Water Accounts for 51% of Nonalcoholic Beverage Consumption

Water accounts for just over half of what American adults drink on an average day (not counting alcoholic beverages). Water is 51.2 percent of nonalcoholic beverage consumption, according to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. In second place among beverages is coffee (14.9 percent), followed by sweetened beverages (10.2 percent), tea, (8.7 percent), fruit beverages (5.6 percent), milk (5.5 percent), and diet beverages (3.8 percent). 

Water's share of beverage consumption declines with age while coffee's share increases. Among adults aged 60-plus, coffee accounts for 20.5 percent of daily beverage consumption. This is more than twice coffee's share among young adults...

Percent distribution of nonalcoholic beverage consumption by age, 2015–18

	total	20 to 39	40 to 59	60-plus
Water	51.2%	56.5%	49.3%	46.9%
Coffee	14.9	9.2	16.1	20.5
Sweetened beverages	10.2	13.5	10.4	5.9
Tea	8.7	6.7	9.6	10.3
Fruit beverages	5.6	6.5	5.1	5.2
Milk	5.5	5.0	5.2	6.4
Diet beverages	3.8	2.6	4.4	4.9

Source: National Center for Health Statistics, Nonalcoholic Beverage Consumption among Adults: United States, 2015–2018