Daniela and I, enjoying a big glass of melon juice with our meal.I don't know about you guys, but I'm not a big juice person. Maybe a glass of OJ with breakfast, maybe a berry smoothie every now and then (although for me those are a meal in itself) but mostly I just stick to water. Occasionally a Coke, if I'm out and about, maybe some wine or beer with dinner. Nothing too crazy. That is so not the case here in Chile.
People here drink juice with every meal. And I'm not talking about some lame apple juice. I'm talking peach, melon, mango, pineapple, the works! With meals! And not in little sippy cups either, I'm talkin big, milkshake size glasses. It's really very peculiar to me. If you're enjoying a big plate of fettucini alfredo, do you really want to be guzzling down some guava juice with it? It just sounds gross to me. But not to Chileans. They love it.
They look at you like you're crazy if you just order water. If it's not juice it's some type of soda, maybe a Bilz y Pap, maybe a standard Fanta or Sprite. Sometimes Chileans will order three different drinks, for one meal. A friend of mine once ordered a pisco sour, a Kustmann beer, and a big pineapple juice. It's like.....which one doesn't belong? I know! The drink one normally only consumes will lounging on a beach somewhere.
My dad, who is Sri Lankan, is also a big fan of juice, and has been known to order a glass of cranberry while having a fancy steak dinner (of course, it being alcohol-fueled Las Vegas, the waiters always assume he means a vodka cranberry and he has to correct them). This doesn't seem as odd to me. Maybe it's because my dad comes from a small, tropical island in the South Pacific, where there's an abundance of mango trees and other tropical fruit, so drinking exotic juice was part of his childhood. But mango juice in Chile? That's weird to me.
Lauren said that when Daniela moved in with her in Long Beach, she was shocked at the lack of juice in the fridge. (The fridge was, in fact, completely filled with booze.) But still, that was Lauren's first indication of the difference between Chileans and Americans, in terms of beverages, anyway.
Not only does juice with a meal sound heavy to me, they're loaded with calories and aren't the best thing to be drinking 24/7. So I think I'll just stick to water, thank you very much. You can leave the jugos naturales for the Chileans. I know they'll drink them!
- Aneya
In Colombia it's very similar actually. We have natural fruit juices all the time at our meals, during snacks, at cafes, but Coke and sodas are always available too, and is just as popular.
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