In the News: Making Healthy Choices

On the front page of our local newspaper, the Standard-Examiner, there's an article about how high fructose corn syrup can be linked to America's obesity problem. Then, as soon as I got online, I saw an article put out by Eat This Not That about the worst drinks at grocery/convenience stores and thought that with spring break coming up, it might come in handy for all those road trips we like to go on. (Okay, so I'm thinking WAY ahead but if you had 4 feet of snow in your yard, you would be too! LOL)

I'm by no means a health nut, but I am a bit of a label-reader and I'm always interested in finding out what foods and drinks are hiding under heathy facades but are actually really bad for us. This info was in Men's Health magazine as part of the popular Eat This Not That series, and it shows just how much sugar is in some popular bottled and canned drinks. I love that ETNT has equated the amount of sugar in each drink with a sweet treat so we can get a better idea just how much sugar we're talking about.
The Worst Tea: Snapple Lemon Ice Tea has 250 calories and 58 grams sugars. That's as much sugar as you'll get in 6 original Fudgsicle bars.
The Worst Flavored Water: With 150 calories and 33 grams sugars, Snapple Agave Melon Antioxidant Water sounds healthy, but you'd have to eat 3 bowls of Honey Comb cereal to get that much sugar.
The Worst Bottled Lemonade: You can eat 5 Good Humor ice cream sandwiches or drink a bottle of Minute Maid lemonade for the same amount of sugars (67 grams).
The Worst Soda: A 20-oz bottle of Sunkist packs 325 calories and 88 grams of sugars which is about what you'd get if you chomped 17 chewy Chips Ahoy cookies.
The Worst Coffee Drink: Did you know Starbucks Coffee Frappuccino has 290 calories, 4.5 grams fat (2.5 saturated), and 46 grams sugars? If you'd rather have 3 1/2 scoops of Dreyer's double fudge brownie ice cream, it's about the same.
The Worst "Heathy" Drink: Naked Protein Zone Banana Chocolate has 480 calories, 3 grams fat (1 saturated), 32 grams protein, and 70 grams sugars. That's as much sugar as 5 Breyers Oreo ice cream sandwiches! (I was glad that my favorite healthy drink, Bolthouse vanilla chai, is the healthy alternative they recommend.)

Here are some additional grocery/convenience store drinks you might want to pass up: SunnyD Smooth Style (for a kid drink), Rock Star (for an energy drink), Nesquick chocolate milk (for a bottled milk), and Sobe Lizard Lava (for a fruity beverage).

If you want little updates from Eat This Not That, you can follow them on Twitter here. And now, I'm curious: Do you read labels on foods and drinks before you buy them? What's your favorite bottled or canned beverage?

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