Sports drink is one of the highly commercialized beverages today – from its TV advertisements to its popular athlete endorsers – as mainstream media makes it look like drinking it will keep you healthy and well-hydrated. Beverage companies advertise that sports drink will help replenish the electrolytes in your body during exercise or outdoor activities, but the truth is the ingredients of your favorite sports drinks will not hydrate and benefit you, and may even be detrimental to your health.
A typical sports drink contains high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and artificial sweeteners. It has two-thirds of the sugar content of soda, and is 30 times more erosive to your teeth than water. High-fructose corn syrup could cause negative health impacts like preventing the natural production of your body’s human growth hormone (HGH). It also contributes to almost all chronic diseases like diabetes, cancer, and heart disease.
Aside from sports drinks, there are also other sweetened beverages that you don’t benefit much from, like sodas. These are also equally unhealthy for your health, as just a 20-ounce bottle of cola gives you 16 teaspoons of sugar through high-fructose corn syrup. Diet soda makes no difference either because a study revealed that diet soda drinkers have a 70 percent increase in waist size than those non-diet soda drinkers in a 10-year period.9
Commercial fruit juices are another sweetened drink that you must avoid because they do not have any hydrating properties and are actually loaded with sugar. For example, Minute Maid’s 15.2 ounce bottle actually contains 49 grams of sugar.
What’s more, most processed fruit juices are made with little resemblance of what an actual fresh fruit juice would be. Commercial fruit juices are pasteurized and their oxygen is removed to preserve them for a long time, making the juices less nutrient-dense. Store-bought fruit juices with an expiration date of 60 days or more is a sign that it is heavily processed, so I encourage you to boycott these kinds of beverages.