Which Health Drinks Taste Good And Are Better For You Than Sodas, Vitamin Waters, And Energy Drinks?

We know people don’t drink sodas because they are a health drink. They drink them because they taste good, they’re bubbly and they lift your spirits for a moment. That is, until the sugar and caffeine crash hits you. With high caffeine energy drinks and sugary vitamin waters, the mood bounce is just as bad, if not worse, as your body tries to adjust to the disastrous combination of sugar and caffeine in dangerously high doses. Why are so many people consuming these very unhealthy drinks?

They taste good
They provide a temporary mood boost
They are relatively inexpensive compared to quality health drinks

What if you could find a health drink that actually tastes good, fills the body with vital nutrients, gives you a mood boost, and costs about the same as one of those sugary vitamin water drinks? Would you be willing to try a health drink that doesn’t contain sugar and caffeine, but is loaded with concentrated nutrients from fruits and herbs? What if you knew that these concentrated health drinks were supplying your body with living enzymes, natural antioxidants, complex carbs and phytonutrients from plants? Does that make you at least reconsider your consumption of carbonated caffeine and sugar?

There are many other reasons to consume natural, low carb health drinks instead of sodas, sugary vitamin waters or caffeine boosted energy drinks.

Sugar wreaks havoc on the body.

Excess sugar contributes to obesity.
Sugar suppresses the immune system.
Too much sugar can upset the body’s mineral balance.
An overload of sugar contributes to arthritis.
Over consumption of sugar speeds the aging process.
All that sugar in soft drinks, energy drinks, and in vitamin waters causes your pancreas to produce excess insulin, which leads to an energy crash.

Your overall fitness level increases with natural, low carb health drinks. All those soft drinks and high caffeine energy drinks are very acidic, which contributes to a pH imbalance. The body needs a ratio of 80% alkaline foods and drinks to only 20% acidic foods for proper pH balance. An improper ratio of too many acidic foods and beverages causes the body to break down faster as it pulls calcium from bones in order to maintain the right pH balance. Natural health drinks on the other hand are, more often than not, alkaline by nature.
Vitamin waters, soft drinks and energy drinks actually deprive the body of some of the health benefits of drinking water. All the phosphates, sugar, caffeine and artificial ingredients take more water to process than they replace. When the body does not take in enough water and vital nutrients then you experience cellular dehydration, which in turn leads to numerous health challenges.

So, people who are guzzling soft drinks, caffeinated energy drinks and sugary vitamin waters are actually walking around dehydrated. On the other hand, people who are consuming natural health drinks that contain live nutrients from whole foods such as fruits and herbs are enjoying the many health benefits of drinking water plus the numerous benefits of consuming phytonutrients in their water. When you realize that it is a good idea to be more selective in your beverage choices then you have to ask yourself, “Where do I find these health drinks that taste good and offer so many benefits?”

Search the Internet for natural low carb health drinks and you will find very affordable powder formulas that you simply mix with water. These whole food health drink concentrates are made without sugar, artificial sweeteners, high fructose corn syrup, or isolated vitamins and minerals. Instead, they are made with real fruit and herbs that are known for their hydrating and fat flushing properties. Some of the natural low carb health drinks taste better than any of those artificial vitamin waters and you can drink them in natural flavors of peach, lemon, raspberry, cinnamon and even green tea. With the right health drinks your body not only receives the benefits of drinking water, but also the many health benefits of live, whole food nutrients from real ingredients like peaches, raspberries, lemons and cinnamon.

As you come to understand the differences between live, whole food nutrients and artificially enhanced vitamin waters, sodas or energy drinks boosted with caffeine you make better choices. Your body starts to find its own natural balance and digestion improves, you get fewer mood swings, less stiffness in your joints, more energy and an overall improvement in mood. You feel better about yourself when you replace your overly processed, sugary, caffeine enhanced beverages with health drinks that are truly healthy.

Healthy Snack Foods – Why and How to Make Your Choices Count

When most people think of the word “snack,” they are usually not thinking about healthy snack foods. Instead, they think about candy bars, salty potato chips, cinnamon buns, and other sweet or salty foods. Maintaining a diet incorporating healthy snack foods is just as crucial as eating healthy foods for your main meals – breakfast, lunch, and dinner. That piece of candy may look “sweet” and innocent, but it is probably loaded with double, even triple the value of sugar, fat, carbohydrates, among other not-so-great things, that can foil any dieter’s good efforts.

What makes healthy snack foods healthy?
The rule to follow when buying healthy snack foods is to make sure your choices are high in protein and contain complex carbohydrates. Protein is critical because it is a primary component of every cell in the human body. The body uses protein to make and mend tissue as well as to reproduce bone, muscle, hair, nail, skin, and blood cells.

Carbohydrates, on the other hand, are the body’s main source of energy, and come in 2 forms – simple and complex. You may have learned that all simple carbohydrates are not good, but this is not entirely true. The “bad” simple carbohydrates are those found in so-called junk foods like candies, soft drinks, table sugars, milk and white chocolates, etc. The body absorbs these simple sugars quickly and uses them for a quick boost of energy, but this fast absorption can make the body “crash” after processing the sugars. Plus, the body can begin to crave excess sugar, all-the-while storing it in fat cells, bringing on weight gain. “Good” simple carbohydrates are found in fresh fruits and, while too much of anything is bad, opt for too much fruit instead of too much candy. This much is obvious. The reason for this is fresh fruit contains different kinds of sugars that help you avoid the aforementioned “crash”.

Healthy Snack Food Tip
Certainly, there is a right way and an incorrect way to snack. In addition to selecting snacks containing high protein and low carbohydrates, making sure to snack regularly in between meals is vital. It’s a great idea to get in tune with your internal hunger clock; don’t wait until your stomach starts talking to you. If you make your tummy mad, you will most likely over eat, far past the suggested serving size.

The best way to snack successfully is to change your thinking about it. You should first understand that snacking is not bad, if you do it right, i.e. – no junk foods. If you already feel this way, think of snacking as a way to float from meal to meal.

Practicing portion control will also make snacking more effective for you. Instead of grabbing an entire bag of nuts from the kitchen cabinet, try measuring out the appropriate serving size ahead of time. It’s just like packing a lunch for work.

Healthy Snack Foods You Can Start Eating Today
Now that we have defined what makes a snack healthy, here are helpful tips to follow while munching. The following is a list of healthy snack foods you can incorporate into your diet starting today! Most of these foods are probably sitting in your kitchen right now.

Healthy Thirst Quenchers

Fat-free milk
Unsweetened juices
Low-sodium tomato juice
Mixed vegetable juice
Water

Crunchy Healthy Snacks

Apple slices
Whole grain bread sticks
Unsalted rice cakes
Baked tortilla chips
Nuts – 1 ounce or less
Whole grain cereal

Hot Healthy Snacks

Clear, low-sodium soups like chicken noodle
Homemade soup, be sure to use a low sodium broth

Sweet Healthy Snacks

Fresh fruit
Unsweetened canned fruit – Not in syrup
Baked apple
Raisins
Frozen grapes
Low-fat / fat-free fruit yogurt
Dark chocolate

Eating healthy snack foods is just one part of a health maintenance strategy that should incorporate eating healthy, a nutritional cleanse, and a physical fitness plan. By combining all of these components together, you can create and live a long, healthy, happy lifestyle!

Alkaline Foods List: How to Tell Which Foods Are Alkaline

If you’ve ever researched alkaline foods lists you’ll know how frustrating it is that they all vary so much – how can you know who to trust? In this article I will give you a quick explanation of who to trust and why – but, and perhaps more importantly I will give you the simple rules so you can tell which foods are acid and alkaline when you don’t have an alkaline foods list handy!

So when you are:

eating out
travelling
at the grocery store
with friends

You will know exactly which foods are acid and which are alkaline by following a few simple rules. But first…

Why Are Alkaline Foods Lists So Different? AND Who Can I Trust?

I know how frustrating and confusing it can be when you first start the alkaline diet. The first place you go to is the lists of alkaline foods to see what you can and can’t eat – but they are all so different. Thankfully, there is one simple reason why they are so different:

The difference is because somecharts follow PRAL and others don’t!

PRAL (Potential Renal Acid Load) measures the pH of a food by burning it at an extremely high temperature and then measuring the ‘ash’ that remains. Whether a food is acid or alkaline using PRAL is dependent entirely on the alkaline mineral content in the food. While this does give some of the detail we want, it only gives half of the picture. Because the foods are burned at such high temperatures, the sugar content of the food is removed and thus not measured – and as sugar is one of the main determinants of pH you get a misleading picture.

Fruit is a great example of this. Bananas, for instance, are reasonably high in potassium and so this gives an alkaline measure on the PRAL scale, but this ignores the fact that bananas are exceedingly high in sugar and therefore, despite the potassium, they have an acid-forming effect on the body.

The only 100% trustworthy alkaline food lists available are those based upon the work and research of alkaline diet pioneer Dr Robert Young.

Dr Young studies the effect of foods after they’ve been consumed – so the pH effect on the body, rather than relying on what the food is in it’s natural state.

For instance, on many PRAL-based charts you will see lemons in the ‘acid’ column, whereas when consumed, lemons actually have an alkaline effect on the body.

So, how can you tell at a glance whether you can trust an alkaline foods list?

The two quick, simple tests I use to measure whether a food is trustworthy or not are:

Where are bananas and pineapple? If they’re listed as alkaline, close the website. These are the two most sugar-rich fruits.
Where are lemons, limes and tomato? If they’re listed as acidic, close the website.

How to tell which foods are alkaline if I am out of the home?

If you are out an about, at dinner with friends or are travelling, you can use these simple rules to try and determine which foods are alkaline and which are acidic:

All vegetables are alkaline
All salad leaves such as lettuce, spinach and watercress are very alkaline
Sweeter vegetables such as carrot & capsicum are less alkaline but are still ok
Fresh is best, anything old, preserved etc is more likely to be acidic
All fruits except for avocado, tomato, lemon, lime and grapefruit are mildly or very acidic
All pre-packaged and refined foods are acidic
Anything microwaved is acidic
Meat & dairy is acidic
Fungus is acidic

I hope this helps! If you stick to these simple rules then you will find it easy to know which foods are alkaline foods!

Do you want to get an acid / alkaline foods list you can trust? Energise for Life have been at the forefront of the alkaline diet since 2004 and have over 500 alkaline recipes, articles, guides and how-to’s on the Alkaline Diet Blog. Find our more about the alkaline diet and download the Definitive Alkaline Foods List at Energise.