Healthier beverages can help quench thirst, provide essential nutrients, and keep you hydrated. These drinks are particularly recommended if you’re lactose intolerant, trying to cut caffeine consumption or just want something different than soda pop.
Sugary beverages provide too many calories for children and teenagers, leading to weight gain, tooth decay, and diabetes. Opting for healthier drinks such as water or tea could help.
Water
Water is the go-to beverage when it comes to healthy drinks. Not only can it hydrate, it also flushes away waste from your system and maintain proper blood sugar levels while helping with weight management. Plus, water contains no calories, fats or sodium additives which could pose health hazards.
The beverage industry has introduced many drinks that claim to help with stress relief, immunity enhancement, or just giving an energy boost. But do these claims actually hold water? CR conducted rigorous tests on some of these new offerings to find out.
Green drinks containing fruit (and sometimes vegetable) juices are another healthy choice, though they should not replace eating whole fruits and vegetables which provide more fiber, essential vitamins and minerals as well as extra calories. Unfortunately, many green drink brands contain additional sugar that adds unwanted calories.
Kombucha is a fermented drink packed with probiotics and prebiotics to feed the good bacteria in your digestive tract, as well as cancer-fighting compounds and polyphenol antioxidants that could potentially benefit you. Although kombucha requires some intensive prep work, its potential health benefits make it worth your while to give this recipe a try if you want to add probiotics and other health-promoting ingredients into your diet. Likewise, herbal teas such as ginger and holy basil (tulsi in Hindi) tea may aid digestion while relieving inflammation and relieving stress while being low calore sources of iron!
Juice
Juice can provide essential vitamins, minerals and fiber. Fresh orange juice provides ample vitamin C while also being packed full of potassium, calcium and thiamin (plus many phytochemicals). Furthermore, juice has lower sugar levels than typical sweetened beverages.
However, depending solely on juice as your way of meeting recommended fruit and vegetable intake or aiding weight loss may not be optimal. Be wary when purchasing juice concentrates used in many brands of fruit drinks as these could contain added sugar as well as potentially unhealthy preservatives.
Furthermore, juice lacks the fiber found in whole fruits and vegetables that helps stabilize blood sugar and slow stomach emptying, providing a measure of satiety while controlling appetite. Without fiber present in juice drinks, though, drinking one may quickly deliver energy surges leading to blood sugar spikes.
Keep in mind when considering juice: its caloric intake may surpass that of smoothies. Popular green beverages like Naked Juice’s Green Machine and POM Wonderful can pack a caloric punch due to ingredients like kale and spirulina; therefore it would likely be wiser to opt for water over these types of drinks.
Tea
Tea is an alcoholic-free beverage containing an amino acid called L-theanine that promotes relaxation and healthy brain functioning, along with polyphenols known to help slow cancer development, stroke prevention, heart disease prevention, high blood pressure prevention and stroke recovery. Tea offers more fewer calories and is low in caffeine compared to coffee; for maximum health benefits aim to consume 16 fluid ounces daily unsweetened as part of a nutritious diet plan.
Studies indicate that flavonoids present in black tea can help lower cholesterol and triglycerides, potentially decreasing risk for cardiovascular disease. Furthermore, green tea’s polyphenols appear to protect against certain forms of cancer; furthermore, drinking tea with meals may help prevent sudden spikes in blood sugar for those living with diabetes.
Laboratory studies have demonstrated the anticancer properties of epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), found in tea. Studies in humans are less definitive: some suggest tea drinking may reduce stomach cancer risk while others show an association. When drinking tea for health purposes it should always be combined with water; milk and/or sugar may reduce its antioxidant properties so adding these substances will diminish this benefit.
