What Not to Drink

         

     So the other day I realized that I have talked a lot about different foods that are healthy and foods that are unhealthy, but I really haven’t talked much about healthy and unhealthy drinks. Many people focus too much on eating foods that are healthier and don’t realize that they drink a lot of the calories they consume on a day to day basis. In order to maintain a healthy diet, you need to eat healthy foods and consume drinks that don’t have too much sugar in calories. One drink that is terrible for you is soda. Soda is full of sugar, caffeine and empty calories. It has no nutritional value whatsoever. If you look at a typical can of soda, you will see that it has 140 calories and 39 grams of sugar. That is a lot of sugar and calories for one small drink. Even Diet Coke isn’t good for you because it contains artificial sweeteners. According to UnitedHealthCare.com, artificial sweeteners increase your sugar cravings. This is because your insulin response is generated when sweetness hits the tongue. Your body craves sugar when you consume drinks with sweetener, but the sweetener does not satisfy the sugar cravings, therefore you are more likely to consume more sugar later on.

 

Energy drinks and sports drinks (like Gatorade) can also be linked to weight gain because of the large amounts of caffeine and sugar. Vitamin water is also a drink that deceives many people. People think that because it contains a lot of vitamins, it is automatically healthy. In reality, Vitamin Water is loaded with sugar and calories. Vitamin water has about 33 grams of sugar per bottle and 125 calories. This is almost as much sugar and calories as a 12 OZ can of soda! Be careful with fruit juices as well because most contain a lot of sugar! If you are going to have fruit juice, make sure it is 100 percent fruit juice and even then, only drink it in moderation because it still has a good amount of sugar. 

My favorite juice is Ocean Spray’s cranberry-raspberry juice, but it contains a lot of sugar! What I do instead of drinking a full glass of that juice, I add a little bit to a glass of water which gives the water a little bit of that flavor that I love. Whenever I crave soda, I replace it with seltzer water and a little bit of that same cranberry juice to give me the satisfaction of having a carbonated drink. One last thing to stay away from is Alcohol because it contains a lot of calories. The amount of calories depends on which drink you have, but the majority of alcoholic beverages do contain a lot of calories. For example, a 12 OZ serving of Budweiser has 143 calories. Remember, you don’t have to completely cut these drinks out of your life, just have them in moderation. If you often drink soda or some of the other drinks on this list, try limiting yourself to having it on a certain day only, like Friday.

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