soft drink replacements?
 

Apologies if this should be in the Cooking forum...

So I've been an avid soft drink, um, drinker, for as long as i can remember, and usually tear through a 2-liter in a day and a half. I backed off a little at college but still usually have a ton of cans of stuff to drink. At one point in high school, I couldn't fall asleep at night unless I drank a soft drink right before bed, which seems counter to caffine but thats how it was. Now a few days ago I was laying in bed and I realized that since I had run out and hadn't been back to the store, I had gone almost a week without drinking one, and kinda liked the idea that I could really cut back hard right now if I wanted to since I already had a start. I still will drink them to stay awake on the road or for late night studying, or even the occasional drink, but I think I'm going to try to stick with this whole cutting way back deal, seems like it has to be better for me than how much I was drinking before.

My question is, what the hell else am I supposed to drink throughout the day??? I've been drinking a good amount of water but I need some variety for my taste buds. So for anyone who doesn't drink soft drinks all that often, what do you drink throughout the day? And to get it out of the way ahead of time, I hate hate hate hate hate hate tea, any kind of tea, all kinds of tea, even though i've grown up in north carolina my whole life. So other than water tea, what do you drink throughout the day? I know it sounds stupid, but when you've relied on different kinds of soft drinks for this long, i just can't really picture anything else.

Re: soft drink replacements?
 

Might I suggest "crystal light" ?

http://www.kraftfoods.com/crystallig...uit_lineup.jpg

I'm a fan of the orange juice and the peach tea.

Water. For variety, try some of the flavored waters out there. Some aren't half bad.

And there's always the old stand by.. Kool Aid!


And how in the hell do you not like sweat tea? :p

Seltzer Water with fresh fruit.. You can mash up some strawberries, raspberries, peaches, any fresh/frozen fruit and you have a tasty refreshing beverege.

I start out my morning with a tall glass of water with the juice of 1/4 of a lemon. To be honest, I just squeeze the little plastic lemon in the glass to taste. It helps to get rid of morning phlegm.

Lemonade is a good thing to drink at work, if I am not drinking water or tea (though you don't like that). Milk is good for you if you don't mind the phlegm again.

At night, I like to drink wine, or a cheap knock off of it like Arbor Mist. Again, water is always good, as is juice. It just depends on if you are on a diet, what types of things you don't like to put into your body, and what types of things you are able to make.

My mother, on the other hand, is addicted to Mendota Springs water- the lime flavor. I think it is like drinking salt water, but that is just my humble opinion.

Good old Gatorade, or Powerade. Then there's any kind of juice. Water with lemon is really good too. I used to drink a ton of water, with a little slice of lemon, now I just drink coffee and water.

Crystal Light contains aspartame. Some of us are allergic to that stuff. Anyway, it's still a soft drink. Carbination is not required for a "soft drink". All "soft drink" means is that it's not alcoholic, as far as I know.

You can get non-caffinated, non-sweetened drinks. I've found flavored seltzers in the supermarket, for instance. Note that the flavor is more subtle than the normal overpowering cola or whatever flavor you're used to, though.

You just can't beat the healthy alternative...H-Two-Oh!!

Water baby....it does a body good!

I think they have changed to splenda, but I could be wrong!

Bottled Crystal Light is sweetened with Splenda. The powder is still aspartame city.

You don't really need variety for your taste buds. Just slug a bunch of water. Your body will thank you NOT to adultrate your water with sugar and artificial flavors.

I used to drink alot of pop also.....here's what I now drink....

gatorade...sobe, that sam's choice flavored water they sell at wal-mart, lemonade, iced tea...

I also quit (or mostly quit) sodas.
I replaced them with:
Gatorade
Juices
Water

is carbonated water any better than just plain water? taste-wise? i like it better, it's more interesting :)

milk? fruit juice? squash?

here's a weird one, but its quite nice: teaspoon of honey + teaspoon of vinegar in water?

and personally I'd rather have a weak beer than coke ... i'm sure it's less bad for you in the long run ... that's my excuse anyway ;)

ditto ratbastid - your tastebuds will get used to water after a while

if you don't want water....

juice.

I tried a Diet Snapple Green Tea, which uses Splenda. I had runs for three days. I don't know if it was coincidence, but I'm not planning on trying again. A web search says that I'm not the only one, however.

EDIT: Blitzkrieg doesn't read posts carefully. No cookie for him. Gustoferson said specifically he HATES tea. That obliterates my post.

Also, have you considered hot water? It is surprisingly good. Somehow it tastes sweeter than cold water.

Dude, Hi-C. It's the shit. Especially Ecto-cooler (or whatever the name is now -- the green stuff with slimr on it, you know!)

Drinking juice all day is not a good idea if one is concerned about weight gain or blood glucose levels.

I drink 4 - 6 cans of Diet Coke per day, interspersed with water (still or bubbly) and an occassional glass of SPORTea.

Diet Coke is a good standby if you're worried about losing weight. I swapped to Diet Coke, and between that and a bit of excercise I've already lost 25 pounds.

Water from a Britta filter is also extremely good.

Sometimes I flavor my own water. A little bit of lemon or cranberry juice in it and you don't have just plain water but you also don't have the concentrated sugar from juice either.

I'm addicted to coffee though that's not always the best. Course you can use caffine free. Make some iced coffee in the summertime.

I know you said that you hated teas, but there are some great herbal teas. One is Yerba Mate and another is Roobois. Since I had to cut out soft drinks and coffee, these have become my drinks of choice. They don't taste like tea, but are great all the same.

Hot chocolate is pretty good, and I suggest shelling out for brand name. If you can gauge how much water to how much powder on your own, buy the non-packeted ones. I suppose they save a little money.

agreed...i drink powerade as a soda replacement, although i dont drink nearly as much powerade as i did soda. usually i just drink a lot of water.

I have done the same thing except I drink Diet Pepsi and since I got home from school 2 months ago I have lost 20. Especialy like diet Pepsi Vanilla.

The problem with all the sports drinks is that the electrolites (salt) can eat the enamel off your teeth. Kind of a gross prospect, but my brother had major issues with it when he played college football.

I'm trying to cut down on soda too. *sniffle*. I tend to drink dilluted 100% juice, thus the juice lasts longer and isn't so sugary. I also like to drink lemonaid. Water is okay, but not fantastic. I'd much rather drink water ice cold - because I think it tastes better.

If you're weight watching juice isn't such a good idea unless you get the sugar free or low sugar kinds. Most of the time juice can have just as much sugar/cals/carbs ect... as most soda does.

Diet Coke is not good for you. :\ I can't stand when people go around telling others to drink it if they're trying to lose weight. It may have less sugar but it's bad for your digestive system because of all the sugar replacements and other crap they put in it. It has absolutely no nutritional value. If you really want to lose weight, water should be your main drink.

Anyway...as for soda replacements...a lot of the time when I'm thinking about going for that can of coke, I'll reach for the seltzer instead. Seltzer is really just carbonated water. It has zero calories. But it feels just like soda when it's going down! It works with me.
Another thing I do sometimes is I mix cool-aid, orange juice, cranerry juice or something like that into the seltzer....but like the person above me said, juice still has a lot of sugar in it.

So really, ice cold water is very good. If the tap water in your neighborhood tastes bad, stock up on the Poland Spring.

Thanks for all the suggestions and such. Its not really a weight loss thing, don't really need to, as much of a general "i know sodas aren't good for me at all so if i have a chance to cut back with a head start already then why not" sort of thing. I figure eventually the unhealthiness of it will start to catch up so why not give it a shot.

I think for now I'll just keep hitting up water and I just bought a cubic lode of gatorade at the grocery store, a couple different flavors to keep it from getting monotonous. Who knows, we'll see how things work out retraining my taste buds.

I have a couple of things:

60-40 mix of sparkling water and grapefruit juice. It's got a kick -- wakes me right up in the middle of the afternoon. It's not sweet, for sure -- tastes more like a mixed drink. Good for you, too. Some folks say that grapefruit actually helps keep weight off.

Other than that, I mainly drinking sparkling water/mineral water -- plain or lemon-flavored.

Water is #1, then diet whatever's handy, and I know you don't like tea BUT Arizona Green tea with Ginsing and Honey is really good and doesn't really taste like tea. Less cals than pop but I believe it still has caffeine. You can buy it in gallon jugs too, so it doesn't cost very much if you can find it like that.

I stopped drinking pop due to caffeine and calories. I mainly stick to water because it's hard to go out to fast food places and restaurants and get something non-caffeinated AND low calorie.

I second this, it's soooo good. kind of a healthier, 'homemade' soda.

I have bben drinking club soda/tonic water instead of Coke or Pepsi, and it's been surprisingly refreshing. It has no caffeine and no nasty sweeteners in it. A lemon wedge or lime will give it a little more taste.

Maybe this should be a separate post, but does anyone else get headaches from drinking soda with caffeine? I often get them if I drink one and then stop for a day or too. At first I thought it was a coincidence, but it's happened 10 or so times that I can remember.

Sounds like Fresca, now that you mention it.

(edit) add link

Caffeine Withdrawl --

I get them if I go more than two days without blessed caffeine. Y

I find that if I don't get off the caffine, I get more and more wired, jumpy, irritable. Then when I get off it, I get the withdrawl symptoms, including migraine. So I don't do caffine if I can avoid it.

I used to be a soda drinker as a kid... I also used to be quite the fatty. One day I just cut the soda out, and that helped alot. Now I can't stand soda. I can't stand any sugary drinks, period.

Around here they sell this fantastic Turkey Hill diet iced tea. I go through nearly one 2-liter bottle a day.

Its very VERY good, and has no sugar to boot.

I stand corrected


denim is right
I am wrong

Splenda is sucralose, not aspartame.

I drink:

Orange Juice in the morning (sometimes I switch it up with Apple, Grape, or Cranberry juice... or I mix if I'm feeling adventurous)
Water at work
Beer when I get home

When classes start up I usually bring a water bottle or buy a can of fruit juice from the vending machine.

http://www.buono.tv/shop/negozioimg/spellegrino.jpg

Pellegrino. I drink lots. Lots. At least a case per week. Cheap at Trader Joes.

Mineral water. They also make lemonaid which is super great.

Other than that, just high-quality h2o.