After a long day at school, sophomore Shreya Kanchan often returns home craving something refreshing. With a parched mouth, she opens her refrigerator door until her eyes rest on a can of Sprite.
Kanchan does not often like to admit it, but she has been “addicted” to soda from very early on in her life.

“I always had parties — say, Divali parties or birthday parties — so I starting drinking [soda] at a young age,” Kanchan said. “But I drank it a lot more in middle school.”

For Kanchan, the desire to drink more soda rises as the temperature does.

“In middle school, I used to get [soda] whenever it was hot,” Kanchan said.

At a party one time, Kanchan tried drinking Coke with milk, a combination she had read about on the Internet.

“It wasn’t as bad as you’d think it would be,” Kanchan said. “It’s not my favorite thing; I’d rather have regular soda. But it tasted like a float when the ice cream melts away.”

Kanchan decided it was time for a change in drinking habits when she heard about an experiment in which a hard-boiled white egg is placed in a glass of Coke. The egg turned brown a day later, and the shell fell off a year later.

The changes in the egg illustrated the effects on one’s teeth and convinced Kanchan that her soda obsession had to end.

“I cut down a bit, because before I used to get Izzes all the time,” Kanchan said. “But now I don’t.”

Whereas she used to drink soda almost every day, Kanchan has now limited herself to drinking it once a week or once every other week. Sophomore Meeta Marathe, one of Kanchan’s friends, aided her in making this change.

“I told her that it was super unhealthy,” Marathe said, “so we started having these one month periods where she wouldn’t drink soda at all. Then sometimes we would go to the lunch line, and she would buy milk and sometimes water instead of soda.”

Since she has started to cut down on soda, Kanchan has not seen any major health improvements. She is still glad of the change, however, realizing that whenever she feels like soda, it is usually because she is thirsty.

Kanchan’s friends were relieved to see these changes in her lifestyle.

“She doesn’t drink soda as much anymore,” Marathe said, “but it used to concern me, because she used to [drink] it like every day.”

Despite her efforts to stop this “addiction,” Kanchan still finds herself reaching for a soda can every once in a while, remembering how the carbonation tickles her tastebuds. This sensation is the reason Kanchan is obsessed with soda, not other drinks.

“I like that bubbly, tingly feeling,” Kanchan said. “It’s like a party in your mouth.”