When it comes to weight loss and nutrition, you initially focus on preparing a healthier diet plan without realizing that the worst drinks also exist, and they could be a culprit.
If you are not careful, you may drink more calories than you eat.
You can quickly grab beverages with a scary load of sugar, unhealthy additives, and artificial ingredients. After all, the market tags them as health drinks, but are they?
It is quick to label soda as the worst drink for your body for the most obvious reasons. Yet, there are other drinks with misleading advertising that are also bad for you.
These representations are deceiving. You might be thinking you are finally making a healthy, all-natural choice only to end up sipping sugar and artificial sweeteners that could negatively impact your system in the long run.
Cognitive Health and Wellness Institute is on a mission to help people have a quality life with length of life. So, we are making an unhealthy drinks list you should watch out for.
Unhealthy drinks list
The best drink has always been water. But, not everyone is a fan of it. We understand that its blandness is not for all, and many get tired of it eventually. If you opt for options with more flavor – reading the labels should help you make a healthier decision.
These are some of the beverages that you should include in your worst drinks watchlist:
Orange drinks
Orange drinks have become an overrated drink that the general public perceives as healthy. It has the word orange in it, it is fast to abuse, but the truth is – an orange drink has the same amount of sugar as a Coca-Cola.
While orange juice is a decent source of antioxidants and vitamin C, it’s not an excuse to overconsume this drink. This drink might spike up your blood sugar that could lead to weight gain and severe illnesses.
Then, what do you get from a cup of orange juice? An 8-ounce glass has 110 calories, 26 g of carbs, 2 g of protein, and 22 g of sugar. The concentration of this beverage is also why it has a high level of potassium and thiamine. It has vitamin C and folate, but they may not be of high quality because of the production of this drink.
Diet soda
It is common to see people on a diet swapping their regular sodas to a diet one. They do this to still enjoy a cup of a sweet and refreshing drink, minus the calories from the traditional soda drinks.
We hate to break it to you. Most studies claim a strong link between the over-drinking of diet soda and severe health problems. These health risks range from dementia, heart disease, stroke, and diabetes.
So, the next time you call diet soda nutritious, remember that it comes with a mixture of artificial sweeteners, carbonated water, and food additives. Yes, it has no calories, but it has no crucial nutrition beneficial for your body.
Canned energy drink
Energy drinks have gained popularity in the market most especially to people who exercise and need an energy boost to last a whole, tiring day.
You often interchange energy drinks with sports beverages, but they are not the same. The earlier features guarana, caffeine, sugar protein, sodium, vitamins, and minerals.
Studies are revealing that some energy drinks have 14x the caffeine that is present in sodas. Consuming this causes difficulty sleeping and other issues such as irregular heartbeat, lack of concentration, anxiety, and headache.
The most alarming practice is that there’s a vague regulation about the safety of energy drinks. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention disclosed that 1,145 adolescents aged 12 to 17 went to the emergency room after an energy-drink-related incident. This number increased in 2011 to 1,499.
Controlled trials may have revealed that there is a temporary improvement in alertness related to this drink. But, the majority of the studies are connected with negative health implications which makes this one of the worst drinks to take. Most of the latter are related to stress, alcohol/cigarette abuse, blood pressure, obesity, and stomach irritation.
Pina Colada and Caffeinated Alcohol
This fun-time drink is a staple at summer and beach parties. Who doesn’t enjoy those mini umbrellas? But, with their ingredients, it would be best to limit them for occasional purposes only.
Booze is already deadly by itself. Now, add caffeine to an alcoholic drink, and it becomes lethal. This combination can impair your judgment.
While caffeine may excite your mood, alcohol, on the other hand, has depressant effects. These counter-effects sometimes cause you to drink more, confuse your body to keep drinking, and devastate your metabolism.
Supersized frappuccino, canned/bottled coffee
Coffee, by itself, is good due to its antioxidants. However, as in any other food and drink, when you drink too much coffee, it can cause health risks. Some of these risks are insomnia, palpitations, and an increase in LDL cholesterol.
Hence, adding more sugars or canning/bottling coffee adds more calories to your body. Additionally, these food processes may cause the loss of nutrients, making them the worst drinks to buy. Some of the popular coffee shops worldwide offer fancy concoctions with whipped toppings and too sugary syrups.
Cold-pressed juices
Generally, cold-pressing juices should retain more nutrients than regular juices. However, experts believe that juicing may cause bacteria proliferation, which may consequently lead to food poisoning. It makes them one of the worst drinks to have.
Unfortunately, because cold-pressing involves high pressure to pasteurize the drink, this process means leaving the pulp behind. Fiber, usually found in the juice pulp, is lost due to this process. Fiber is essential to give your body the nutrients you need mainly because it’s a good indicator of feeling full already.
Bottled smoothie
Smoothies naturally have sugars, vitamins, and minerals. If a fruit juice provides X energy, a smoothie can provide 2X more. Too much energy means more risk of adding weight to your body.
Drinking water than juices and smoothies is still more recommendable, in this case. Additionally, bottling a smoothie means preserving the drink. Many foods and drink manufacturers add even more sugars to protect the smoothie in the bottle. It would be wiser just to eat the fruit itself instead of drinking them, whether as smoothies or bottled ones.
Vitamin-enhanced water
As you would have guessed by now, bottled drinks aren’t always a good choice. One of the worst drinks to buy is bottled water with vitamins infused in it. Drink manufacturers usually add 30+ grams of sugar in 20-ounce Vitamin-enhanced water, for example.
Don’t be fooled with the name “water” in the bottle! Make sure always to check the nutritional facts on the label.
Root beer float
What is a root beer float? Think of soda and add sugary ice cream to it, and voila! Since soda is already on this list of worst drinks for you, adding ice cream makes it even more problematic.
A carbonated beverage plus a scoop of sugary ice cream is temptingly good. Sadly, though, as the saying goes, “a moment on your lips, forever on your hips.”
Sweet iced tea
Many fast food restaurants serve sweet iced tea. Bad news though, most iced teas have food thickeners and emulsifiers only such as propylene glycol alginate. This food additive can potentially trigger neurotoxic or cardiovascular diseases.
Propylene glycol alginate, though a safe supplement, sometimes causes nausea and an upset stomach. As with the rest of the worst drinks in this list, drink sweet iced tea only in moderation.
Unhealthy drinks effects
If you’re not conscious of what you drink, it could be detrimental to your health. Limit intake of these worst drinks from the list to avoid heart disease, obesity, diabetes, tooth decay, and metabolic syndrome.
Those sneaky added sugars can be harmful to your health and destabilize blood sugar levels in your body. Artificial sweeteners can even hyper-stimulate your taste buds which may consequently alter your appetite for healthier choices.
It’s time to rethink what you drink and eat. Water is still the best go-to drink to hydrate yourself. If you’re craving a little bit of flavor, you can always add cucumber, berries, or lime to it. You can also make a habit of bringing a reusable water bottle when going out. Avoid coffee shops or skip the whipped cream and milk.
Whenever you feel thirsty, think healthy so you can swap your favorite beverages to water and less sugary ones at a minimum. Ultimately, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, eat and drink in moderation.
References:
https://www.shefinds.com/collections/6-reasons-you-should-never-drink-a-pina-colada-like-ever/#slide-2
https://www.liquor.com/slideshows/8-unhealthy-cocktails-to-avoid/
https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/health/diet-nutrition/a33452/drinks-to-never-drink/
https://www.eatthis.com/worst-drinks-on-planet/
https://www.garciaweightloss.com/blog/10-worst-drinks-body/
https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-magazine/nutrition/sugar-salt-and-fat/sugary-drinks/soft-drinks-best-to-worst