Summer Drinks: Health and Facts
High temperatures in the summer often affect your appetite. Many people choose many cool or seemingly light foods to cope, which often leads to seemingly reasonable dietary mistakes.
The Worst Summer Drink: Lemonade
Summer Drinks:
Worst: Lemonade
Most of these drinks you buy in the store are made with the same sweeteners, preservatives, and edible colorings as carbonated drinks.
Such a drink contains 100 calories per cup, equivalent to 6 teaspoons of sugar in sweeteners, and has no nutritional value at all. You are essentially drinking liquid sugar, and in fact, it is not fresh either.
So what is the best drink to cool down and quench your thirst?
Best: Soda Water
Nothing is healthier for you than plain water.
But if you think plain water is too bland and want something with more flavor, soda water is a great choice. Soda water is an aqueous solution of sodium bicarbonate, which is weakly alkaline. It can be used externally for disinfection and sterilization, and when consumed, it can neutralize the acid-base balance in the human body and change an acidic constitution.
Just make sure your soda water doesn't contain artificial sweeteners that can damage your teeth. The ingredient list for your soda water should only have water and natural flavors, and nothing else.
The Worst Alcoholic Drink: Iced Fancy Drinks
Want to relax with a cocktail? Find out the best and worst choices.
Cocktails:
Worst: Iced Fancy Drinks
When it comes to cocktails, the mixers are the real culprits for high calories.
Here's an example: According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 480 ml of iced fruit punch rum contains 880 calories, which is 8 times the amount in an equivalent serving of rum. While such a high-calorie drink might quench your thirst, it will ruin your figure.
The Best Alcoholic Drink: Light Beer
Best: Light Beer
A recent study found that beer, including light beer, contains ingredients that help bones absorb calcium and other minerals. The alcohol in beer also provides a protective effect on the heart, and a 355 ml bottle of light beer has only 100 calories.
The Worst Energizing Drink: Extra Strong Coffee
Which lunchtime energizing drink is a diet wrecker? Find out the worst choice.
Energizing Drinks:
Worst: Extra Strong Coffee
After adding 2% milk, a large iced Joe can contain 800 calories and a significant amount of saturated fat that can clog your arteries.
Additionally, there's a reason it's so sweet: one serving of extra strong coffee contains 170 grams of sugar, which is much more than what's in a caffeine buzz.
The Best Energizing Drink: Iced Green Tea
Best: Iced Green Tea
It has no calories and is rich in antioxidants that bring health and beauty, which in part protect the body from diseases such as heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis, high blood pressure, and senile syndrome.
A study found that people who drink tea regularly have a younger biological age compared to those who don't.
If you don't care for the taste, you can freeze 100% juice into ice cubes and add them to your drink. As the ice cubes melt, your beverage will have a fantastic color and flavor.
The Worst Liquid Lunch: Large Fruit Smoothie
Think about it, is a smoothie the healthiest drink? Do you still want to drink it?
Liquid Lunch:
Worst: Large Fruit Smoothie
Yes, fruit is good for you, but this drink is extremely harmful to your body.
A 1000 ml smoothie can contain up to 700 calories, is too high in sugar, and has only 2 grams of protein.
It's like eating a whole pineapple, a whole mango, plus a cup of blueberries and strawberries all at once.
Why this is harmful: If the calories you consume from food exceed what you can burn, the calories from any food will be absorbed by your fat cells.
The Best Liquid Lunch: Yogurt
Best: Yogurt
Less fat, fewer calories, only 120 calories per cup, keeping the carbohydrates, protein, and fat in your body in a healthy balance—pour yourself a cup of yogurt.
In addition, each cup of yogurt contains 10 grams of protein and 5 grams of fiber, and it also contains ten types of probiotics. These probiotics have been shown to improve gut health, boost immunity, and control weight.