Water now makes up more than half of what Americans drink, CDC data show

Water has overtaken every other drink in the American diet, according to new federal data showing that both children and adults now draw more than half of their daily fluid intake from plain water rather than milk, soda, juice or coffee — a marked shift from a decade ago, when sugary drinks and milk held a much larger share of what the country consumed.

The finding comes from a data brief published September 2 by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), the statistical arm of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Researchers analyzed dietary recall interviews collected through the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) and found that during August 2021 through August 2023, water accounted for 57.2 percent of total nonalcoholic beverage consumption among youth ages 2 to 19, and 57.3 percent among adults 20 and older — statistically indistinguishable shares between the two age groups, despite very different drink habits in every other category.

The numbers

Beyond water, the youth and adult diets diverge sharply. Among young people, milk was the second-largest contributor at 16.1 percent, followed by sweetened beverages such as soda, sports drinks and fruit drinks at 15.3 percent, 100 percent fruit juice at 5.5 percent, coffee and tea at 3.9 percent, and diet beverages at 2.0 percent. Among adults, the runner-up was not milk but coffee and tea, at 20.1 percent of total beverage intake, followed by sweetened beverages at 11.2 percent, diet beverages at 4.8 percent, milk at 4.6 percent and fruit juice at 2.0 percent.

The report, produced by NCHS researchers Nicholas Ansai and Catharine Couch along with Ann Goding Sauer of CDC's Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity, also breaks the data down by age. Among children ages 2 to 5, water made up 51.1 percent of intake, rising to 54.6 percent for ages 6 to 11 and 61.7 percent for teenagers 12 to 19; milk's share fell in the same span, from 26.1 percent among preschoolers to 10.5 percent among teens. Among adults, the pattern reverses: water's share peaks at 64.9 percent for those 20 to 39 and steadily declines to 50.2 percent for those 60 and older, while coffee and tea intake climbs from 13.2 percent among the youngest adults to 26.8 percent among the oldest.

• Water's contribution to youth beverage intake rose from 42.4 percent in 2013–2014 to 57.2 percent in the latest survey cycle
• Water's share among adults rose from 46.9 percent to 57.3 percent over the same decade
• Sweetened-beverage contributions fell for both groups — from 22.0 percent to 15.3 percent among youth, and from 14.9 percent to 11.2 percent among adults
• Milk's share dropped from 21.7 percent to 16.1 percent among youth and from 6.1 percent to 4.6 percent among adults

How we got here

The estimates come from two 24-hour dietary recall interviews conducted with a nationally representative sample of NHANES participants — 1,760 youth and 4,790 adults in the most recent cycle — in which trained interviewers ask what a person ate and drank over the previous day. For children younger than 6, a parent or guardian answers on the child's behalf; children 6 to 11 answer with a caregiver present, and those 12 and older answer for themselves. The August 2021–August 2023 cycle also introduced a methodological change: both recall interviews were conducted by phone following a household visit, rather than the first interview being conducted in person, a shift the agency has flagged as a factor to weigh when comparing results with earlier cycles.

The new brief updates two earlier NCHS reports — one on youth beverage consumption covering 2013–2016, the other on adult nonalcoholic beverage consumption covering 2015–2018 — allowing researchers to track a full decade of change. Water's rise tracks closely with federal dietary advice: the 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans instruct people to make water and other unsweetened drinks their primary beverage choices, to limit 100 percent fruit juice, and to avoid sugar-sweetened drinks altogether. CDC's own consumer-facing Rethink Your Drink campaign has pushed the same message for years, arguing that swapping sugary drinks for water is one of the simplest ways to cut added sugar and excess calories from the diet.

Who the data cover

The pattern is not uniform. Sweetened-beverage and diet-beverage intake still climbs with age among adults even as water's share falls: adults 60 and older draw 5.9 percent of their beverage intake from diet drinks, compared with 3.1 percent for adults 20 to 39. Milk consumption among adults is also highest in the oldest group, at 6.1 percent versus roughly 3.9 percent for both younger adult brackets. Among youth, the direction of travel is more consistent: contributions from water, coffee and tea, sweetened beverages and diet beverages all rise with age, while milk and fruit juice fall steadily from early childhood into the teenage years.

Because the analysis measures the mix of what people already drink rather than total volume, it does not by itself say whether Americans are drinking more fluid overall or simply reshuffling the same volume toward water. It also draws on a sample gathered during a NHANES cycle affected by the mode change in how recall interviews were collected, a detail the agency notes as a caveat for comparisons across survey cycles.

The data brief frames the shift as evidence of gradual alignment with federal nutrition advice rather than a dramatic behavioral break.

"Between 2013–2014 and August 2021–August 2023, significant increases were seen in the contribution of water to total nonalcoholic beverage consumption along with corresponding decreases in the contributions of milk, 100% fruit juice, and sweetened beverages for both youth and adults. Over time, these changes come closer to meeting ongoing [dietary guideline] recommendations emphasizing water as a primary beverage for youth and adults."

The authors note one exception to the otherwise steady trend: diet-beverage consumption dipped in the middle of the decade before rebounding to roughly its starting level by the most recent cycle, a pattern the report does not attempt to explain. Coffee and tea intake, meanwhile, showed no statistically significant trend over the ten-year span for either age group, even as its share of adult beverage intake remains second only to water.

What happens next

NCHS releases these nonalcoholic beverage estimates periodically as new NHANES cycles are processed, and the agency has already scheduled related dietary reports in the coming weeks, including updated data on fruit and vegetable consumption among children, adolescents and adults drawn from the same August 2021–August 2023 survey cycle. Public health researchers who track diet trends are likely to use the beverage figures as a benchmark for evaluating state and local efforts — from school water-access rules to soda taxes — aimed at nudging consumption further toward the guidelines. The underlying data tables and full brief are available on the NCHS website for researchers seeking more granular breakdowns by sex, race and ethnicity, which were not highlighted in the topline summary.