Lots of times the restaurants won't even have milk

And diet sugar

’ll have a number 6 with extra dip. Big Smoke: I’ll have two number 9s, a number 9 large, a number 6 with extra dip, a number 7, two number 45s, one with cheese, and a large soda. Make that diet, I'm trying to watch my weight.

To be fair, the alcoholic menu us typically like this too. 95% of the menu is beer, wine, or vodka and some kind of syrup.

Even if it's not on the menu, it's not like you can't get X neat or on the rocks.

^ This. Diet Coke/Pepsi if you're LUCKY. Otherwise, water.

Do you people’s restaurants not serve iced tea?
- In some states iced tea would also be full of sugar. And "hot tea" is a dry teabag next to a cup of warmish water.
  
  As an iced tea enjoyer, who has been to almost 40 states that is absolutely untrue. I've never been to any restaurant that serves sweet tea but does not serve unsweetened as well. Some places especially in the north don't consistently have either, but in my experience, if they have one they always have the other
  
  Nope. Plenty of places in the midwest only carry unsweet and "flavored", not regular sweet tea. The flavor is usually extra sweet fruit flavored syrup like raspberry or peach.
  
  Okay fair enough, I haven't been to many Midwestern states, especially rural areas of those states. I was more referring to places carrying only sweet tea and not unsweet
  
  I have been all over the continental United States of America, except California, Washington, Arizona, Nevada, and that other state up there between California and Washington that I always think is Vermont, driving a truck and have literally never been to a place that had sweet tea but not unsweet.
  
  I’ve seen a few the other way around, but that was in New England, about as far from sweet tea culture as you can get.
  
  Maybe a gas station or a fast food joint that use the syrups instead of brewed, but you don’t want to drink that shit
- The trick is "Unsweetened Ice Tea", which not everyone has. :(

I mean, I just annoyed that milk isn't even an option in a lot of restaurants. It's something so basic, like.

actually milk is slightly acidic

jk
Sorry, the milk is for the kids' menu. You can't order from that.
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Check the menu for items that require milk as an ingredient. You might be able to order a glass even if it isn't on the menu.
- Like milksteak?
  
  Like anything with a bechamel-based sauce or gravy, or custard/pudding/flan, or pancakes, etc.
  
  Unless you are at an extremely expensive or extremely small restaurant, their sauces come premade in a bag from Cisco.
To order for a kid? Or the sloppy steak?
- OMG - i had forgotten the sloppy steak!
Are you a cat?
- Yes.
Despite what Lucille Bluth believes, vodka doesn't bad in a few days after opening bottle. Milk goes bad quickly.
- They usually have the milk on hand for cooking, or just the kids menu. If my family of 4 can easily go through 2 gallons a week, I can't imagine a resteraunt having problems using up milk before it goes bad unless they over-purchase
I've been in plenty where you could just order milk. 🤷

Though usually those are chain restaurants that prioritize breakfast, might be why.
If the restaurant has a kids menu, it also has milk.
- I like how the small fraction of adults that drink milk are downvoting you for actually giving helpful advice. Lol

Afaik, the only other options besides what you listed for beverages anywhere is milk, coffee and tea. And depending where you get them, the coffee and tea may as well just be sugar (or aspartame) too.

Well, coming from a tropical country to the US was a disappointment there. I used to be able to get a variety of freshly squeezed juices almost anywhere, and the only thing they serve around here are bottled OJ's that barely taste like orange. It's not even like there's a limited variety at the grocery store, it's just not a thing...
- Most juice has a lot of sugar. The ones that don't don't generally taste that good.
  
  But bottle OJ tasting like shit is a real thing, they have to do so much to it to get it to last for more than a week on the shelf that all the flavor is sucked out of it.
  
  idk, I make them at home with no sugar and it's pretty good. But I guess expecting the sweet stuff plays a factor on your perception.
  
  Yeah no added sugar. The juice generally contains enough sugar on it's own. Fruit juice is about as nutritious as a soda. You're taking the sweet part of the fruit and leaving behind the fiber and other nutrients.
  
  Fruit juice is about as nutritious as a soda
  
  Not even close. Different kinds of sugar, preservatives, and vitamins all have vastly different ratios.
  
  Different kinds of sugar are all sugar when they get to your gut. Anything beyond "the body treats this like sugar" is just a pissing contest.
  
  When you juice something, you're leaving 95% of the nutrients in the fruit, extracting the sugar water, and telling yourself you're drinking healthy. That's just not the case. The meat of the fruit is where that stuff is at. The fact that some of it makes it in to the juice is incidental. It would be better to drink a glass of water and eat the orange, than to juice the orange. Unless you then throw the juice away and just eat what's left of the orange. That's probably the best thing.
  
  Different kinds of sugar are all sugar when they get to your gut.
  
  Nope fruits are high in fructose while sucrose, aka table sugar, is 50:50 glucose and fructose. Fruit has the same or even worse makeup sugar-wise as HFCS, glucose can be used pretty much directly by the body while fructose needs to be processed by the liver, into fat. Evolutionary speaking that makes a lot of sense as when there's a lot of fruit around it's summer and you need to fatten up.
  
  Real fruit vs. juice is a matter of fibre and satisfaction from chewing, it's way easier to overdrink than to overeat fruit.
  
  Where I come from we just take the meat of the fruit and blend it with milk or water (and yes, we call that juice), I you have never try it, go get a ripe mango, blend it with milk and you'll have a delicious smootie, you can use water but imh milk is superior for that use case.
  
  Of cours that is no possible with oranges for example, but there a aloooooot mor fruits than oranges.
  
  If you ever have the oportunity to have some guayaba-milk-juice, don't pass it up, the shit is the nectar of the gods.
  
  Sugar is sugar, HFCS found in sodas and juice with added sugars is more concentrated, but your body still sees it and treats it as sugar.
  
  Which it also just happens to see as something to hoard because for our entire evolutionary timeline sugar was a rare resource to be had. It wasn't until the industrial revolution that we began being able to have sugar whenever and however we wanted. Which on the timeline of evolution is nothing but a blimp, a speck of sand.
  
  Even 100% freshly juiced fruit juice with no additives is a sugar bomb.
  
  different kinds of sugar
  
  Fructose isn't good for you, either.
  
  Sugar is sugar.
  
  It really doesn't matter if it's naturally occurring or added after the fact. It's sugar.
  
  Debating what kinds of sugar are better for you is kind of like debating which landmine is better to step on.
  
  Don't get me wrong, the occasional sugary beverage is fine. But juice is never going to be good for you. Even arguably.
  
  You’re trading HFCS for plain old sugar. Most fruits are approximately 50/50 fructose and glucose, while HFCS is between 42% and 55% fructose, with the balance being glucose.
  
  Chemically and biologically, they are basically the same.
- Juice is still pretty sugary, even fresh squeezed. They naturally have sugars in them which is why they are sweet. While a lot of premade juice also includes added sugars. There was a study posted somewhere on Lemmy not too long ago that showed most American's sugar intake came from fruit juices and not sodas as previously thought.
Mocktails, a whole new world

This annoys me so badly.

I don't drink carbonated beverages,, so when I go into a place and don't want beer then my options are basically coffee or water.

Fine in the mornings, but I don't want a coffee at 5PM. So I guess it's just water then huh

i'm a hydrohomie, i would be/am more than fine with that.

What's wrong with water? I usually just get water and ask for lemon slices to squeeze into it. Which is a game changer and they always have on hand because of the alcoholic drinks lmao

Don't forget fake sugar. And most of that "sugar" is actually corn we tricked into tasting like sugar.

I honestly hope you are making some attempt at a joke, and I'm just failing to get it...
- I think it's a high fructose corn syrup joke, but that's more like squeezing all the sugar out of a cob of corn and pretending it's juice concentrate in my mind.