Heart and Mind

Let's Talk About Big Gulps

One of the things that we're constantly hearing about when talking about the problems American have with being overweight is that "portion sizes are have increased."

Now, what's funny about that is that on the surface, that seems like a good thing. If I go out to dinner and I get more food for my dollar, that's a whole lot better than what I could call "school lunch syndrome," where, back in the day, the lunch you got in school was so sparse that it left you clamoring for more. I kind of like making sure I'm full when I'm paying 10 to 15 dollars for a plate at Applebees. To blame portion size for the reason I'm a little rounder in the mid-section is kind of weak. Large portions may explain why we eat too much, but it doens't cause us to eat too much, one might argue. They do have doggie-bags available, and one can take his food home with him instead of pigging out. (Not that I, myself, haven't been known to the chose the latter instead of the former.)

Certainly on place you see "larger portion sizes" in our "super-size" world is on the beverage front. Every pizzas place or takeout joint you go to seems to have one of those huge cups that hold an insane amount of soda. They're usually labeled "best value," too...which in and of itself is debatable. While, mathematically, you get a better rate in terms of ounces per cents, it's not such a good value if you end up throwing out half of it. One dollar for 16 ounces is actually a better value than one-fifty for 32 ounces if I only end up drinking 16 ounces of my purchase anyway.

It makes sense that places would optimize their soda sizes. Soda is crappy product ("sugar water" made with high fructose corn syrup) that is ridiculously cheap to make and dispense in fountain-form. As the popular notion goes, "the 5-cent cup costs more than the liquid inside it that you're paying $1.25 for."

So, today, we are so used to big soda cups that they seem normal.

But it wasn't always like this.

Around 1980, Seven-Eleven introduced the Big Gulp, and it was like nothing that had ever been seen before.

At the time, it seemed like an absolutely absurd, unheard of amount of soda. 32 ounces. One liter. How could one person actually drink that much in one sitting, we used to ask.

The cup was immense. It was barely something I could wrap my 9-year-old hands around. I used to get a Big Gulp and share it with a friend.

But I have bought many Big Gulps in my day (usually with some non-carobonated alternative in the cup). Because despite what I said before about value per ounce being a misleading stat, the difference between the Big Gulp and the regular "large" drink (which, back in the day wasn't called a "Gulp," like it is now) was just too much drink for not much difference in price. It used to be like .59 for a "normal" sized cup, and the Big Gulp was double the size for .69. Double your drink for a dime.

And yes, back in the day, if I recall correctly, there was a small, medium, large, and then the "Big Gulp," which was intended to be the "monster size."

And then it happened. As if Big Gulps with their teeming 32 ounces wasn't enough, they came out with the Super Big Gulp. Like ravenous soda whores, Seven-Eleven goers felt the need to take the monstrosity and enlarge it. "I need 44 ounces of soda! I need to buy a one-liter bottle (like the kind you pick up at the pizza parlor when you were picking up dinner for the family) and I'm going to drink ALL of that, and then buy another one of those and drink half of it." That's what Super Big Gulps were like.

Big Gulps were usually enough for me. I rarely pushed that envelope and went for the Super Big Gulp. That was just crazy. But when things couldn't get any crazier, they did!

Introducing the Double Gulp! It was bigger than the Super Big Gulp. In fact, it was double the size of the Big Gulp. So, what just a few years ago seemed like an absurd amount of soda for a person to drink now was only half-enough, in the eyes of the Double Gulp buyer. Imagine seeing someone walking out of Seven Eleven two-fisting Big Gulps, one in each hand? You'd say, "Wow, dude, are you thirsty or insane?" Double Gulps could serve a family of five very comfortably. They were like two liter bottles, meant to be drank through a straw by one person.

Originally, the Double Gulps came in this paper carton that folded together. It was like a box of soda with a straw whole. These days, plastics have taken over the paper cups and they're able to actually make a round, cup-shaped one.

Although I rarely got Super Big Gulps, I, ironically, did on occasion get the Double Gulps. I used to get them when I was working summers doing beverage delivery, driving a van and carrying cases of beverages that I couldn't drink in the hot summer sun. So I would get a Double Gulp and it would last me all day, which I needed as I was sweating all day and getting very parched.

These days, as referenced before, they call the size below the Big Gulp a "Gulp." And that's like a 20 ounce, maybe what the "super large" was pre-Big Gulps. And now that's the SMALL! You can't get 'em any smaller at Seven-Eleven.

We're living large these days, no doubt, and I do believe it all started with the Big Gulp. And, if by the way, you think it seems like I know a lot about Seven-Eleven, you have to understand something. Growing up on Long Island in the 1980s, Seven-Eleven was like night life for me. In high school, we would loiter in the local Seven-Eleven parking lot and inevitably run into lots of people we knew. And then out of boredom, we'd drive around to other Seven-Elevens, eating low-grade microwaved food and loitering more.

And if you are reading this and don't see the point... If you are saying, "What? I regularly drink 64-ounces of soda every time I get a drink with my lunch? What is the big deal?" If that's the case, you either have always lived in a post-Big Gulp world, or you don't really remember life pre-Big Gulp. The Big Gulp was big stuff.

posted by Steve @ 2:02 PM