The Beverage Desert

[foxgrrl]

Why is it so hard to find something to drink? Oh yeah, because I don't want to drink:

• Tap Water
• High Fructose Corn Syrup
• Aspartame (NutraSweet)
• Alcohol
• Milk
• Caffeine
• Excessive amounts of Sugar

Dear Lazyweb: What kind of drinks can I put into my body? Note that most fruit juice available in the United States is fortified with High Fructose Corn Syrup.

Update:
Ok, small amounts of Caffeine and non-HFCS sugar are ok. I just don't want a lot of those most of the time.

Comments

[hep.livejournal.com]

i drink green tea but i believe that has caffeine. what about chamomile or one of the other herbals? i just make a giant batch in a jug and put it into plastic bottles.

[m4dh4tt3r.livejournal.com]

Bottled water in glass? I have very similar desires/restrictions on what I drink. Another problem with a lot of fruit juices is not just HFCS, frequently, there is some other form of sugar added. I drink juices that are 100% juice, and then I cut it with about 1/3-1/2 bottled water, depending on the sweetness of the juice, generally San Pellegrino because I like the fizzy. My favorite juices are cranberry, pomegranate, pineapple, and grapefruit.

[m4dh4tt3r.livejournal.com]

Green tea does have a little bit of caffeine, but it isn't all that much, but indeed, it doesn't satisfy the no caffeine requirement. :-)

[(Anonymous)]

Tropicana Pure Premium is an orange juice that does not have HFCS in it. I just read the ingredients label on the carton in the fridge.

[kitten-goddess.livejournal.com]

Oops. I forgot to log in before making that last comment.

[solarbird]

If sucralose is okay, then Cascade Ice. Assuming you can find a Cascadian import drink down there in the California Republic, of course. ^_^

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Simply Grapefruit juice (and its relatives) has no added sweeteners. Also, if small amounts of caffeine is OK, the various sorts of bottled unsweetened or low sweetened bottled green and oolong teas found at places like Whole Foods are also wonderful. I also love Whole Foods organic cola, but that has lots of sugar. In addition, I make up batches of iced green tea and keep it in my fridge. For no caffeine, peppermint tea or a 50/50 mixture of rosemary tea and unsweetened apple juice are both quite yummy.

[tiggerfox.livejournal.com]

I'm a big fan of Pure Natural 100% Unsweetened Cranberry Juice. Orange Juice is a close second followed by Apple Juice. I find Cranberry Juice satisfies my thirst craving well.

[hep.livejournal.com]

i tried to calculate the amount of caffeine i was intaking it at one point, but it's hard to figure once you start rebrewing with leaves. i generally rebrew them about 3x until you can't get any more flavor out of it. this is what i use to refill bottles with, but i also tend to drink a whole bottle of oi ocha first and then reuse the bottle until i finish rebrewing on that batch of leaves. generally about 2days.

also tho if you don't mind carbonation mineral water is what i drink aside from tea. usually san pellegrino since it is easy to find everywhere. less salty than calistoga but i will drink that too.

also i drink odwalla daily, usually i pick up a giant jug from costco to last me a week. intaking vitamins and minerals and then holding them is a huge problem for me so my dr demands that i drink mostly pureed all natural juices to get as much nutrients from them as possible. i drink 8oz of an odwalla protein shake and 8oz of a pureed fruit juice mix daily.

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

Get to know different kinds of tisanes (herbal teas). I highly recommend peppermint tea.

I also recommend getting lemon juice and a sweetener that you like, and making lots of lemonade.

[zeeth_kyrah]

I'm generally fine with tap water run through a home filtration system. I buy some drink with a sturdy bottle, and re-use the bottle, washing it in the dishwasher every so often when the smell changes. I have three plastic bottles which have lasted at least six months now.

Then again, I've never been shown any convincing research that fluoridation does anything to the body except protect the teeth a little, or that other chemicals in the water were at any harmful level. And besides, it's been run through a frickin' carbon filter, one good enough to pump swamp muck through and get drinkable water (and believe me, when your pipes dump yellow out the tap on a regular basis, you don't want to drink that stuff without something in between you and the eldritch horrors).

[foxgrrl]

I've been doing something like this lately. Adding pure lemon juice to San Pellegrino. There is a brand of "Santa Cruz" organic lemon juice, which unlike every other bottle of pre-squeezed lemons you can find, does not contain Sodium Benzoate. Which is also on my list of things to avoid.

Sodium Benzoate turns into Benzine in the presence of ascorbic acid (vitamin C, E300).

[eqe.livejournal.com]

The sparkling juice bottles I see at many SFBA coffee shops claim to be "sweetened with only fruit juice".

I drink sparkling water under similar circumstances, sometimes with a small amount of pure fruit juice (sometimes marketed as "nectar") poured in; Ceres (in aseptic boxes at your local hippie store) is one good brand.

And of course, many herbal teas (properly called tisanes) are completely caffeine free; mint and Rooiboos (sp?) are both good.

(My true vice, though, is an afternoon decaf coffee with 20% or more milk. Soymilk may satisfy your "no milk" requirement.)

[m4dh4tt3r.livejournal.com]

Sodium Benzoate turns into Benzine in the presence of ascorbic acid (vitamin C, E300).

Yeah. I've been avoiding any kind of preservatives, but that one in particular in the presence of ascorbic acid.

[mayamaia.livejournal.com]

Tap water is pretty decent though, especially with a simple filter.

Is there any objection to almond milk? I love the stuff so much, and Trader Joes usually stocks unsweetened versions of it.

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

Red tea is among my current favorites. No caffeine, no sugar, and very good.
I also drink a lot of peppermint tea, and loose-leaf green tea, though I generally only put a few leaves in and keep refilling the hot water so the caffeine content is very low. Chamomile is nice if you want to sleep, and I like various caffeine-free teas that contain hibiscus.

Many stores sell little electric tea-pots that heat water to boiling in about 2 minutes. I often start a kettle when I'm headed to the bathroom or something like that and have hot water ready by the time I return.

I also drink a lot of V8, and carbonated water.

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

Oh! And I forgot to mention yerba matte. I can show you were it grows in the wild around here. It's got an interesting flavor.

[dragonzuela.livejournal.com]

I drink tons of decaffeinated black tea. Red tea (rooibos) is also good although I haven't had it in awhile. As a Mainer in California I need to hydrate a lot, and I like having a simple hydration option that isn't plain water.

[reo-the-eagle.livejournal.com]

White tea = <3
But seriously? Fructose and Glucose is fine unless you have it in a 55/45 ratio. That seems a bit silly. =P

[centauress.livejournal.com]

Corn syrup is cheap, and a syrup. If you want any juice that's, well, drinkable, you're going to see some of it in there unless you're drinking apple, grape, or orange juice, which are juice bearing fruits. Or pineapple or a nectar.

Generally what I do is cut my store-bought juice with sparkling water or tonic. Usually tonic, it's sweeter and is less likely to be really dry tasting, but it does cut the sweetness. I can just put straight juice or nectar - lime, lemon, cranberry, etc - into tonic and have some drinkable -ade.

The tea I buy has no sugar. But it's produced by a Japanese company. So I get it at Costco or Nijiya's.

Carbonated, juice-sweetened juice is another selection... It's much easier to find these sorts of drinks than it used to be... Safeway even has them now.

I don't know what you have against tap water. Let the instilled gasses percolate out, and it's just water. At least it isn't flavored water, with a touch of some hideous oil that's better to be smelled than tasted like orange or cherry oils. Ugh.

[centauress.livejournal.com]

...And just how much food would you have to consume to get a dose that would adversely affect? Something ungodly large, according to studies on mice and cows, in which it wasn't possible to feed them enough to get a negative reaction without feeding it to them straight, at 2 grams per kg dosages. At a concentration of 0.01% in a can of soda, how much would you have to drink to reach your threshold for statistical data of a 1/3rd of a lb dose?

[centauress.livejournal.com]

I sniff Ringer's solution when dehydrated. I know, probably not the best solution, but if I'm at the point I'm not able to conduct enough water through my sinuses to counteract the dryness...

[jovino.livejournal.com]

I'll double the green tea vote, and add the hint that if you take the bag, pour hot water over it and toss out the first immediate steep, then it will be, for the most part, decaffeinated. Yay science. I've been drinking a lot of chai lately, but that's got the caffeine that you are trying to avoid. Also, sometimes you just need to squeeze a lemon or a lime into water to get rid of the tap taste. Remember the filter, of course. :) You can also go for some carbonated water for a change-up.

[solarbird]

You can also pull this trick with loose-leaf black tea, it's about 90% caffeine reduction.

(My normal drink during the day is black tea. If you to go uptontea.com and search for TA40, that's it. Cheaper than bags and so much better.)

[erisian-fields.livejournal.com]

What's wrong with tap water?
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=87558&page=1
http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/nbw.asp
http://www.ehso.com/ehshome/DrWater/drinkingwater.php
Oftentimes, bottled water IS tap water.

I don't usually drink fruit juice. I'd rather eat the fruit than drink the juice. "Juice drinks" are generally vile stuff even my kids won't drink (okay, the 15 year old will, but she's got the typical American palate that none of the other kids got).

One gallon of regular ole water with a DROP each of peppermint essential oil and grapefruit essential oil (yes, both) is very refreshing, especially when it's cold. It's a better pick-me-up than caffeine if you want to avoid the jitters and crankies. No caffeine for me, not if I want the baby to sleep EVER. I have much the same list as you for things to avoid, possibly for some similar reasons. I mostly drink water. I'll have herbal tea when I want something different. Good Earth makes a really tasty caffeine-free tea that doesn't need sweetener and makes a really tasty chai when mixed with a little soy milk. I love that one.

[ur3shii.livejournal.com]

Apollinaris, Gerolsteiner, and my personal favorite, Sanfaustino.

Why yes, I am a water snob. :>

[zeeth_kyrah]

Yerba mate happens to contain various xanthines, including caffeine; that's why it's added to energy drinks.

[mooflyfoof.livejournal.com]

I am a big (huge) fan of Crystal Geyser Juice Squeezes. They are just fruit juice (mixes) and fizzy water. No HFCS, no caffeine, no sugar added. My favorite drink ever.

Also, you can find regular fruit juice that's not full of added sugar or HFCS. Look for the ones labeled "100% juice". Usually if it's something tart like cranberry juice and or grapefruit juice that means it's been sweetened with apple juice or grape juice.

Limonata is really tasty. It's like super fizzy lemonade. Reed's Ginger Beer is great too. No HFCS in either of these, but they do have sugar. On that note, many higher end root beers eschew HFCS for real sugar-- just read the label. Tasty treat, no caffeine.

On the off chance that you occasionally want to drink something caffeinated, look for Mexican Coke. It's sweetened with sugar rather than HFCS.

Also, Crystal Geyser natural mineral water is great. Way nicer than tap water, comes in a few different flavors, no calories. It doesn't have aspartame, it's just not sweetened at all. Like fizzy water with a lemon wedge in it.

Lastly, I find that tap water is actually quite tasty if you refrigerate it (and Brita filter it-- though SF water is great even without being filtered).

This post speaks to me because that's basically my list of "things I don't want to drink" too. :)

Edit: Of course! Tea! Make it yourself. Add only a little sugar. Maybe soymilk, if you're into that. I'm really fond of Earl Grey, which is caffeinated. Samovar has a great take on the Earl Grey concept with their Earl Red -- it's an herbal tea, so no caffeine. There are tons of different uncaffeinated teas out there; go to Whole Foods and buy a few to see what you like! Check out Mighty Leaf -- expensive but really nice teas.

[zeeth_kyrah]

Jones Juice uses cane sugar instead of HFCS.

[mooflyfoof.livejournal.com]

Tonic usually has high fructose corn syrup in it generally. Sadly.

There are tons of juices without corn syrup added; you just have to read the labels. Usually they're sweetened with apple juice.

[secretsoflife.livejournal.com]

i'm lucky to live in a city where we have great tapwater, but if i didn't a useful solution would be a filter bottle. mec.ca carries "Pristine" and "Katadyn" brand ones, and REI probably carries the same in the US. nothing beats the convenience of filling up at a cold tap, and a bottle with a good filter on it seems more reliable than purchasing water to my mind.

hope that helps :)

[robbat2.livejournal.com]

+1 for Ceres here - just slightly upset that not all the flavours are exported from South Africa.

[robbat2.livejournal.com]

How about straight club soda? Nothing but water and fizz. If you want to flavour it with something, I suggest a hint of a non-alcohol-based bitters.

[chocolatecoffee.livejournal.com]

Herbal tea comes in every conceivable flavour, and white tea is getting big (less caffeine* and more antioxidants than green!) Celestial Seasonings is the most common brand up here.
Club soda doesn't have any sweetener, at least here in canadaland. Just sodium.
Perrier and similar are just carbonated water with a bit of lemon or lime - they're my current vice.

As for juice, hit the health-nut aisle and look for pure cranberry, cherry, blueberry and pomegranate.
Easier to find are pure lemon juice and orange juice.

*Wikipedia says 15mg per serving, compared to 40mg for black tea, and 20mg for green.

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

Assuming you like citrus juices:

Buy a juicer. The fancy automated kind are cool, but expensive and unnecessary; I got ours secondhand in a hardware store for less than $20. It's manual, works with a crank, and will probably outlive all of us.

Buy oranges, or grapefruits, or lemons, or limes, or tangerines, or whatever strikes your fancy. (Some kinds of oranges are better for juice than others, but it's a matter of taste. I find that smaller oranges tend to produce more juice per unit volume than larger ones, and tastier besides.)

In the morning, slice a bunch of $fruit_of_choice in half and make juice. Six oranges is approximately one tall glass of juice. Or, if you want, go nuts and juice several kilos of fruit at once; store the resulting juice in an airtight bottle.

Mix with sparkling water if you want a juicy soda kind of thing.

I recently found out that "not from concentrate" juice is usually stored for a really long time before it even gets to the store, so it's not really all that fresh in the first place. When it comes right out of the fruit, though, you know exactly where it's been. :)

[octalpussy.livejournal.com]

Jones soda uses cane sugar and has all sorts of awesome flavours without caffeine. <3 <3 <3

[aatheus.livejournal.com]

Herbal tea okay?

[centauress.livejournal.com]

...And then you're drinking apple juice. So I don't see the reason for labeling it as another juice.

I did say tonic has corn syrup in it. However, it has [i]half[/i] the sugar of other things sweetened with corn syrup. And you can get kosher tonic from whole foods or a kosher store... No corn syrup.

[(Anonymous)]

Grapefruit juice sweetened with apple juice still tastes like grapefruit juice -- just not the kind that's so tart it makes your head implode. Same with pomegranate juice and cranberry juice. Plus you're still getting nutrients from the grapefruit/pomegranate/cranberry juices that you can't get from apple juice alone. Granted, not as much as if you were to drink it straight, but it's still good for you. *shrug*

[centauress.livejournal.com]

Bottled water will have the dissolved chlorines scrubbed, and will not have picked up anything living from the water distribution system so is shelf stable. But it's simple enough to get the chlorines out and if you don't let it sit long (like in a bottle or glass overnight) it won't have time to grow a new taste.

Julia does have a difficulty giving tap time to air; she's usually on the move, hence all the bottled water. Maybe I should consider getting her a glass carafe so she can make larger dose of lemonade or water from tap and let it sit in the window to air before she's thirsty while working. Hmm.

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

Err, gatorade is chock full of corn syrup.

[varaviksne.livejournal.com]

Grapefruit juice is considered tart? If so, then my tartness taste buds mustn't be working good...

I've been known to go to a grocery store, buy a 64 oz carton of Florida's Natural grapefruit juice, go out to the parking lot, and chug the whole carton.

More times than that, I've bought a 64 oz Odwalla grapefruit juice with "breakfast" and then nursed it all day.

And, when I have the ability to readily bring juice home from the store, I go through 3 or 4 cartons a week.