Comment by ecshafer

There are a few reasons. One is that soda is marketed extremely heavily by Coke and Pepsi as a very normal drink to have all of the time. The other is that is pushed in restaurants a lot as it has a huge profit margin, similar to alcohol but you can have it as a child; relatedly children get a taste for it as its very sweet and sets people up from child hood. Another is that corn syrup is heavily subsidized, and is in food everywhere here, and very few families have a house wife cooking food from scratch these days. So processed food with sugar additives is normal giving people these addictions and cravings.