In its hometown, the world’s second most consumed beer, China’s Tsingtao, is sipped out of large plastic bags. Like any good beer bottle, the bags are emblazoned with the company’s logo: the Huilan Pavilion underscored with some waves, an homage to Qingdao’s Zhanqiao Pier and maritime culture. Beer drinkers can fill a bag with the light brew and suck it up through straws. In a world of steins, mugs, and bottles, the Tsingtao bag is a novelty. But the bag is a far more common beverage vessel than the world would like to admit.
The plastic bag is perhaps the cheapest, most bountiful mass-manufactured container in the world. In many countries around the world, the cheapest bottled water to be found is not actually bottled, it is bagged. In fact, in Latin America, Africa, and parts of central and southern Asia, plastic bags are an extremely common and cheap container for a wide variety of beverages.
On the east coast of Madagascar, where I lived for nearly 2 years, the largest social events of the month were invariably soccer games. The town would parade down a winding dirt road that roughly followed the course of the slow and muddy Rongorongo River, eventually reaching a vast clearing in the forest—a field with bamboo-framed goals. Typically, young children would play the first games, but the town came out in force for the young men’s matches. Obviously a thirst-inducing activity, some entrepreneurial townsfolk would make the hike with bags of water and frozen bags of juice in plastic basins carried on the hip or head.
I would lug my 1 liter metal water bottle to these sporting events, but reusable water bottles are not a well known commodity in rural Madagascar. When players and spectators did eventually get thirsty, they would pay 100 Ariary to these vendors for a bag of water or a frozen sachet of juice. In Madagascar, these containers are sealed off by heat. The experienced bag drinker uses the teeth to pinch off a corner and pipe the refreshing contents into their mouth.
After these events, as the flood of activity subsided back down the road, exhausted plastic pouches would remain, tangled in the reeds on the boundaries of the clearing. Just as plastic bottles are a scourge to our environments, the plastic bag is no less insidious.
I could never stomach the bagged water in Madagascar. It was a cheap option with presumably potable contents, but the water tasted of the container more than American bottled water. It seems likely that the format pollutes both the body and the environment. Such bags are common throughout Sub-Saharan Africa.
In Latin America also, the plastic-bag-as-drinking-vessel runs rampant. In some countries, consumers must front a deposit if they wish to take the glass soda bottles with them from a store. Only intending to consume the sweet soda inside, some drinkers will opt to pour a Fanta or Coca Cola into a plastic bag and leave the bottle for the shopkeep to return to her distributor.
But Latin American juices are often not sealed off into bags by heat presses. Vendors are agua fresca, horchata, chicha, and pinolillo will all ladle their liquids into sandwich bags and tie them off at the top. I have even seen rubber bands used to kiss the edge of the bag around the base of a straw.
In Mexico, tepache vendors deftly tie the neck of each of their bags of tangy pineapple juice. In Honduras, bagged water is sold in factory sealed pouches. In Nicaragua, chicha and pumpkin seed horchata are both rationed out in plastic baggies. Even in India, I have seen chai vendors serve out little chai cup portions in a bundle of bags for someone to bring back tea for the whole office. The milk at chai stands is invariably poured from pre-sealed plastic bags.
Why do we see so few of these drinking bags in America? Well, we drink very few locally produced soft drinks. All of our sodas come from industrial factories where the temporary, drink-right-away concept of the bag is irrelevant. Bags of liquids are simply harder to transport than something semi-rigid. These factories are also equipped with the technology and equipment to produce their own bottles on premise.
Don’t be surprised, though, if you go to Cancun and find locals drinking pozol con cacao, a grainy chocolate corn drink, out of plastic bags with straws.
During the war, the burgeoning international trade of the late 19th and early 20th century dissipated to the point that many nations had to look internally for their basic needs. Yeast, an all important ingredient in the bread and beer that western civilization relies on, was a focal point of this supply chain disruption. The story of yeast in World War I was everywhere a story of culinary ingenuity and homegrown innovation.
Washington DC, home to the President of the USA and a lot of Ethiopian folks. Accordingly, the city is packed with restaurants that serve delicious Ethiopian food…and beverages. If you are looking for a culinary and cultural change from your normal bar, you can sample the beers, wines, and liquors of Ethiopia right here in America’s capital.
Tea, and eventually coffee, dominated the palate of American bibulous life and yaupon, quite frankly, was never in favor for Europeans or their descendants. The poor who lived in yaupon-growing regions were the only Europeans (and Africans as slaves were brought over and discovered the stimulating drink) to regularly consume the drink. For this reason, America has only ever acknowledged that it has tea literally growing in its back yard during times of caffeine scarcity.
Don’t drink cologne! Just know that other people used to. In fact, the original eau de cologne was sold as a medicine to be ingested. Throughout the history of modern toilet waters, Europeans and Americans have drank them for medicinal, cosmetic, and intoxicating effects. From freshening the breath, to satisfying an addiction on a budget, toilet waters have a long history as a drink.
