To get to the topic at hand, if you also remember the pre-"free refill" era you will may also recall that the largest drink you could buy at a restaurant was either 21 or 22 ounces (depending where you were at). Yes indeed a 22-ounce LARGE soft drink, which you only ordered if you were really thirsty. Most people just ordered a medium, which was 16 ounces. This was when most pop that people bought and drank at home came in bottles. These bottles came in two sizes, 16 oz., which I remember well, and a even smaller size before that which I believe was only 6 oz.. In my house hold if you opened a 16 oz. Bottle of pop you didn't drink it all, you either shared it with some one else or put a little plastic cap on it so it wouldn't lose it's fizz when you put it in the refrigerator for later consumption. I'm fairly certain that this was the case in more households than just the one I lived in because those little plastic caps were sold in nearly every grocery or dept. store you walked into. Granted, out of the bottle you the 16 oz. were poured over ice which accounts for only drinking half of a 16 oz. bottle at a given time. In conclusion it seems that most people drank approximately 8 oz. of pop which with ice included would usually fill a 16 oz. glass, meaning that we drank close to the same amount at home or at a restaurant.

     Then came the era of FREE REFILLS, which soon after ushered in the magical term 'Super-size'. Super-size probably came from the same think-tank that produced the order by number concept (value meals, and the like). I really have nothing against value meals myself, although I feel sorry for those who really don't want the fries but order a value meal for whatever reason anyway. It is almost as if making ordering simpler by ordering with a number that some people have now either lost the ability, or refused to put the effort forth to order items separately. I realize I have strayed from the topic again, but it will be alright. Super-size drinks were originally 32 oz., quite a break through at the time of their introduction. As time passed the 16 oz. drink became known as child size and the 22 oz. drink as medium size. Many places started selling 32 oz. drinks as large size, so not to be out done, the creators of Super-size have now introduced and new 'Super-size' which depending on where you go could be either 44 oz. or 48 oz.. I may not have mentioned this but the really odd thing going on throughout all of this is that people have become accustomed to getting refills, since they are now free anyway. Essentially people went from drinking around 8 oz. of soft drink with a meal to more that twice that much. I am not criticizing anyone for this, because I myself always get my drink refilled, sometime I get two refills and I drink every last drop of it. I really just don't understand when we became so much more thirsty than we used to be.

Thank you for your time.

P.S. It must be global warming making us more thirsty eh?