Our bodies are comprised of about 60% water, our brains 70%, our blood 83%, and our lungs 90%. Are you seeing the underlying theme? We need water to survive. We need it to transport nutrients, digest our food, control body temperature, and flush out toxins. Each day, through food and drink, we must replace 85 oz (2.4 liters) of our body’s water supply.
Most people nowadays do not reach for water when they are thirsty. Many of us reach for soft drinks, fruit juices, and other sugar-laden beverages that are not keeping our body healthy, and shockingly, not quenching our thirst. “You mean to say that drinking soda does not quench my thirst? How is that possible?” Nope. It is actually quite the opposite. Here’s why:
Soft drinks contain a lot more than just the flavor and fizz you have grown to love. And the ingredients are specifically formulated to keep you reaching for more. Take Coke for example, or almost any other soda. Among other ingredients, it contains caffeine, sodium, and sugar. Caffeine is a diuretic, which means that it actually makes you lose water (or pee more), and sodium makes you crave more water. So lets think about that for a minute. You are drinking caffeine and sodium to make you even thirstier, and sugar to cover up the taste of the salt. Hm…that doesn’t sound like a conspiracy at all…
These companies specifically design their products so that we fall into a manipulative cycle. We drink their product, which makes us want to drink more, and so we buy more products. So, why is this a problem? Because the products are harming us more than we realize and most of it has to do with sugar. Sugar contributes to an extensive list of health problems such as diabetes, mood swings, Candida, weight gain, and MANY more. The majority of added sugars we consume daily are coming from soft drinks and juices. A whopping 32% come from regular soft drinks alone. According to the USDA, on average, Americans are consuming 130 pounds of sugar per year. This comes out to be about 162 grams per day, or 40 teaspoons. Recommendations are that we should not be consuming more than 4-5 teaspoons per day, TOTAL. Wow.
So what about juices then? Juices are widely misunderstood. Juice companies try to make us think that we are doing something great for our bodies by consuming their products. After all, we are told that fruit is an important part of a healthful diet. It is…in moderation. Fruit contains a lot of sugar. When you eat a whole fruit, you are eating the fiber and other components along with it that contain bulk, help you get full, and help regulate how fast the sugar enters your blood. When you drink juice, it is a concentrated form of the fruit (much like dried fruits) and you end up consuming a lot more sugar than you realize. An additional problem is that a lot of commercially available fruit juices aren’t even made from real fruit at all. Take Nantucket Nectar’s Orange Mango juice, for example. The ingredients are (in order of highest content to lowest) filtered water, SUGAR, orange juice concentrate, mango puree concentrate, passion fruit concentrate, natural flavors, citric acid, ascorbic acid, fruit juice concentrates (for color), and acacia gum. This drink only contains 20% juice and 65 grams (16 teaspoons) sugar per bottle. Not exactly what experts mean when they recommend consuming fruit for good nutrition.
Now that you have the information, what is the solution? Stop drinking soft drinks and other sugary beverages. What do you drink instead? Simple. Water. Now you are probably thinking “Well, that’s boring”. But it’s not. There are many things you can do to make water a bit more “exciting” if you don’t think that it is on its own.
Here are a few ideas:
1. Add a little flavor – mint leaves, lemon, strawberries, peaches, apples…they make a lovely addition to your water with added nutrients.
2. Add some fizz – if you are the type of person who just can’t live without the fizz of your soda, try some seltzer water. Just pure bubbly water, without the added sweeteners and unidentifiable ingredients. You can even flavor this with the suggestions above.
3. Add a bit of kombucha – adding kombucha will give you flavor, minimal sugar, and some beneficial probiotics.
4. Add veggies to your juice – If you must drink juice, consider juicing it yourself, and having a ratio of 50% fruit and 50% vegetables. This balances out the sugar content and provides you with other beneficial nutrients.
Be sure that the water is always filtered. My favorite go-to filtration system is Sweetwater’s Kitchen Defender kitchen water filter.
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This article was contributed by Magdalena Wszelaki, a holistic health coach and nutrition expert for people with thyroid and autoimmune conditions.
Magdalena created SUGAR REBOUNDas a 7-day live online program to help a people to redefine their relationship with sugar. The Program will focus on reversing sugar blues or addiction by making easy, effective and delicious diet and lifestyle changes to help lose weight and regain hormonal and emotional balance and wellbeing.
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