Here are two interactive visualizations I put together showing beverage consumption, in gallons, from 1985 through 2007. The data are from the US Department of Agriculture.
There are a host of interesting things in the data. From 1985 through 2007 the biggest changes are:
–A sextupling in consumption of bottled water
–A 50% increase in diet soda consumption
–A 60% decrease in whole milk consumption
–A doubling in skim milk consumption
It’s interesting to see how beer consumption hovered around 24 gallons per person per year from 1985 through 1990 and then dropped off and …

Protovis small multiple mockup of bls.gov data showing 10 yr trend of weekly hours of production for 39 industries, courtesy the Business Intelligence Guru.