out to me because it would seem to be the opposite, but would go hand in hand with a super sized fast food meal and an overweight population.
“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.”
The problem with that theory is that it is utterly disconnected from reality. The American habit of filling their glasses with ice long predates free drink refills.
I don’t know why so many people have such strong opinions on the matter – because to me, it is all a matter of opinion, tastes and likes. I am an American that has lived abroad and on the list of things North America (Canada, the US and to some extent Mexico) does differently than the rest of the world, let me tell you, ice in my beverage is very low on my list of priorities.
To me, the question of how it all got started seems to be more pertinent than why. The reason so many Americans use ice today is because that’s what they’re used to and so that’s what they like. But why did Americans first start to use ice?
The same question could be asked about other things. Living abroad, I could care less about whether my drink was hot or cold when I’m suffering through an indoor temperature of 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius). Oh yes, they open the windows and maybe, if they really want to splurge, even have a fan or two going, but it’s nothing like America where the stores and restaurants are so cold you often need a sweater!
Worse still, is the refusal to use heat when the money to afford it is not a problem. It really sucks to have to work, shop and use public transportation in an area where no one uses heat, even when the temperature stays below freezing. That got me worse than anything – months of feeling like my toes are about to fall off from frostbite, being so cold I can’t hold my body still from all the shivering, feeling like I’d never be warm again, all while trying to stand in front of 30+ students teaching English. Whether it’s because of some stupid folk tales/cultural beliefs that say heat is not good or because they were all too cheap to pay for it, I don’t know. But then again, I don’t really care, because of all the cultural differences I experienced in my time abroad, that’s the one I truly hate the most and don’t care about their reasoning. I could understand if they were too poor to pay for it, like a third world country or something, but that was not the case. Every Joe Shmoe there had a smart phone and iPad, so money was not the issue.
And why does the rest of the world use trains so much more than we do in the states? I had never even been on a train (not counting subways as trains) until I left the states. I would love to have trains here in the states – a mid-price and mid-speed option between flying and driving. Taking a high speed train in Asia, I made a trip in 2.5 hours that would have taken 5-7 hours driving. And the price was about 1/8 of what a plane ticket would have been.
To ask an American “why don’t you take a train?” is silly – but to ask why the trains disappeared from America to start with is a better question. Again, don’t ask why American’s use air conditioners when Europeans don’t – the obvious answer is because that’s what we’re accustomed to. But why are we accustomed to it? Why did air conditioners take over so much in America but not in Europe? And so “why did Americans start to use ice cubes?” rather than “why don’t other countries use ice cubes?”
I entirely disagree with your finally point about body temperature. I live in Germany and ice cubes are actually used in drinks, but only during hot summer months. The view is that putting a cold drink in your stomach will cool your body, the same effect happens when you submerge your body in a cold pool. The temperature cools your blood and cools your body. Another example would be elephants ears, the blood flow surging through their blood vessels in their ears is cooled, thus cooling their entire body. I can not help answer the question as to “Why Americans Like Ice cubes so much?”
Joe Palca addressed the science behind drinking hot beverages on hot days.
“Cool Down With A Hot Drink? It’s Not As Crazy As You Think” http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/07/11/156378713/cool-down-with-a-hot-drink-its-not-as-crazy-as-you-think
There are receptors on the tongue that detect something hot. They tell the brain that it’s hot, and the brain turns on our cooling mechanism: sweating.
First: refrigeration is expensive — It consumes a lot of energy, takes up valuable space, requires repair, &etc. If your country just got good and wrecked by war and had to deal with the Iron Curtain for a neighbor right around the time relatively inexpensive home refrigeration became available in the US, having access to plentiful ice for one’s drink isn’t too high on list of priorities.
Further: If you’ve ever had to spend all day working in a field during the hottest part of summer, you might have once experienced the stomach misery resulting from drinking ice-cold water and getting back to the hard work at hand. I sure didn’t repeat it after the first time. Now, the vast majority of Americans have not experienced this. Most ice-cold drinks are consumed by people sitting down, who then proceed to do more of the same on couches, in chairs, at desks, in cars, likely in air conditioning. Relatively few people have to do hard physical labour outdoors in the heat anymore.
That’s my two cents, for whatever the exchange rate works out to be.
In Greece, the reason ice is not used is that water is actually scarce. You have to conserve water, so cutting out ice is first on the list.
Simple. houses are smaller in Europe. Therefore fridges are smaller and some times don’t even come with a freezer, let alone a fancy ice cube making wotsit. Therefore we don’t have ice.
Real estate. Premises in Europe tend to be a lot smaller and storing ice takes up a lot of space when you are using a lot of it. Ice making machines are noisy and expensive.
An older reason could well be that ice was seen as a rich person’s possession and flaunting it was the norm. There was an ice magnate in the mid 1800s who shipped it all around the world including Europe.
“Any difference felt is an illusion?” What a strange comment to make. Meaning that his authority overrides what your body is telling you. Perhaps he should also tell you when you’re full and should stop eating. Maybe that’s why Americans are also so obese – they can’t think for themselves.
Basically try it and see. Drown yourself with a bucket of ice water before a meal and watch your body react. Then do a week with a cup of tepid water and observe. Be your own authority.
As for getting sore throat this is totally true. In Russia (I think in many other countries too) we’re afraid of getting a cold. And plus since it’s not hot most days we don’t need any extra cooler. And yeah, if you ask for ice in a restaurant/café you’ll probably get it made of tapped water.
At a conference break for lunch in Chicago, I got something to eat and a drink. As I was filling my cup with ice, my friend G., from Italy, yelled for me to stop. Why? I asked. “Ice is harmful to the liver,” was the answer. I asked G what happened to ice on the way to and in the stomach. “It melts,” he was forced to say. So how can it hurt the liver? That was a rhetorical question, because Italians invoke forthcoming liver problems for just about anything on earth. “Il fegato” is probably outdone only by “la corrente,” or draft. It can be over 100 degrees in a room or office or a train or whatever, but nobody will want to open a window to let in a little breeze, because that will cause infinite and generally incurable maladies. Anybody who does open a window a crack will be greeted by a chorus of “La corrente!”and warned of a doomsday scenario. And the same applies to air conditioning, ice cubes, colors of clothing and hundreds of other things…
I think there are several reasons why ice is less common in Europe:
1. In Italy, where I am from, we were always told that ingesting iced things before a meal harms digestion. After all, our insides are near 100 degrees, and diluting the digestive-system heat with iced beverages is not natural and harms digestion.
2. Cost. The cost of making ice is not insignificant and in many cases ice is more costly than the beverage inside the container. Especially tap water (essentially free) and soft drinks (not much more than free).
3. Where free refills are not the norm, as is the case in most of Europe, one cannot drink ice and it is seen as wasteful, especially considering the size of a drink is almost always less than a drink in the US.
4. Space. Ice-making machines are large, noisy, energy and water guzzling things that take space and resources away from other uses. Most restaurants and kitchens in Europe are far smaller than in the US — and it’s unheard of to have a 25 cubic foot side-by-side fridge there.
5. Safety. Ice is usually made from tap water, filtered as it may be, but tap water in most of Europe is viewed as inferior and may be, in fact, unsafe to drink. Freezing does not kill pathogens, and ice from impure water will remain impure.
6. Heat and humidity. It’s hotter and more humid in the US than it is in many parts of Europe.
7. Marketing. Most beverage makers market their products in sweating containers and as “ice cold.” Can you imagine anything more disgusting than drinking a warm Coke or Pepsi in the US?
I want my liquids to be glacial. Of course I live in the deep South. (True it’s the humidity that wears one out.)
“after a half hour in your stomach, it’s all going to be the same temperature anyway”
But meanwhile the stomach is not working at its proper operating temperature. Traditional Chinese medicine is especially sensitive to this issue because it understands how important the digestive process itself is to overall health. We would all be a lot better off If western medicine had a better understanding of such things.
For most of Europe’s recorded history, drinking water was eschewed because water made you sick or killed you. Today we know why – the water was typically contaminated and microbe-bearing. That’s why Euros always favored alcohol-based drinks like wine & beer even for young children. By logical extrapolation, then, ice, was viewed for what it was – contaminated water and, therefore, disfavored.
‘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.’
I’d like to know if an illusion can work if you don’t know it’s supposed to work. I drank soda with ice all year long for all my life. I never *consciously* perceived cooling until my 30s. The first time was when we were all told to turn our thermostats down in winter to save energy. After I did this, the first time I drank an iced drink, I FELT colder, almost most to the point of shivering, but I simply did not know why. It took a couple of days before I connected it with the iced drink. I was quite surprised.
Similarly, one summer a few years later, I decided to switch to the “free” coffee provided at work to economize because it was already paid for. The thermostats were up to save energy. Shortly after drinking a cup, I noticed myself perspiring slightly. Again, I had no idea why. Again, I didn’t figure it out until a couple of days later.
I fully understand Dr. Edell’s point and his data are beyond dispute. However, I’m sure there is something going on that is completely physical and probably mundane that scientists have neglected to measure. It is not an illusion.
It’s like a cold soda with no ice vs a cold soda with ice. It’s just more satisfying and yeah it’s possibly all in my head.
There may be many factors, but keep in mind that most parts of the USA are much warmer than Europe. I was once in Germany in August, and it was cold enough that everyone was wearing coats, in the middle of the day no less.
Disagree with water being drank less in Europe. I can’t remember a meal I had there that wasn’t served with a pitcher of water.
haha great idea for a post. I hate when my glass isn’t filled up with enough ice when I travel!