Gallons and Liters

The Coke Zero bottle caught my attention over lunch today. It was a 2-liter bottle.

I've seen 3-liter bottles of soda on the grocery store shelves, but never 4. Are we too wimpy a people group to be able to carry 4-liters? Why don't you see gargantuan sized soda bottles in the bulk section of the store? There's huge cans of pudding, why not soda?

The sizing in general is noteworthy when compared with the soda bottle sizes I grew up with. In the Philippines, at least in the 1980's, the largest soda bottle available on the market was a 1-liter. We'd buy a case of 12 at a time. The standard size was 350ml, (that's milliliters for you non-Canadians) and it was a big deal, a huge marketing bonanza when the bottle makers introduced the 500ml. The standard aluminum can of soda is around 350ml I believe, but I don't think I've seen anything that gets to the 500ml size, 20oz maybe. Those were all glass bottles by the way. And the thrifty stores, to recoup the refund for returning the empty glass soda bottles, would give you your soda in a cellophane bag instead of giving you the bottle.

Speaking of all this, has anyone ever seen USA milk packaged in metric containers? Why is milk always in quarts, pints and gallons? How would it sound to yell up the stairs, "I'm heading down to Weiser's to get a liter of milk"? Or to ask the dairy stock person for a 3-liter bottle of milk?

It must be because the US cows can't squirt in metric.