What should you pay attention to when reading the label?
At the beginning, it should be remembered that according to the Regulation of the Minister of Health (1), such a product, due to all the additives, is no longer water, but a drink. A good-quality drink should contain: water, natural flavors and carbon dioxide (in the case of a carbonated drink). However, they should not include: preservatives, sugar, acidity regulator and other sweeteners, e.g. glucose-fructose syrup.
We x-ray the products available on the market (the order in the picture is according to the sugar content per 100 ml of the product, 1 cube = 3 g)
Saguaro with lemon flavor
Composition:
By drinking 1,5 liters (the minimum amount of fluid that should be consumed during the day), we consume almost 80 g of sugar.
Price: PLN 1,86 **
Żywiec Zdrój with the taste of strawberries
Composition:
After consuming the entire bottle (1,5 l) of Żywiec Zdrój, drink 69 g of dissolved sugar with the taste of strawberries.
Price: PLN 1,79 / l **
Ustronianka – Still drink with lemon flavor enriched with vitamins
Composition:
Drinking 1,5 liters of this water is like eating an additional 10 cubes of sugar. The advantage of this composition is the addition of vitamins.
Price: PLN 1,95 **
Fresh lemon – Non-carbonated lemon-flavored drink based on natural mineral water
Composition:
One large bottle of this drink contains 37,5 g of sugar. A good direction in this situation is to introduce sweeteners instead of a lot of sugar. What I don’t like is that, in addition to sweeteners and sugar, the manufacturer adds preservatives.
Price: PLN 1,59 *
Power Water – zero calories – pink grapefruit
Composition:
In Piotr and Paweł I got Power water. What pleased me was the lack of added sugar, but the producer gets the sweetness by adding a sweetener. The treatment is a plus, but it is better to get used to sweet drinks.
Price: PLN 3,69 / l **
Arctic Fizzy still drink
Composition:
I give this manufacturer an additional advantage, because a year or two ago this drink was sweetened with sweeteners, and now you can buy a similar product without their addition.
Dinner: 3,99 / l ***
When analyzing the ingredients bottle by bottle, I noticed that only two waters that I found in popular discounters * are not sweetened with sugar or glucose-fructose syrup. My favorite of the list is Arctic Fizzy, which I can recommend to you with a clear conscience, but unfortunately the price goes hand in hand with the quality.
Remember that the energy from added sugar should constitute a maximum of 10% of the total carbohydrate requirement (2), which translates into about 50 g of sugar per day. Our dietitian – Jagoda Krüger – also confirms that drinking this type of drink is not a good alternative to natural water:
The described drinks most often contain sugar, glucose-fructose syrup, and even sweeteners, e.g. acesulfame. A small bottle of flavored water can contain up to 4 tablespoons of sugar. You can easily prepare lemon-flavored water at home and it will be a much better, cheaper and, above all, healthier option than an apparently similar drink bought in a store.
I was looking through our forum out of curiosity and by typing flavored water into the search engine, I noticed that this topic has already been mentioned several times:
- Drinks Żywiec Lemon Zdrój water and I’m on a diet I’m losing weight…. Could this slow down my weight loss process? I know maybe this is a stupid question…. but I’m really curious …
- I also drank only this water and I have no idea if it has any effect on fat burning, but it seems to me that it is not such a bad idea, because it is water, and consuming a lot of water works to some extent on intestines stimulating, maybe I’m wrong, but that’s my opinion.
- Flavored waters do not fatten themselves. The amount of possible calories is so small that it does not affect your balance.
- On the so-called I have been to the diet since I remember, I used to drink flavored water, because I tried to replace the lack of sweets in this way, but I gave up because the diet did not make sense then. I cut down on my food, exercised, and drank caloric water, which has a lot of sugar by the way. Then I drank any kind in large amounts and with lemon juice 🙂
- Flavored water is like drinking, for example, juice or cola with water, it probably only has a common state of concentration, because in addition to valuable properties, it has sugars, and this is an unnecessary addition to the diet. in my opinion
I am glad that among the incorrect answers there were also correct ones. By drinking 1,5 liters of Saguaro a day, we consume an additional 315 kcal. It’s like eating 1,5 mars every day. When losing weight, our efforts may simply be wasted, because we unknowingly consume extra kilocalories. However, if we want to maintain the current body weight and additionally drink such drinks, after about 23 days we can already have 1 kg more (for a weight gain of 1 kg of adipose tissue, we need to eat about 7200 kcal extra).
Homemade ways to change the taste of water
I do not see any contraindications to change the taste of natural mineral water with home remedies, without providing the body with artificial flavors, preservatives or sweeteners. You can add slices or squeeze lemon, lime or orange juice to the water, add mint leaves, sliced pineapple or cucumber, or add small frozen fruit (raspberries or strawberries). It is best to keep the prepared water in the refrigerator and drink it within one day.
* as of September 19.09.2018, XNUMX
** Prices from 19.09.2018/XNUMX/XNUMX come from stores:
- Tesco
- Piotr and Paweł
- Lidl
1. Regulation of the Minister of Health of 31 March 2011 on natural mineral waters, spring waters and table waters
2. Nutrition standards for the Polish population – amendment, prof. dr hab. med. Mirosław Jarosz