What Should You Be Drinking?
Stay hydrated. Drink 8 glasses of water per day.
Somewhere along the way, society got brainwashed.
Maybe it was well-meaning personal trainers. Maybe it was an attempt to manage society’s increasing waistlines. Maybe it was financially motivated by the bottled water companies (although they likely jumped on the bandwagon that was already moving).
If you’ve been following my blog for any length of time, this will come as no surprise—there are hundreds of scenarios where we have been tricked into doing things in the name of health that don’t make any sense.
This article is going to go into the long list of fallacies that relates back to staying hydrated and what we should be drinking.
The Benefits of Drinking Water
Much like the “fats are evil” mentality that was bred into us in the 90’s with the USDA’s food guide pyramid, the “8 glasses of water per day” recommendation is one recommendation that was created with no real scientific rationale but stuck with the tenacity of political opinions on Facebook.
The “8 glass a day” Myth
I can safely say that there is not a single shred of research that backs up the idea that 8 glasses of water per day promotes health (although I will demonstrate in later in this article that the opposite is true).
I’ve studied this topic at various points over the years to see if new research had been published, but it just never shows up.
I’m not saying that you should go for a 6 mile hike in Arizona at noon in August without any water. Staying hydrated is important.
How often have you seen someone walking around the block at a leisurely pace (which is a whole other topic that I addressed in my Exercise article that can be read by clicking here) sporting a plastic water bottle.
Have you ever heard of anyone drying up into a husk walking around the block?
Of course not. But society has us so programmed that we don’t go anywhere without 8 ounces of bottled water within easy reach.
Health Myths of Water Intake
There are many purported health benefits of drinking copious amount of water per day.
The first is this idea that water helps your body detoxify. That if you drink more water your body will miraculously start to break down toxic stored chemicals in your body.
This is just not true. Water will not drive an enzyme to act faster. Water IS, however, an essential part of the detoxification process, just not a rate-limiting factor for the process.
Contrast this with sulfur (found in foods like garlic and onions) with is a factor in detoxification that can start enzymes working to break down toxins (through the sulfation pathway).
The next big myth is that drinking more water helps with weight loss and helping to curb hunger.
As with the detox myth, this one just doesn’t hold water either. There have been studies looking at whether water was able to curb hunger during weight loss programs and the research has pretty solidly found that it does not.
Maybe this is because hunger is, in part, related to expansion of the stomach. This would happen quickly if you drink a glassful of water, but this water is also rapidly absorbed through the walls of the stomach, quickly shrinking the stomach back again.
Drinking Your Calories
There are few concepts that are as important as understanding that we should not be drinking our calories.
There is no scenario where you can get more nutrition from drinking something rather than eating it.
Juice Myths
Take orange juice for breakfast (or any other juice). Pretty much an American staple and is on every kid’s restaurant menu on the planet. An 8-oz glass of OJ has around 110 calories. If you or your child drinks 3 glasses per week, this adds up to 17,000 calories per year.
But doesn’t orange juice contain healthy nutrients?
That’s what we’ve been led to believe and this is closer to the case with fresh-squeezed orange juice. Btu the pre-packaged stuff?
Did you ever ask why they promote the “fresh-squeezed taste” of orange juice in pre-packaged stuff?
And have you ever wondered why, even though no two batches of oranges taste the same, that pre-packaged orange juice always tastes the same? No matter what time of year or where in the country you buy it? Doesn’t that seem a strange to you?
Here’s why.
When orange juice is squeeze by the large conglomerates, the orange juice is then stored for up to a year. During this time, the orange juice understandably loses all its flavor. To add back in the flavor, they can add “natural flavorings” to the juice to add that “freeze-squeezed taste.” Since they are natural flavorings, this doesn’t have to be disclosed on the label, leaving the consumer unaware that he or she is actually drinking year-old “fresh-squeezed” juice.
Rest-assured that all the other nutrients in the orange juice have pretty much degraded away in that time as well. B vitamins do not store well, so the folic acid that is promoted to be in orange juice is actually added in later.
If you’d like to eat 110 calories of oranges on the other hand, feel free to. This contains bioflavonoids, folates, vitamin C and fiber at much higher levels than you’d find in the juice.
The same goes for all juices—you just can’t get the nutrition in a juice that you can get in the fruit when eaten whole.
There have even been some recent recommendations to pull juice off of the WIC-approved items list for this very reason. Personally I think this would be a good move.
The only exception to this are some of the dark, phytonutrient-dense juices that have been shown to have some potent benefits in research studies. These would include pomegranate and tart cherry juices.
I do need to clarify one exception to this. “Juicing” has become far more powerful over the past decade or so. The terminology has not caught up to the process. There are really two types of juicing; the juice extraction that just leaves you with the juice and the food processor that takes all of the components of the foods put into it.
As you might’ve guessed, juice extraction is not my favorite approach (even though Jack LaLane was a big fan of his juice extractor and I’ve been a big fan of his…).
Making juice in a food processor, however, has potential. But it has to be done right. Stay away from too many fruits like cantaloupe, watermelon, oranges, bananas and apples. Stick with darker fruits, vegetables and herbs like turmeric and ginger.
Make your smoothies out of these and you’ll be better off. And make sure you add some type of protein source like tofu (GMO free), powered peanut butter and higher protein Greek yogurts.
Dairy Myths
While there are lots of reasons to avoid dairy, I’ll just focus on the basics here. If you’d like the full story, feel free to check on my Misconception of Dairy as a Health Food eBook by clicking here.
Just like with juices, dairy is a calorie-laden beverage. There are some families that go through 1-2 gallons of milk per week. Did you ever stop for a minute and do the math on just how many calories this is?
Hint: You’re going to need a calculator.
As I’ve pointed out before, I’d like to know who the first person was to look at a cow’s udder an exclaim, “I’ve gotta try some of THAT!!”
It’s a little gross when you put the actual act of drinking mammalian milk into perspective. Or consider this—how would you feel if you saw a 21 year old walking up to mom and asking to nurse?
Really awkward, huh?
But somehow the dairy industry has duped everyone into thinking it’s a health food.
There have been links to cancer, diabetes and osteoporosis (as ironic as that sounds). You can certainly argue that low-fat or fat-free milk would be better instead of the full fat version. The problem here is that whole milk may lower the risk of diabetes, but at the cost of an increased risk of certain cancers, most notably breast cancer.
In other words—you can’t win. So just avoid it.
Soda – the Ultimate Devil Drink
I’m sure I really don’t need to go into too much detail here. I’m hoping that everyone by now has realized that sugar-sweetened beverages are the foundation for our current global obesity epidemic.
Sure—there are other factors, but the adoption of high intakes of sugar-sweetened beverages with all calories, no value and plenty of downside is a major fuel for the increase in the global waistline.
Later in this article I’ve give you some options if you just can’t live without that fizz.
Sports Drinks
Sports drinks essentially started life as an electrolyte replacement with some rapid-acting sugars added in. As any old marathon runner will tell you, these were functional and not exactly an experience you’d look forward to taste-wize.
As the market evolved, the manufacturers got smarter and expanded the marketing efforts. And quite successfully, I might ad.
There is no reason that anyone who is exercising, even vigorously, should need to replenish electrolytes within the first hour. After an hour, if activity is continuing, then THIS is the purpose of these drinks. And they do it well.
But the marketing has gotten to the American public and now every kid sitting on his or her couch playing video games is seen sporting a Gatorade or Powerade.
Let me be clear—there is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON anyone who is not participating in extended periods of exercising should even consider drinking these products. As with soda, juices and dairy this just adds unneeded calories with no real benefit.
If you do happen to fall into the athletes who perform for extended periods of time, then here are a few things to consider:
- Avoid any artificial sweeteners in these drinks (more on this later). After all, you’re drinking these because you need to replenish the glucose you have burned through—what the heck is the point of a sugar-free drink being used to replace sugar??
- Most, if not all, of these products contain artificial food colorings. Try to find the brands and flavors that have the least colorings added in.
- Avoid any drinks with high-fructose corn syrup. This has no value and just adds calories (and mercury).
If you really feel the need to stay hydrated with something that has electrolytes, I would recommend one of the Alacer products like Emergen-C or the Electro-Mix. Further (much) down the list would be a less-colored drink like Gatorade Ice.
Alcohol
No good conversation about drinks can be complete without discussing alcohol.
Before I say anything else about the pros and cons of alcohol, I do need to point out that it is a carb and it does have calories. Quite a few calories depending upon your rowdy friends and the state of health of your liver.
You may have a lifestyle that makes the Dalia Lama look like a fast food junkie, but if you’re pounding down a bottle of wine every night these calories will continue to accumulate around your waist.
There have been hundreds of studies looking at alcohol intake and risk of conditions like heart disease, diabetes and cancer. The bulk of the evidence suggest that moderate alcohol intake is good for you, especially as it relates to the heart.
But what exactly is “moderate?” Moderate is a pretty darn subjective word when it comes to alcohol intake.
The Dietary Guidelines for Americans described moderate alcohol intake as 1 drink per day for women and 2 drinks per day for men. This is daily. A “drink” is further defined as a 12-ounce beer, 8-ounce malt liquor, 5 ounces of wine or a 1.5-ounce shot of distilled spirits or liquor.
For those of you already doing the math in your head–no, you can’t get credit for the weekend by skipping that beer or glass of wine during the week.
Speaking of wine….
The resveratrol debate. It all started with the “French Paradox,” where the traditional French diet contains lots of artery-clogging saturated fat but there is a lower-than-expected number of heart disease patients in this population. This led researchers to believe that components in red wine (also a big part of the French diet) where protecting the French population from the high saturated fat diet.
Resveratrol was the compound that was found to protect the blood vessels. Resveratrol is found in the skin of red grapes as well as the skin of peanuts. It is found in other fruits as well, but these two have the highest levels.
This is the reason that red wine is generally considered better for you than white.
The caveat with alcohol intake that must be noted is a link with breast cancer. There is a dose-response increase in breast cancer risk with alcohol intake. This means that the more you drink, the greater your risk.
Before you run to the sink and pour that bottle of wine down the drain, there is a way to get around this alcohol-breast cancer link.
Alcohol raises the level of estrogen in the bloodstream. Since sex steroids like estrogen are linked to breast cancer, it makes sense that alcohol would then increase breast cancer risk.
Since dietary fiber lowers estrogen levels as well as increases the protein that estrogens attach to (sex- hormone–binding globulin concentration), it would seem reasonable to assume that dietary fiber would be a good candidate for offsetting the risks of alcohol intake on hormone-dependent cancers like breast cancer.
Which is exactly what researchers looked at in a study on dietary fiber, alcohol intake and hormone-related cancers. Here’s what they found:
- Higher alcohol intake led to a 70% higher risk of breast cancer.
- When higher alcohol intake was combined with low fiber intake, this risk skyrocketed 253% for breast cancer and 37% for prostate cancer.
- These elevated risks were NOT seen in those with the highest dietary fiber intake.
So, if you’re going to be a regular alcohol consumer, you need to make sure that your diet includes a decent amount of dietary fiber.
Notes on Artificial Sweeteners
Not much to say here other than to avoid them all like the plague.
Sucalose / Splenda. Aspartame / Nutrisweet. Acesulfame K / Acesulfame potassium. Saccharin.
These chemicals were released to the public with the belief that non-caloric sweeteners would lead to lowered rates of obesity and diabetes.
But guess what happened—we got the opposite. When you try to cheat Mother Nature and still live the “sweet life” it’s not going to turn out well.
You need to make sure you are label shopping to avoid these chemicals in everything that you drink, chew or even clean your kitchen sink with.
A 2nd Note on Natural Sweeteners
With the concern over artificial sweeteners (and rightfully so) society looked for natural sweeteners that were less likely to cause undesirable little things like cancer.
The herbal sweetener stevia tops the list. There are also the sugar alcohols (anything ending in an “-ol” like xylitol, erythritol or sorbitol) and agave.
While these have been widely accepted, I’m against routine use of these compounds. Although arguably safer, it still tricks out bodies into desiring more “sweet.”
This desire for “sweet” is a critical component of the progression to obesity and diabetes. While not the only factor, it certainly is a major one; right up there with sitting your duff in an office chair and the couch for 18 hours per day.
Until you break the cycle of needing that sweet sensation you won’t fully be on the path to an ideal body weight and the healthiest you. Use these sweeteners only occasionally; do not rely on them for everyday use any more than you would the toxic artificial sweeteners.
Best Options for You to Drink
So, you shouldn’t drink anything with calories. You should avoid artificial sweeteners like someone infected and oozing open wounds with Ebola. Even natural sweeteners don’t get the green light.
What’s a parched person to do?
2nd Line Drink Options
Before I get into my personal, strongest recommendations for what to drink, I’ll start with my second favorite list.
Sparkling Water
For those of you who feel the need for that exciting fizzy experience, your best option is sparkling waters. Years ago, your options were pretty limited. Maybe unflavored Canfields. Maybe Perrier. If you were feeling really edgy you could drop a lime in your Perrier.
Fast forward several years and the options have expanded very nicely. There is now an awesome selection of wonderfully flavored sparkling waters:
- Dansani has an ever-increasing selection of flavors. Raspberry-Lemonade is one of my family’s favorites.
- La Croix has all kinds of crazy flavors like coconut, mango and berry.
- Perrier has expanded its flavors to lime, pink grapefruit and lemon-lime.
- Pellegrino has been around forever and can be dressed up nicely with a lime (stay away from San Pellegrino—it has quite a bit of calories).
But, there’s a catch with these.
Plastics and BPA.
Most of these come in plastic containers or aluminum cans that are lined with BPA. Pellegrino is frequently available in glass containers (although I cannot send glass bottles in my son’s lunch….), but the others are not.
If you’re unaware of the dangers of plastics and BPA, it’s probably just because you haven’t yet read my blog post on Toxicity (that can be read by clicking here).
For this reason, I can’t wholeheartedly recommend these drinks for everyday use.
But there is an alternative.
The Soda Stream Crystal machine is an all glass device for making your own sparkling water. While there is a larger up-front cost, in the long run it’s much cheaper. You have to be careful with the flavors that you choose—make sure there are no artificial sweeteners in the ones you buy and you’ll be just fine.
Kombucha
Recent years have increased the popularity of this probiotic-enriched drink, although it has been around for hundreds (if not thousands) of years, most likely originating in ancient China.
Along with the popularity has come a cornucopia of brands and options. I do have a few favorites and reasons for these.
GTS brand kombucha, especially the gingerade, has one heck of a kick. This kombucha has 30 calories per serving and 2 servings per bottle (60 total for the non-math wizzes). For me, it usually takes a day or so to finish a bottle, so 60 calories are not a big deal.
A lot of kombuchas have natural, non-caloric sweeteners like stevia or erythritol. I’ve never been a big fan of the taste of stevia. For this reason, if I buy any other kombuchas sweetened with stevia, I find the ones that have around 30-35 calories per serving. Some have as little as 5, but I find that these have too much of a “stevia” taste, so I avoid them.
Vitamin Waters
I’ve never been a big supporter of drinks that advertise that they contain minerals like magnesium and calcium. I’ve always thought that, if you are relying on something you are drinking to provide you with a paltry amount of minerals because you’re not getting them from your diet, we’ve got bigger problems to discuss.
That being said, there is one that I will look for if we’re out somewhere and need to drink something to stay hydrated.
Regular Vitamin Waters have 120 calories per bottle. Start pounding down 2 or 3 of these in a day and the calories add up quick. These are to be avoided.
But the Vitamin Water Zeros are sweetened with the sugar alcohol erythritol. While not my favorite, these are my preferred drink when we are at places like Disneyland or stopping at a gas station while on a road trip. I feel much more comfortable with my family drinking something with very low calories and no artificial sweeteners or colors.
Dark Fruit Juices
If I’m going to be honest with you, I’m going to have to admit that I’ve been a little disappointed to see studies finding solid benefit from the use of dark fruit juices like pomegranate, tart cherry and blueberry.
As I mentioned in the beginning of this article, there will never be the potency of the actual fruit.
The Best Everyday Drinks for Hydration
If you’ve stuck it out this far, it’s time to conclude with what I feel are the best options for you to be drinking all day, every day. It’s a pretty short list and absolutely does NOT include water, for reasons I covered right out of the gate.
Coffee
Years ago, coffee had a bad rap. I can honestly say that, in the early years of my journey, I would recommend that patients avoid coffee.
It’s one of the few things that, as the evidence has accumulated, I have done a 180 on what I recommend to patients.
The research is solid. Coffee is good for your blood vessels and brain.
With a few caveats.
First. Caffeinated only (more on this in a bit). The research does not support decaffeinated coffee as having the same benefits as the fully leaded version. This is because caffeine and its derivatives, theobromine and xanthine, are potent antioxidants. While the are other protective compounds in coffee (like chlorogenic acid) that also contribute to its benefits, caffeine itself packs a wallop.
Second, we’re talking about coffee, NOT coffee with all the crap everyone loves to put in it.
Sugar. Creamer. Artificial sweeteners (UGH…).
These additions detract from the health benefits of coffee. And, while we’re at it, we can add in espresso (which, pound for pound, has more antioxidant properties than brewed coffee).
For those of you that drink your coffee straight up black and fully leaded, you’re good to go.
But if you’re adding in all kinds of crap to make it taste better, you’ve got some work to do. Here are some options:
- Try darker, locally grown honeys as a sweetener.
- Torani Signature syrups can add great flavor with only a few calories
- Non-dairy creamers now come in all varieties and flavors. Silk and So Delicious are just a few
- In a crunch, you can try just a little bit of raw sugar
If you’re an espresso person (we’ve got an espresso machine at the office—at lunch I don the smock on play the role of barista…) here are some options for making your own mochas:
- Double shot of espresso
- Heaping teaspoon of cacao powder
- Couple of hits of organic cinnamon
- Top it off with ice and some dark chocolate almond milk
This comes in at about 70 calories but is loaded with lots of protective compounds. Not too bad overall for the ratio of phytonutrients to calories.
Buy Organic Coffee
Here comes the biggee where most people fail in their coffee drinking.
Coffee is a very pesticide-loaded crop. This means that you should buy organic coffee whenever possible. For us, we wait until our local Sprout’s Farmers Market has organic coffee on sale and we buy a couple of pounds of French vanilla for home (drip coffee ground) and for the office (espresso ground). Most often the sale price is around $6-7 / pound, which is pretty reasonable.
Of course, when buying coffee at a coffee shop, such as at the near-ubiquitous Starbucks, it’s going to be hard to find organic. Just make sure that you try to use organic coffee whenever possible.
Tea—the Best Option for Hydration
Hands down, without a doubt I am a massive supporter of tea drinking. Black, green, white, herbal—the research supporting the benefits of the routine drinking of tea is enormous and beyond reproach.
There may be a few out there who are sensitive to the caffeine and it gives them heart palpitations, but this is likely because there is something else wrong in that person’s lifestyle that is affecting heart rhythms. These are the few who should hesitate in downing a pitcher of tea before lunch until he or she can get to the root of why caffeine has an overzealous effect on heart rhythm.
And for those of you who have been brainwashed to believe that you need a glass of water for every caffeinated beverage you consume so that you don’t dry up and blow away, consider this. Many of the early studies done on the benefits of tea were done in Asia on little old men who drank green tea daily.
Do you think these aged Chinese men were carefully matching each cup of green tea with the equivalent ounces of water?
Of course not. Despite this, the health benefits of tea were consistently shown.
This may be the case because studies have found that the kidneys rapidly adapt to the caffeine to protect the body from losing fluid.
The same issue with pesticides and coffee applies to tea, so you need to make sure that you stick to organic as much as possible. Years ago, this was a much greater challenge, but recent years has seen a serious increase in the amount and variety of organic teas available. I’ll cover some of my favorites in a minute as well as how we make it.
But first, some information on just how good tea (and coffee) are for you.
Tea and Coffee Protect You from Dying
I’ve always considered the comparison of the health benefits of “8 glasses of water per day” to tea and coffee like a battle to the death between tax accountants and Filipino Escrima masters.
In one study looking at the benefits of drinking coffee and tea, researchers looked at a group of almost 2500 Manhattan residents followed for 11 years. Here’s what they found:
- For each cup of coffee there was a 7% lower risk of dying from any cause, while caffeinated coffee offered a very strong protection among those who drank at least 4 cups per day.
- Each cup of tea lowered overall risk of death by 9%.
- At least 4 cups of coffee per day led to a hefty 43% lower risk of nonvascular death.
- At least 2 cups of tea per day was not as powerful, but still logged a 37% lower risk of nonvascular death.
- Lest we switch to coffee instead of tea too quickly, at least 2 cups of tea led to a staggering 67% lower risk of cancer.
With this kind of protection, there is no reason to continue to push drinking 8 glasses of water per day in lieu of tea and coffee. And there’s no reason to avoid coffee and tea for some imagined health risk.
Tea Buying Choices
Here’s where life gets interesting. I’ve already pointed out that we try to stick with organic tea where possible (with some exceptions that I’ll point out) so that rules out certain large name brands.
You won’t find any Lipton plain, boring black tea at our house. We also don’t routinely shop at tea stores like Teavana (owned by Starbucks, in case you didn’t know) because they have been shown to be higher in pesticide residues.
Over the years we’ve found some brands and flavors that we really love and others that just didn’t taste as good as they sounded. It takes some playing around to find out what you’re going to like.
We do all unsweetened, flavored teas. Here’s some my family’s favorites:
- China Mist has a short list of awesome organic teas:
- Jasmine peach
- Coconut rooibos (we generally don’t like rooibos teas—too floral—but this one is awesome!)
- Pineapple black
- Tropical green
- China Mist non-organic (OK—these are just too amazing not to sneak some every so often)
- Blackberry jasmine
- Black currant
- Zhena’s organic tea
- Coconut rum
- Coconut chai
- Republic of Tea organic
- Blueberry green superfruit
- Acai green superfruit
There are other brands and flavors that we’ve liked, but these are the ones we make most often. And our household goes through an enormous amount of tea. Typically, 1.5-2 gallons per day for 3 people.
The next most important thing to know is how to make it.
What I’m about to tell you needs to be kept secret. If word got out to any tea snobs I could become a target. You know the type—they tell you to steep your tea at 174.5 degrees Fahrenheit for 3 minutes, 42 seconds. Let cool in the direct sun on the summer solstice. Serve chilled.
Anything less is tea heresy.
That’s why you can’t share what I’m about to say with anyone who is a tea snob.
The teas that I’ve mentioned either come in individual steeping bags, loose leaf teas in bags or as loose leaf teas in a single container. So how much you use will depend on what form the tea your using comes in.
For loose leaf tea that does not come in its own steeping bag, we use a tea infuser cup. Not the little ball ones—these pretty much suck. The cup type (you can check them out at Amazon by clicking here) is perfect. For the China Mist brands of tea one container fits perfectly in the cup.
If the tea is in its own steeping bag we will use 5-6 small bags (typically designed for a single cup of tea) or 1-2 large bags (typically designed for commercial tea makers). How much you use is going to be a balance between flavor and cost. Obviously, the more you use, the more you’ll spend in tea but the better the flavor.
While we’re on the subject of cost, I need to address this aspect. The argument that many people use for not making healthier choices is cost. This argument falls apart with tea the way we make it.
$60 worth of tea, even at the volume of tea we drink, will usually last 4-5 months. Do the math. Compare this to bottled water or soda. We’re not even in the same ballpark. Tap water is cheaper, but this kind of gets balanced out in the long run by medical expenses from cancer and diabetes.
We do have a Reverse Osmosis (RO) system that we use to fill up a stainless steel 10 quart pot. It stays on our stove and this is the only thing we use it for. It gets stained from the tannins over time, but this is easily removed with a little bit of elbow grease every few months.
Once the pot is full, you put the tea infuser or bags into the tea and bring it to a boil. I won’t tell you to let it boil for 2.3 minutes—we pretty much catch it as it just starts to boil and shut the stove off. Do NOT forget about it. It’s going to take a hammer and chisel to get burnt tea leaves off the bottom of your pot.
Let the tea cool down for a few hours before you pour it into the servings containers. We used to use large glass ones (avoid plastic, especially if you’re pouring hot tea into the pitcher) but then it occurred to me that, if one of these got dropped (they’re quite heavy when filled with tea), it’s going to be a disaster.
Because of this concern, we switched to the largest stainless steel pitchers we could find and they’ve been perfect. A pot of tea generally fills up to of these pitchers and keeps us in tea for the next day or so.
And there you have it. The simplest, most cost- and time-effective way to make tea. And we go through a LOT of it, so I should know.
In Summary
What you drink daily is just as important as exercising, eating right, managing stress and avoiding environmental chemicals.
But so many of us get it wrong. I was at breakfast the other day and a woman had a small pitcher of diet Coke perched on her table. Pretty much went through the entire pitcher by herself in the course of a ½ hour.
Society has accepted some of the wrong choices (like milk, orange juice, diet soda and sports drinks) as being OK and maybe even healthy. This has to change if we are ever going to get healthier as a society.
Hopefully this article has opened your eyes to what may be better options for what to drink and give you some ideas of options to try. You’re not going to like them all. And maybe you do need to start your tea-drinking journey with a little sweetener and slowly back off over time to get your taste buds used to less “sweet.”
Thanks for sticking it out until the end. Now hop into the comments below to share what’s worked for you and what your favorite healthy drink is.
Marylou Ewen says
Good article. I’m going to start making tea this way??
jatinder says
Very informative article. Good to know about the myths.
Joe Schmoker says
Great article Jamie!
Barb says
Your research is fantastic and so helpful. Thank you for keeping us healthy.
Vic Cordts says
Hi Jamie, these are, what I consider, very “rogue” topics. Scary even, but I’ll take your word for it, thank you. So tea doesn’t have an adverse affect on the liver?
James Bogash says
Vic,
Never came across anything to suggest that tea would harm the liver. Most of the studies go the other way–it posts a protective effect.
Dr. Bogash
Jan MacKinney says
Very informative! So how long do you leave the tea bags in the boiled water?
James Bogash says
We typically leave the tea sitting in there for an hour or so as it cools down. It allows us to make a stronger tea with less actual tea used.
Dr. Bogash
Mary says
Yay!!! I love my tea and coffee. It’s great to know that it’s as good for me as it tastes.
Tom Sutton says
Dr. Bogash,
Great article.
What are your thoughts on coffee &/or tea with someone with high blood pressure? Is it best to drink caffeinated or decaf? We only buy organic beans & grind our own.
Thanks,
Tom
James Bogash says
Tom,
The nice thing about blood pressure is that it’s easy to monitor at home. In general, caffeine has far more benefits than harm on the blood vessels (which is the heart of high blood pressure), but some people are very sensitive.
Dr. Bogash
Ron walters says
WOW!