(The Verge) – Vitamin Water gives the impression of a healthy, hydrating, and rejuvenating beverage. The bottles are beautiful, colorful, and the text on them is motivating and clever. They have empowering flavor names like “endurance,” “energy,” “essential,” and “focus.” However, Vitamin Water is not the healthiest drink choice to make, as downing a bottle of “charge” or “balance” will not give you the proper nutrients. The cold, hard truth is that Vitamin Water is fortified sugar water. Read the label carefully.
According to Fitday.com, Glaceau vitamin water is a subsidiary of Coca Cola that is privately owned. It’s also sometimes known as Energy Brands. The last decade has seen tremendous growth and expanding success for Glaceau, whose vitamin water brand was actually the biggest selling brand of enhanced water in 2002. Since then, Glaceau has expanded into France, Australia and even the United Kingdom with its enhanced water. Glaceau vitamin water is advertised as a healthy alternative drink, but there is controversy or at least some question about this.
Glaceau vitamin water is an alternative to both water and soda. The ingredients in an average bottle of Glaceau vitamin water are filtered water (either subjected to reverse osmosis, vapor distillation or deionization), the sweetener called crystalline fructose that is brought about from corn syrup, electrolytes, natural flavors, citric acid and vitamins E, B12, B6, B5, B3 and C. At other times, more ingredients are included based on the flavor needs of a particular vitamin water drink. The sweetener, crystalline fructose, is decidedly unhealthy for you as there have been concerns raised about its propensity to play a role in causing chemically produced liver damage, or hepatotoxicity. The presence of citric acid also may be a problem, as citric acid is known to wear down your tooth enamel if ingested in excess.
The sugar content in Glaceau vitamin water can be a bit of a problem. Just a 20-ounce bottle of this drink already contains 8 teaspoons of sugar, which comes out to 33 grams of sugar in just that serving. For comparison purposes, a 20 ounce bottle of Coca Cola has 16 teaspoons of sugar in the same serving. So basically, the same serving of healthy vitamin water by Glaceau already comes with half the sugar content as the same-sized bottle of Coca Cola.
Huffington Post Healthy Living Blog, “The dark side of Vitamin water,” by John Robbins reports that Coca-Cola is being sued by a non-profit public interest group, on the grounds that the company’s vitamin water products make unwarranted health claims. The lawsuit, brought by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, alleges that vitamin water labels and advertising are filled with “deceptive and unsubstantiated claims.” In his recent 55-page ruling, Federal Judge John Gleeson (U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York), wrote, “At oral arguments, defendants (Coca-Cola) suggested that no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking vitamin water was a healthy beverage.” Noting that the soft drink giant wasn’t claiming the lawsuit was wrong on factual grounds, the judge wrote that, “Accordingly, I must accept the factual allegations in the complaint as true.”
But about 35 percent of Americans are now considered medically obese. Two-thirds of Americans are overweight. Health experts tend to disagree about almost everything, but they all concur that added sugars play a key role in the obesity epidemic, a problem that now leads to more medical costs than smoking. The truth is that when it comes to weight loss, what you drink may be even more important than what you eat. Americans now get nearly 25 percent of their calories from liquids.
In 2009, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health published a report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, finding that the quickest and most reliable way to lose weight is to cut down on liquid calorie consumption. And the best way to do that is to reduce or eliminate beverages that contain added sugar.
Now, Vitamin Water is not completely toxic. It is certainly not something that I would personally drink, but if the choice is between Vitamin Water or Coke, I suppose Vitamin Water is a wiser choice. But you know what the smartest choice is? Water. Real water. It is important to keep your body properly hydrated at all times, especially in the summer and pure water is the only way to do this. Drinks that are full with sugar only continue to dehydrate the body, regardless of their water content.
Want something sweet to drink? Try squeezing lemon or lime in pure or sparkling water or pouring yourself a glass of green tea and you’ve got a drink that hydrates, tastes great, and isn’t full of sugar or added nonsense.
Really informative post!! I used to always think that Vitamin water was healthy, now I know better!