Book Review: A History of the World in Six Glasses

Beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola. I bought A History of the World in Six Glasses by Tom Standage because five of the six drinks are forbidden for Mormons. Want to know what the world would have been like if the Word of Wisdom had been around since the dawn of time? We all would have DIED!! And been very unsocial.

Actually, the book wasn't that dramatic. But it was pretty obvious that the health benefits of drinking beer instead of water contributed to the rise of civilization. Alcohol is a poison. It poisons people slowly, but it poisons germs a lot faster. Instead of dying of dysentery when you're 20, you can die of cirrhosis of the liver at 40! Early man doubled his lifespan by drinking alcohol. And because of the germ-killing properties of alcohol, people could stay in one place longer even after they fouled the water supply. Beer helped people go from the nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle to agriculture.

Wine had the same alcoholic advantages of beer, but with the advantage of being more expensive, so snobs could differentiate themselves from beer-drinkers. Eventually, the price evened out and everyone could drink wine too.

Alcoholic drinks were used to pay laborers. Better than money! Plus, the jobs at that time were so boring and miserable, being buzzed was the only way the workers could stand them.

Once coffee came to Europe, the Enlightenment happened. Caffeine makes you more alert. Now that the most popular drink didn't make you tipsy, people started thinking! Tea had the same advantage. The world got smarter because of caffeine.

Coke was originally a quack medicine. You know - guaranteed to cure everything from rotfoot to a broken heart. Coke did have a bit of cocaine in it, but it wasn't alcoholic. Coke really started to get popular when the Temperance Movement in America started gaining traction in banning alcoholic drinks. And when alcohol came back, Coke stayed anyway.

Coke conquered the world, and is synonymous with America and consumerism. In WWII, Coke sent Coke out with all the troops. The bottles didn't ship well, so Coke sent materials and employees out to military bases so that the troops could have Coke. Every American military base had it's Coke fountain and "Coke colonels", and even soldiers who didn't like Coke drank Coke because it was the American thing to do. The soldiers went home eventually, but Coke stayed everywhere.

The book predicts that the drink of the future, however, is water. Not just fancy bottled water that people in countries with safe tap water buy; the idea of safe drinking water for everyone is taking hold around the world. Thousands of years after mankind abandoned water in favor of drinks with antiseptics in them, the technology finally exists to make water safe to drink.

Standage's descriptions of how the drinks influenced the culture were interesting. Drinking is a very social event, and always has been.

My six drinks are water, milk, Diet Coke, baby formula (I make it but I don't drink it), hot chocolate and chocolate milk. What are your six drinks?