#snapple drinker

[charcharliee]

I decided to do a late introduction because I'm bored and have nothing else to do ౨

I am zane 〔people call me by my silly name ; 'dinker'〕

My interests are ;

Roblox hackers/exploiters, myths or roblox "urban legends" (like 1x1x1x1, koolkid, tubers69, etc)

Pvp games (any)

Jjk

Vocaloid

The amazing world of gumball

Ouran highschool host club

Super robot monkey team hyperforce go (barely anyone knows this)

Mlp (my little pony)

Smiling friends

Fnf (Friday night funkin)

Sonic the hedgehog

SpongeBob SquarePants

Space / astrology

Learning about past paranormal experiences

Animals

Madoka magica magi purella

Fate Apocrypha

Kill la kill

Paswg

Skullgirls

Brawlstars

D4dj

Super sonico

Gloomy bear

Card captor sakura

Nana

Spvtw (scott pilgrim vs. the world)

💰

There's more but I can't think of any right now

I'm filled with brainrot!!!

I am a gay and aroace! 〔 + transgender 〕

I REALLY REALLY like snapple (I consumed so much snapple my blood is basically snapple) <- I injected it

I eat dirt, true statement

I'm also 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓴𝔂../j

What I don't like is ;

Proshippers/BAD comshippers (they make me uncomfortable) // comshipping isn't that bad, it's just complicated ships like mortal x human, hero x villan and stuff, but I'm talking about the bad, like who proship and stuff..

Alfred playhouse (I can't stand seeing that)

girls being weird to gay men (just be supportive, not drooling over them, this also goes to straight men being weird to lesbian girls) <- don't do this cis men/women

Think that's it for the stuff I don't like 😓

I do use emoji combos for artists I like

I also use random emoji combos

And stuff I do like mirrorshipping (which is version of character x other version of character)

People think it's bad because the other thing for it had the word "cest" in it, which I can understand(?) // Gen don't know chat

I do love cats, jellyfish, dogs, otters, birds, parrots, deers, and rabbits

I do like unicorn stuff because it's just funny to me

I sometimes use ":3" ( + more )

I like using brainrot terms

Sigma, skibidi toilet, skibidi slicers, gyatt, kai cenat, rizz, baby gronk, rizz party, grimace shake (yes I still use that) and etc

I do vocal stim a lot and stuff and I can't tell when I'm annoying so oops 🦌

My favorite food is cheesecake and Mac and cheese so I might mention those a lot (and I like munching on pickles)

I do like xenos/neos, I think they pretty cool, I don't really know how to use them but that's sigma

I do like peoples headcanons of characters (I don't like when people call it blackwashing tho, that isn't skibidi + it's adding rep not taking)

Thats all bye bye !! :3

Hatsune miku ꒱

[mellylari]

Went to the local store across from my job, and acquired free samples of fresh mixed tea from the kind old lady there!

Sadly, i do not have anything to brew the fresh, non bagged tea in. I’ll have to pick those up on like. Friday if walmart has them.

[lavender-rosa]

Chainsaw Man Characters + Coffee and Tea

Power: Thinks that coffee tastes like mud water and that tea tastes like piss. If she wants caffeine she will just chug a whole pack of redbulls. She thinks Aki is lying about "quality" because all tea and all coffee tastes the same to her.

Denji: He accidentally had a sip of Makima's coffee once and spent the next hour eating his way through Aki's shoe.

Aki: Likes his coffee with lots of (oat) milk and sugar. Power and Denji are always making fun of him for how he takes his coffee, and he's always like "it just...tastes better this way?" and they are like "well of course YOU'D think that, you fucking pussy" and then he's like "you guys don't even LIKE coffee so why the hell are you on my case about it?" He likes jasmine tea and he thinks that boba is the devil.

Himeno: She only likes coffee when it's one of those caramel mocha vanilla frappuccino abominations that barely even tastes like coffee. She thinks regular coffee is disgusting. She likes tea when it's cold or when she's sick. One day she gives Power a sip of one of her fancy Starbucks drinks and she sees God. She lies and says it was gross.

Kobeni: Not a big coffee drinker. She likes mint tea. She likes chai. She likes boba. She likes snapple. Simple stuff.

Angel: He puts milk in his coffee, a lot of sugar and sometimes cinnamon. He doesn't like tea because it literally just tastes like someone soaked leaves in hot water, and when anyone responds "yeah.....that's just exactly what it is..." Angel's like "and you drink that? By choice?"

Kishibe: While he would much rather drink alcohol he is still a snob about coffee and he doesn't care about tea, he used to grind his own coffee when he was younger and thinks putting sugar or milk in it is a sacrilege. Makima wishes he would shut the fuck up.

Quanxi: Agrees with Kishibe, albeit less passionately. Mostly because she thinks that not drinking coffee black is for pussies.

Makima: Doesn't want to admit she has a caffeine addiction, the stuff she drinks is so strong it could kill a small child. Prefers earl grey and black when it comes to teas but drinks them rarely.

Beam: Is this really someone you want to give caffeine to?

Reze: She doesn't really drink tea or coffee but sometimes she will drink a monster energy drink because she enjoys watching people's reactions.

Yoshida: He doesn't want to get addicted to caffeine, so he refrains from drinking coffee, will only drink tea if it's iced or in boba form. Sue him.

Yoru: Actually really wants to try out one of those caramel mocha vanilla frappuccino abominations but insists on drinking her coffee black even though she hates the taste because apparently she has a reputation to maintain. Asa thinks she's being a complete dumbass.

[lemon-lime-limbo]

haikyuu caffeine hcs

ok so this is an idea i've been turning around in my head for a while, so here's some hq characters and their caffeine of choice!

hinata

doesn't drink any caffeine: his mom doesn't really let him. he has an occasional soda here and there, but that's all. coffee is too bitter, and tea is weird, he thinks.

oikawa

huge tea drinker, omg. loves sweet teas especially flavored ones like peach and mango.

nishnoya

energy drinks, particularly redbull or monster. loves the yellow redbull especially, and the white monster. his mom doesn't let him have them too often for his blood pressure though.

iwaizumi

likes tea over coffee. won't admit it, but really likes flavored teas, the really sweet ones like snapple and stuff.

kenma

hot tea, mostly. green or oolong tea especially. puts milk and sugar in it.

daichi

huge coffee drinker. seems like he says he drinks black coffee but totally can't handle that; he puts a lot of cream and sugar in it.

tendou

also energy drinks, but definitely prefers the birthday cake bang (absolutely vile. just saying.) he loves that no one will touch it other than him (prevents anyone from drinking it)

[cozycreaturescorner]

vibes: coffee drinker but in a dad way, snack distributor, friendly but always worried you’re not, the color dark green, and snapple facts

👁👄👁

[nosdreamsrp]

                     › THE MEMBER GROUPS

The member groups found on nostalgic dreams are based on popular fashion brands that you see many wearing on social media. We have four different tiers ( standard, premium, elite & diamond ) and each tier has four different brands within it. Down below you will find our sixteen member groups with traits and simple aesthetics so everyone has an easy fit for their characters!

standard member groups

quirky › uncouth › curious › forgetful

skateboarding or skating in free time › late nights on the beach › blastoff by internet music › chain smoking cigarettes › dirty and torn vans › messy hair › monster energy drinks › winged eyeliner › choppy bangs › sunflower by post malone › white tees x denim jeans › cliff diving at night › bucket hats › cross body fanny packs › reflective colors › flower snapchat filter › sleeping through alarms › fades into the background

irrational › playful › mischievous › bold

strong cologne and perfume › baby showers › strappy heels › bad and boujee by migos › gold grills › natural makeup › straight hair › timberland boots › late night breakfast spots › red hues for accents › suede material › hennessy black › denim x neutral colors › kickback with friends › at fault by medasin & felly › patterns › frappes from starbucks › broken promises › curiosity killed the cat › not so trusting

socially aware › lazy › adventurous › fanatical

all white attire › eating cereal for dinner › going shopping with friends › setting multiple alarms › red bull and vodka › curly hair › frequent visits to art galleries › hoodies and cargos › yamborghini high by a$ap mob › sight-seeing for photo-ops › simple jewelry › hot girl bummer by blackbear › wispy lashes › gold caps › amusement parks on the weekend › rhetorical questions › always the peace makers › cool and comfortable

bourgeoisie › idealistic › know-it-all › persistent

picnics in the park › always has an opinion about something › good as hell by lizzo › chunky sneakers › braided pony-tails › attends charity events › always has a plan › text back in 2 to 3 business days › blazers and combat boots › blurred lines by robin thicke › coffee in the morning › dark hues of color › too smart for their own good › obsessed with coordinating › lover of vanilla scents › minimalistic jewelry

premium member groups

optimistic › selfish › discreet › inconsistent

oversized tees › inconsistent actions › hustle & flow by zaehd & ceo › reads newspaper comics › caffeine over sleep › cross-body bags › social loners › too cool for school › walking snapple facts › where’s my juul?? by full tac & lil mariko › layers clothing › black as an accent › love the smell of flowers › rolled up jeans x thick socks › triple texters › tiny sunglasses › lover of music festivals › fishnet material

manipulative › go-getters › frivolous › spontaneous

clubbing on the weekends › flashing cash in pictures › designer from head to toe › said sum by moneybagg yo › headband accessories › bright color accents › quick money schemes › night owls › face tattoos › oversleeping in the mornings › imma by bbno$ & lentra › prefers facetime over phone calls › silk & satin material › always in large crowds › woodsy and earthy scents › overflow of gold jewelry

nature-focused › oversensitive › cautious › self-indulgent

bonfires on the beach › loose and flowy clothing › too many pillows on the bed › rollin by calvin harris, future and khalid › early nights & mornings › organized planners and journals › brunch on the weekends › straw and fringe material › tiny handbags › vacationing on islands › coffee bean by zaniah › bitter and zesty flavors › beach curls or waves › green is serene › million dollar smiles › dewy skin

temperamental › confident › melodramatic › witty

flavored swishers › jewelry anklets › basketball and football › loads of unread messages › fresh hairstyles › sum 2 prove by lil baby › late night drives › hip hop music on repeat › gamer heads › always texting, never calling › vodka drinkers › durags and dad caps › whats poppin by jack harlow › sleeping in on weekends › wears sunglasses inside › life of the party › knock knock jokes › wake and bakes

elite member groups

whimsical › spoiled › empathetic › irresponsible

their way or the highway › falling asleep on the phone › indecisive about life › dunkin donuts over starbucks › dior by pop smoke › lace and mesh material › 90’s aesthetics › dramatic lashes › easily persuaded › cluttered spaces › layered chains › what they want by russ › takeout over cooking › has a hard time fitting in › mixed prints and patterns › has to be center of attention › silk scarves › floral parfum

judgmental › traditional › evasive › diplomatic

online shopping › distressed jeans › astrology lover › minimalistic vibes › enamel pins and brooches › chanel (go get it) by young thug, gunna and lil baby › handwritten love notes › more logical and practical › hot apple cider with cinnamon › leading the conversation › supalonely by benee & gus dapperton › monochromatic colors › frequents museums › murder mysteries lover › moral sensibility › prefers action over words

meticulous › inconsistent › humble › catty

lover of vintage designers › espresso shots › name plate jewelry › happy by pharrell williams › starts new things but never finish › autumn nights › loves meeting new people › works well under pressure › winged eyeliner › chocolate candy eaters › detailed oriented › instrumental music › cooler than me by mike posner › chunky and platform heels › sand between their toes › loyalty over everything

devious › persuasive › rebellious › flirtatious

take tons of selfies but never post them › bright colors › drinks with umbrellas › snake lovers › demons by drake, fivio foreign and sosa geek › ice cream sundaes › seizes every opportunity › reckless when drunk › smoky eyeshadow › moody by briijean › sweet scents › socks x sandals › drumsticks over flats › compulsive liars › teardrop tattoos › pool party throwers › color blocking aesthetics › impulsive nature

diamond member groups

charming › reserved › innocent › jealous

love diy projects › rom-com lovers › drinking water from a wine glass › my hair free care free › fresh scents › getting caught in the rain › pink matter by frank ocean and andre 3000 › cuddling with a love one › denim on top of denim › blushes easily › singing in the shower › watermelon sugar by harry styles › white button-up shirts › bamboo plants for luck › up before sunrise › mutes the group chats

scatterbrained › imaginative › martyr › resourceful

oversized sunglasses › hard on the outside but mushy on the inside › loves conspiracy theories › would misplace their head if it wasn't attached to their shoulders › mismatched clothing › why don’t i care by gglum › cancelling plans last minute › watching the sun set with friends › sticky and sweet flavors › prefers waking up in the afternoon › thrifted furniture › deep meaningful conversations › earfquake by tyler, the creator › brown and yellow accents

studious › possessive › mature › talkative

hasty when provoked › alternative music › collects artwork and coins › knows more than they should › dream catchers on their walls › read books at coffee shops › bloom by troye sivan › gardens full of produce or flowers › random dance sessions › animal prints › nitro cold brew coffee › parce by maluma and others › speaks in third person › leather watches › whiskey connoisseurs › watches the history channel

volatile › spunky › promiscuous › nurturing

matte black everything › monster by kanye west and others › hidden flasks of liquor › displays public affection › positive vibes only › hot summer nights › drunk texts and voicemails › less clothes the better › champagne showers › late night rendezvous › drunk face by machine gun kelly › full of energy › has an idgaf attitude about life › speeding in traffic › simple silver jewelry › mile high club

[teartopieces-blog]

CLOSED / @tewwor​

IN SEARCH FOR dim lighting, somewhere with a quietness but not too quiet, a general soundtrack  —  people playing pool, background discussions veiled with a certain distant vacancy. he liked it here, it was almost cinematic; and something of a cliche, he just needs to be picking on a tiny bowl of peanuts and meeting the love of his life in some sort of by chance conversational destiny. instead, though, he’s got his hand periodically twisting and untwisting the cap of his snapple, the small pop of its press and release only audible to him, and his eyes are searching for something interesting to look at for more than a couple seconds   —  the tv was a bust, achilles hates sports. 

he spots a figure looming nearby, and it dawns on him then that he hadn’t seen a bartender since the moment he stepped foot into the place. he supposes the lack of drinkers indulging the stools of the bar is to blame, they were probably serving somewhere else, or maybe cleaning a dirty toilet someone threw up in or fucked near. so much for cinematic; once the figure turns, exposes itself, a sharp intake of breath ensues. he knows that standoffish stature, that silent UNWILLINGNESS to interact, radiating off him like the energy and stench of toxic fucking waste. still, it’s not enough for him to stay quiet, “hey,” he beckons, tries. maybe a little louder this time, achilles? “uh, you. haven’t we.. met?” it’s a generous word to use, all considered.

[psychicdragoncoffee]

A new wine store? Nice!

I don’t know if I ever mentioned it but for the last few years I’ve been trying different kinds of wine to see what I like. All I can say for sure is that I lean more towards sweet wines than I do dry ones. Though semi-sweet are fine too.

One day I went to the movies with someone and I noticed a new wine store had come up at some point. So we went by to check it out. It was pretty big. Of course they do sell more than just wine. But most of the store is dedicated towards wine.

They bought be a couple bottles. A Cherry Risling and a Peach Rose. I ended up buying quite a few things myself. I was mainly going to get as corkscrew because a few bottles I have in my stash are corked and the corkscrews I’ve had before all went missing sadly.

Not only did I get myself a corkscrew I got myself quite a few mini bottles of vartious things. Things from vodka, rum, liquour, and whiskey. Again, to see what I liked. Though with most of them I ended up just mixing them with something as I didn’t might most of them stright up. Expect maybe the whiskey.

One liquour I mixed with coffee, the other with Dr Pepper. With the soda is was like a float. For the vodka I mixed some in with sprite, another I mixed with apple snapple.

Then the whiskey I mixed with soda. Though the apple one I nearly just drank stright up.

Either way, even though I do seem excited for this new store I’m actually not a heavy drinker. Usually I open a bottle of wine once every two months. Though with the start of this year it’s more like once a month.

[silicabeast34-blog]

Four Loko, Joose, and Sparks: An Abridged History of Caffeinated Alcohol

Remembrances of Four Loko — the super-caffeinated, alcoholic energy drink available in every convenience store for a narrow window of time before intervention by the Food and Drug Administration at the end of the aughts — are their own genre of internet content.

It is, if there is such a thing, the internet’s beverage, even years after the demise of its original formula. “If you can remember your Four Loko experiences, it wasn’t a Four Loko experience,” comedian Kady Ruth recently tweeted, in response to a question from comedian Akilah Hughes asking for stories about the drink’s golden age. “Why tell, when you can show a photo series?” dancer and YouTuber Ava Gordy replied, attaching an image of herself surrounded by Four Loko cans and wearing a gas mask. Photos from Four Loko’s golden days are scattered around on Tumblr and Imgur, captured with the high-flash, red-eyed weirdness of disposable cameras and early iPhones.

In an oral history of Four Loko, published on Grub Street last summer, the team of Ohio State buddies who created it explained how the product went from a small production run in 2005 to a splashy New York City debut in 2009 to more than $100 million in revenue in 2010. In short: They made the cans tall and they gave them a neon camouflage print to make them stand out. Plus, they raised the alcohol level as high as they legally could for a malt beverage.

2010 sounds like such a long time ago that I was honestly surprised when one of the Gawker pieces about the moment mentioned the fact that Obama was president. I wasn’t old enough to drink or permitted to have more than one other person in my car at the time, but even I feel a bubbly sort of weakness in my chest reading a blog post about the founder of Ron Jon Surf Shops getting arrested for driving under the influence of Four Loko or a blog post about Chuck Schumer comparing Four Loko to “a plague” devastating the country.

Four Loko was beloved, and it is beloved in death. But why? What’s so great about caffeinated sugar-water full of booze, in a can, retailing for $2.50, other than the obvious? The drink is infamous, and maybe an important cultural moment, but it’s not unique. There were also micro-eras for the nearly identical drinks Sparks and Joose, and the vodka Red Bull got almost two decades. In fact, there’s a long history of people trying to showily ruin their nights or their lives with disgusting combinations of chemicals dreamed up for some business purpose that doesn’t especially concern them. Caffeine and alcohol shouldn’t mix, but they have always mixed.

“People are always looking for a way to get high,” William Rorabaug, a historian at the University of Washington, tells me. “Throughout history. It seems to be part of the human condition.”

The last super-boozy generation was the baby boomers, he explains, but their children got into a health kick — yoga, meditation, bicycles, running — mostly because they saw a lot of bad stuff happen to their parents and older siblings as a result of alcohol, and because they preferred marijuana. Mothers Against Drunk Driving got big in the 1980s, and heavy alcohol consumption dipped throughout the 1990s. It didn’t rise again until about 2003, he says, when “very sweet mixed drinks” that went down easy and would mess you up with sugar and alcohol at the time became more popular.

Philip Dobard, vice president of the National Food and Beverage Foundation, explains to me that the drinking age was lower when he was a teenager, which was in the 1970s, and that he really liked drinking Long Island iced teas. Though they’ve been rebranded as premium cocktails in recent years, Long Island iced teas used to be Diet Coke and the leftover dregs of various well spirits. “It was the vodka Red Bull of its day,” he reminisces. “It was high alcohol, not particularly high caffeine, but caffeine. It was a test of one’s humanity. A test of one’s mortality. You’re young and healthy and you’re not familiar with loss. Injuries, when they occur, quickly heal.”

“It was a test of one’s humanity. A test of one’s mortality. You’re young and healthy and you’re not familiar with loss. Injuries, when they occur, quickly heal.”

A current fact sheet from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about mixing caffeine and alcohol states that it makes drinkers feel too alert (when they should feel sleepy and want to stop drinking or at least sit down and not risk “alcohol-attributable harms”). It also points out that “caffeine has no effect on the metabolism of alcohol by the liver ... (it does not ‘sober you up’) or reduce impairment due to alcohol consumption,” and some studies have found people who mix caffeine and alcohol are three times more likely to leave a bar while still heavily intoxicated and four time more likely to attempt to drive home.

But caffeinated alcohol and the type of high it provides is communal, Dobard notes. It’s almost charming, to want to strip yourself of inhibitions in the presence of people you like. “I don’t think that impulse is new,” Dobard adds. “I think the commercial forces are new.”

He’s right. The vodka Red Bull was invented in the late ’90s by none other than … Red Bull, which chased athletes in ski towns and the rave scene on the West Coast by giving cases of free energy drinks to bartenders, even paying them thousands of dollars to put it on the menu. The first mainstream alcohol and fortified caffeine beverage was an industry plant.

As Haley Hamilton noted in MEL’s recent oral history of the vodka Red Bull, combining alcohol with caffeine has a two-part effect: “The alcohol can dull the effects of the caffeine (boring), or more problematically, the caffeine can dull the effects of the alcohol, meaning you can drink way more than you normally would without feeling super-hammered.” Dobard is not personally familiar with Four Loko, but sympathizes with the plight of a generation that just wants to get as drunk as everyone else got to.

“There’s nothing inherently illicit about combining caffeine and alcohol,” he points out, adding that coffee liqueurs and coffee-based cocktails have been around for hundreds of years, commonly used as post-dinner digestifs. “The problem occurs when there’s so much of one or the other and it’s so available that it becomes easily and widely abused as a substance. That’s typically when government agencies step in and recognize it as a public health risk.”

(In 2010, the New York Times offered the following very funny, very ahistoric thought on the demand for Four Loko: “It has long vexed club-hoppers and partygoers: how do you stay awake while drinking alcohol late into the night? For years, alcohol and soda sufficed.” Imagine if we’d just cool-mom-blind-eyed everyone for choosing to drink gas station cocktails instead of doing cocaine!)

Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan commented on the persecution of Four Loko in 2010, writing that it was part of a “full-blown scapegoating operation,” and pointing out the obvious: “Isn’t the real issue here that kids are stupid?”

Caffeinated alcohol is a distinctly American flavor of stupid. We do it over and over.

That’s a fair question. Budweiser’s alcohol-and-caffeine drink BE was a hit in the United States in the early to mid-aughts but flopped immediately when tested overseas in 2006. Caffeinated alcohol is a distinctly American flavor of stupid. We do it over and over.

A can of Joose, which is 23.5 ounces, contains approximately 380 calories. (Compared to modern Four Loko, which is 660.) While both had 12 percent alcohol by volume and were fortified with caffeine, Joose had a few differentiating features, beyond the fact it was 40 cents cheaper and covered in skulls.

Sparks actually preceded both, and MillerCoors voluntarily removed the caffeine in 2008, before Four Loko even hit its stride. In the two years between its $215 million acquisition from the McKenzie River Corporation and this quiet surrender, Sparks had a 90 percent share of the “alcopop” market, which meant that with its death, Four Loko was primed to become an easy hit.

Today, even in the midst of the “wellness” boom, young people still post exuberantly about knocking back cans of Four Loko and making bad decisions, even though the caffeine has been removed and the current drink is no more dangerous than a wine cooler. In June 2016, long after Four Loko had been rereleased sans caffeine, the strange college journalism platform Odyssey Online published a guide to matching Four Loko flavors with your personality. “Gold Loko is a VERY IMPORTANT new flavor,” the possibly underage author wrote. “The people who drink these LOVE to live on the edge. They aren’t afraid of the challenge (of the added 2 percent alcohol volume).”

But it’s not special. None of it is special. I was a straitlaced high school soccer player during the Four Loko years, but I do remember, with a warm sort of disgust, the acrid taste of college ingenuity — tequila and blue Gatorade, whiskey and strawberry-kiwi Snapple, etc. There was no reason we couldn’t have chosen slightly less revolting combinations, except for the fact that it was kind of romantic not to. In 20 years, are you going to post throwback pics of a rum and Coke? It’s not shorthand for anything, and you would probably drink one now.

In November 2010, one of Four Loko’s creators, Chris Hunter, defended the drink vehemently to Fast Company, arguing that it had the same amount of caffeine as a Starbucks coffee, less alcohol than most craft beers, and less seductive packaging than a Bud Light Lime, and that dozens of other alcoholic beverages were available in the same 24-ounce cans. Asked about a widely publicized incident at Washington State University in which nine college students ended up hospitalized, with Four Loko cited throughout the police report, Hunter got even more defensive, telling reporter Austin Carr:

The police report showed there was supposedly illegal drugs at the party. That was mentioned about 14 times in the police report. There were multiple mentions of hard liquor, but there were only a few, maybe 2 to 3, mentions of Four Loko. It’s really unfair to say our drink was the cause of this.

The same month, his company reached a voluntary agreement with the New York State Liquor Authority to stop shipping Four Loko into the state, and the FDA issued a public warning about caffeine as an “unsafe additive” to alcoholic beverages, as well as private letters to four manufacturers — including Four Loko’s Phusion Projects — that stated, “[The] FDA is not aware of any publicly available data to establish affirmatively safe conditions of use for caffeine added directly to alcoholic beverages and packaged in a combined form.”

The FDA’s letter was sent to Charge Beverages Corporation (which made drinks called Core High Gravity HG Green and Core High Gravity HG Orange), New Century Brewing Company (which made the fortified beer Moonshot), and United Brands, which made Joose.

Jonathan Howland, a community health researcher at Boston University, told Science Daily just after the ban on Four Loko, “Although several manufacturers of caffeinated beer have withdrawn their products from the market, there is no sign that young people have decreased the practice of combining alcohol and energy drinks.”

There have been other gross party beverages meant to recapture the thrill of alcoholic energy drinks without drawing the same unwanted attention. Whipped Lightning, a combination of sugar, heavy cream, grain alcohol, and artificial flavoring had a brief heyday. Forty-proof chocolate milk did not quite. The super-cheap bottled sangria brand Capriccio had a moment, which the company leaned into, saying, “Believe the hype!” MEL’s Miles Klee recently sampled every flavor of a Mark Cuban-endorsed juice-box wine cooler called BeatBox, which has hideous, brightly colored marketing materials and a low price point, but concluded that its 11.1 percent alcohol content wasn’t really enough for anything other than an “unremarkable, if quietly pleasant weekend.”

In fact, even the FDA seems to be over the whole incident. When asked whether it would involve itself in the rise of alcohol-infused cold brew — such as those offered by the California-based Cafe Agave or the forthcoming offering from Skyy Vodka, announced March 15 — a spokesperson said the agency only considers products on a case-by-case basis, when action seems called for, and would have to get back to me.

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Source: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/3/15/18265724/four-loko-history-joose-sparks-red-bull-vodka-caffeine

[headlessbutnotqueueless]

☕, ♫

☕  - Do you prefer coffee or tea? Perhaps neither, or both?My family aren’t coffee drinkers, but my oldest brother picked it up when he graduated. Yoplait has/had coffee-flavored yogurt which tasted okay.I’m picky about my tea. I mostly hate tea, but hot mate is the bomb. I do like raspberry Snapple, though. Lipton sucks. Gag me with a spoon.We have mint tea patches at our house, though one section is succeeding at taking over the yard. Our cats love it when we mow.

♫ - Do you listen to music when you write? If yes, what kind of music, if no, why not?OMG YESI listen to music a lot. My tastes have a wide range, however. I adore instrumental, such as movie scores (Steve Jablonsky is a virtuoso). I like rock, but don’t like hard rock too much (Skillet and Dead By April are good, so is Sabaton). I’m not a huge fan of pop. Rap sucks because it’s just talking while music plays, and that has been appearing in some pop songs lately (I’m a snob).Songs in other languages are appealing, but I try to translate the lyrics first because songs lately have been getting quite foul (why the hell are Blurred Lines or the majority of Bruno Mars’ songs popular? They’re explicitly about rape and objectification of women). Oomph! is a perfect example of good foreign songs.

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Best Mocktail Ideas for January 2020

(Bloomberg) –Dave Arnold has been called the “mad genius” of bartenders, and Existing Conditions, his latest cocktail den in New York’s Greenwich Village, doesn’t disappoint: Arnold and his two co-founders went so far as to import water from Saratoga Springs, N.Y., to use in their Paloma cocktail. Then they re-carbonate the already sparkling water with carbon dioxide.

Still, the most eye-opening feature of the menu may be the list of non-alcoholic drinks, all given the same care as the boozy ones. They use such ingredients as leatherwood honey, Mt. Olympus tea, Champagne acid, and comice pear. For a drink described as a “bougie Snapple,” they mix clarified peaches, clarified lime, barley syrup, and umeboshi, or salted Japanese plums. The clarified fruit is enhanced with glycerin, which creates an alcohol-like viscosity. It takes a full day to prep the concoction.

Arnold says he got interested in elevating the quality of no-alcohol drinks after hearing a bartender dismiss one he was making. “He described it as ‘just a mocktail,’” Arnold says. “I hope I never treat guests with that level of disrespect.”

“Dry January” has gone from punchline to mantra for bars nationwide. The move to add more than a token non-alcoholic option is fueled by year-round demands for more sophisticated drinks aimed at the “sober curious,” as well as a way to get bodies into bar seats during the slowest month of the year. “We’ve added vegan and vegetarian menus,” says Clayton van Hooijdonk, food and beverage director at the Resort at Pelican Hill in Newport Beach, Calif. “It’s the same thing in beverages.”

David Ozgo, chief economist at the Distilled Spirits Council of America, says January on-premise sales in 2018 accounted for less than 7% of total annual on-premise sales. January sales that year were 20% lower than the average for the other 11 months of the year, and 30% lower than in December. “On-premise sales have traditionally been weak in January, as people get back to work after the holiday season and begin to pay down holiday bills,” he says.

The movement has also spawned a small but notable movement involving bars that are completely alcohol-free. Getaway, a Brooklyn spot identified by a “0%” sign out front, serves an upgrade on the usual seltzers and tonics inside an Instagram-ready interior. This month, Wildcrafters, a sober bar that encourages patrons to “come and get drunk on love with us,” opened its doors in Jacksonville, Fla., with kava, teas, and booze-free craft cocktails. The trend is even established in Ireland: The Virgin Mary debuted in Dublin last year.

Some bars are applying a sober-sensitive approach to decor, as well. This month, Marvel Bar in Minneapolis introduced a four-month “dry” series that will run through April. In addition to non-alcoholic drinks made with such ingredients as foraged milkweed shrub and cherry juice-steeped mushrooms, the bar is retooling its interior design. Gone are the 400 display bottles of booze; in their place are books and local foliage. “The challenge of abstaining from something you love, while having bottles front and center, can be overwhelming,” says Peder Schweigert, Marvel Bar’s general manager. “If you walk into a bar and are presented with flowers, that is a lot more welcoming.”

The $16 Mocktail

For bars that serve craft, no-proof drinks, the big question is how much to charge. As a rule of thumb, restaurants depend on alcohol to make up around 30% of sales. On one hand, bar owners note the labor and costs that customers aren’t aware of, including the price of premium ingredients such as fresh juices. There’s also the additional research and development that goes into creating drinks for which there are few existing recipes.

Still, the majority of customers base the value of a drink on its booze, which can be less expensive than the high-end ingredients that go into a well-balanced mocktail.

At Existing Conditions, all drinks, boozy or not, are priced at $16. Arnold says that, instead of getting complaints, customers acknowledge how carefully their alcohol-free drinks are made. “There’s always some part of those drinks that’s extremely costly or hard to source,” he says. “For us, the focus is on drinks that mimic the other characteristics of alcohol, meaning the mouthfeel, the textures, the sugar level.” That requires equipment and techniques that entail a certain level of expertise.

The Resort at Pelican Hill has three restaurants on its property in Newport Beach, Calif. Signature cocktails cost from $16 to $18; no-proof options cost up to $14. “If you present it nicely, with all the same things we do for cocktails, we get no push-back from guests,” says beverage director van Hooijdonk.

Others aim for a lower price point. Inside Manhattan’s Hudson Yards, the British-influenced Queensyard has new booze-free options that include one called Bubbles for Everyone, made with homemade non-alcoholic sparkling wine, Seedlip, and kola nut syrup. (The non-alcoholic sparkling wine is made by blending tea, apple juice, and verjus, then carbonating it.) They are priced at $9, compared to $17 for signature drinks. “I want customers to come back for this cocktail experience,” says beverage director Jeremy Le Blanche. “I want to make mocktails accessible for everyone.”

The Holdouts

Even as the non-alcoholic movement surges, some bars keep the drinks off their menus. Any craft bar with homemade syrups, fizzy waters, and fresh juices can conceivably whip up a no-proof drink. At this point, not putting them on the menu is often a conscious business decision. But it’s less about skepticism of the trend than about bar owners reading their clientele.

In New York’s East Village, the Mister Paradise bar has a customer base that skews young and bar-hopping. Managing partner Will Wyatt says putting a lower-priced non-alcoholic drink on the menu would cause unnecessary confusion on busy nights. “People wouldn’t even look at the header,” he explains. “They would just think they were getting a cheaper cocktail.” If he gets a request, though, Wyatt will create an elegant non-alcoholic drink. “I rarely charge them,” he says, “because it’s so rare. When it does happen, it’s a nice extra thing to do for not a lot of cost to the bar.”

Nearby, Mace is lauded for its refined ingredients such as rectified pomegranate, pea soda, and chamomile honey shrub, but it has no booze-free drinks on the menu. “People talk about non-alcoholic drinks,” says owner Nico de Soto. “But they are hard work, and the demand is very small.”

Sweetwater Social, a Manhattan bar with a party reputation, has also avoided booze-free drinks. “Our customers are coming in a late-night capacity,” owner Justin Noel says. “Non-alcoholic cocktails are the least of their concerns.” Still, he notes that demand for no-alcohol drinks has recently ticked up.

Nor is there much demand for booze-free drinks at Glorietta, in Jackson Hole, Wyo. which maintains a tight, 12-drink list. “Having just one non-alcoholic drink wouldn’t suit the tastes of all the non-drinkers,” observes general manager Chuck Greenwald. “You spend all this time creating a recipe that isn’t used that often.” Joshua Duncan, general manager of Denver tiki bar Adrift, echoes that sentiment: “We don’t get a lot of requests for non-alcoholic drinks.”

Almost every place that doesn’t list no-alcohol drinks on the menu will craft one on request. That’s even true at the Grill, a landmarked bar in midtown Manhattan where the specialty is martinis. But it doesn’t happen frequently, according to a bartender. Customers, he says, “want big glasses of gin.”

The post Best Mocktail Ideas for January 2020 appeared first on Businessliveme.com.

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Death by Diet Soda? Study prompting public angst

Death by Diet Soda?

A new study that links artificially sweetened beverages to premature death is prompting public angst. Some scientists say it has significant flaws.

By Andrew Jacobs

Does guzzling diet soda lead to an early demise?

There was a collective gasp among Coke Zero and Diet Pepsi drinkers this week after media reports highlighted a new study that found prodigious consumers of artificially sweetened drinks were 26 percent more likely to die prematurely than those who rarely drank sugar-free beverages.

The study, published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, followed 450,000 Europeans over 16 years and tracked mortality among soft-drink consumers of all persuasions — both those with a fondness for sugary beverages and those who favored sugar-free drinks.

Given the well-documented health effects of consuming too much sugar, it was little surprise the authors found that people who drank two or more glasses of sugar-sweetened beverages a day were eight percent more likely to die young compared to those who consumed less than one glass a month.

But what grabbed headlines, and prompted widespread angst, was the suggestion that drinking Diet Coke could be even more deadly than drinking Coca-Cola Classic.

“Putting our results in context with other published studies, it would probably be prudent to limit consumption of all soft drinks and replace them with healthier alternatives like water,” said Amy Mullee, a nutritionist at University College Dublin and one of 50 researchers who worked on the study, one of the largest of its kind to date.

The study is not a one-off. Over the past year, other research in the United States has found a correlation between artificially sweetened beverages and premature death.

The problem, experts say, is that these and other studies have been unable to resolve a key question: Does consuming drinks sweetened with aspartame or saccharin harm your health? Or could it be that people who drink lots of Diet Snapple or Sprite Zero lead a more unhealthy lifestyle to begin with?

A number of nutritionists, epidemiologists and behavioral scientists think the latter may be true. (It’s a theory that will be instantly recognizable to anyone who has guiltily ordered a Diet Coke to accompany their Double Whopper with cheese.)

“It could be that diet soda drinkers eat a lot of bacon or perhaps it’s because there are people who rationalize their unhealthy lifestyle by saying, ‘Now that I’ve had a diet soda, I can have those French fries,’” said Vasanti S. Malik, a researcher at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the lead author of a study in April that found that the link between artificial sweeteners and increased mortality in women was largely inconclusive. “This is a huge study, with a half million people in 10 countries, but I don’t think it adds to what we already know.”

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/06/health/diet-soda-health-death.html?fallback=0&recId=1QeYXDNCWWwmsQixl6bQfUGkElf&locked=0&geoContinent=NA&geoRegion=MA&recAlloc=control&geoCountry=US&blockId=home-discovery-vi-prg&imp_id=47967725&action=click&module=Discovery&pgtype=Homepage

© 2019 US Food Safety Corporation. No copyright claim is made for portions of this blog and linked items that are works of the United States Government, state governments or third parties.

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Death by Diet Soda? – The New York Times

Does guzzling diet soda lead to an early demise?

There was a collective gasp among Coke Zero and Diet Pepsi drinkers this week after media reports highlighted a new study that found prodigious consumers of artificially sweetened drinks were 26 percent more likely to die prematurely than those who rarely drank sugar-free beverages.

The study, published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, followed 450,000 Europeans over 16 years and tracked mortality among soft-drink consumers of all persuasions — both those with a fondness for sugary beverages and those who favored sugar-free drinks.

Given the well-documented health effects of consuming too much sugar, it was little surprise the authors found that people who drank two or more glasses of sugar-sweetened beverages a day were eight percent more likely to die young compared to those who consumed less than one glass a month.

But what grabbed headlines, and prompted widespread angst, was the suggestion that drinking Diet Coke could be even more deadly than drinking Coca-Cola Classic.

“Putting our results in context with other published studies, it would probably be prudent to limit consumption of all soft drinks and replace them with healthier alternatives like water,” said Amy Mullee, a nutritionist at University College Dublin and one of 50 researchers who worked on the study, one of the largest of its kind to date.

The study is not a one-off. Over the past year, other research in the United States has found a correlation between artificially sweetened beverages and premature death.

The problem, experts say, is that these and other studies have been unable to resolve a key question: Does consuming drinks sweetened with aspartame or saccharin harm your health? Or could it be that people who drink lots of Diet Snapple or Sprite Zero lead a more unhealthy lifestyle to begin with?

A number of nutritionists, epidemiologists and behavioral scientists think the latter may be true. (It’s a theory that will be instantly recognizable to anyone who has guiltily ordered a Diet Coke to accompany their Double Whopper with cheese.)

“It could be that diet soda drinkers eat a lot of bacon or perhaps it’s because there are people who rationalize their unhealthy lifestyle by saying, ‘Now that I’ve had a diet soda, I can have those French fries,’” said Vasanti S. Malik, a researcher at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the lead author of a study in April that found that the link between artificial sweeteners and increased mortality in women was largely inconclusive. “This is a huge study, with a half million people in 10 countries, but I don’t think it adds to what we already know.”

The authors of the JAMA paper tried to account for these risk factors by removing study participants who were smokers or obese, and they tried to improve its accuracy through statistical modeling.

But Dr. David Ludwig, an obesity specialist at Boston Children’s Hospital, said these so-called observational studies cannot really determine cause and effect. “Maybe artificial sweeteners aren’t increasing mortality,” he said. “Maybe it’s just that people with an increased risk of mortality, like those overweight or obese, are choosing to drink diet soda but, in the end, this doesn’t solve their weight problem and they die prematurely.”

Still, scientists say the alternative to observational studies — a clinical trial that randomly assigns participants to a sugary drinks group or a diet soda group — isn’t feasible.

“Clinical trials are considered the gold standard in science, but imagine asking thousands of people to stick to such a regimen for decades,” said Dr. Malik of Harvard. “Many people would drop out, and it would also be prohibitively expensive.”

Concerns about artificial sweeteners have been around since the 1970s, when studies found that large quantities of saccharin caused cancer in lab rats. The Food and Drug Administration issued a temporary ban on the sweetener, and Congress ordered up additional studies and a warning label, but subsequent research found the chemical to be safe for human consumption. More recently-created chemical sweeteners like aspartame and sucralose have also been extensively studied, with little evidence that they negatively impact human health, according to the F.D.A.

Some studies have even found a correlation between artificial sweeteners and weight loss, but others have suggested they may increase cravings for sugary foods.

“There’s no evidence they are harmful to people with a healthy diet who are trying to live a healthy lifestyle,” said Dr. Barry M. Popkin, a nutritionist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He and others remain concerned that giving diet beverages to young children might encourage a sweet tooth.

Still, many scientists say more research is needed to determine the long-term effects of consuming artificial sweeteners. Although Dr. Mullee, one of the authors of the study, cautioned against drawing stark conclusions from their data, she said the deleterious effects of artificial sweeteners can’t be ruled out, noting studies that suggest a possible link between aspartame and elevated levels of blood glucose and insulin in humans. “Right now the biological mechanisms are unclear but we’re hoping our research will spark further exploration,” she said.

For consumers, the mixed messaging can be confusing. Dr. Jim Krieger, the founding executive director of Healthy Food America, an advocacy group that presses municipalities to enact soda taxes and increase consumer access to fruits and vegetables, said the new study and others like it raise more questions than they answer.

“Gosh, at this point, you probably want to go with water, tea or unsweetened coffee and not take a chance on beverages we don’t know much about,” he said. “Certainly, you don’t want to drink sugary beverages because we know that these aren’t good for you.”

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Want to Lose Weight? Don’t Drink Your Calories

Have you heard the adage don’t drink your calories? Good advice actually. If you want to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight looking at what you drink is a good starting point. Maintaining a healthy weight for most people is really just tweaking a few things in their diet, and eliminating a drink here or there will be hardly noticeable after a few weeks of practice.

Let’s look at some examples of drinks and their calorie contributions over a year:

Beer – Do you enjoy a 6 pack over the week? 135 calories (avg) X 6 X 52 weeks = 42,120 calories or 12 lbs per year.

Wine – Do you savor an 8 ounce class of wine 5 days per week? 200 calories X 5 days X 52 Weeks or 52,000 calories or 14.85 lbs per year.

Soda – 1 can per day? 140 calories X 365 days = 51,110 calories or 14.6 lbs per year

Juice – Pour an 8 ounce glass of unsweetened O.J. every morning? 105 calories X 365 days = 38,325 calories or 10.95 lbs per year

Coffee – Are you like all those other bleary eyed customers waiting in line for your daily morning Tim Horton’s medium double/double Coffee fix? 210 calories X 365 days = 76,650 calories or 21.9 lbs. Much better off having a can of Soda at 6:30 am at least you only gained 14 lbs.

Now, do you get why looking at what you drink can make all the difference in the world to whether or not you are successful in weight maintenance! It really is that simple. People suffer by going on these crazy starvation diets. They lose the weight but eventually find themselves back at the same weight and not wanting to go back to the drudgery and pain of the diet again. Who would? If it’s as easy as cutting out one drink per day why wouldn’t you consider it? Let’s say you have been putting on 8 lbs per year for the last 5 years and have gained 40 lbs. This might seem like you have become the biggest glutton in the world right? Not really. It means you consumed only an extra 77 calories over your daily limit per day. A half a beer, 3 ounces of wine, a half can of soda per day. Not much. Take the can of soda as an example. If you are putting on 8 lbs per year and you now eliminate that can of soda per day you will lose 6.6 lbs in one year by doing nothing else but that. Yes it sounds simplistic I know, but you can’t really argue with the math.

As a trainer I see how not drinking your calories works all the time. We had a 12 week weight loss contest at our studio a couple of years ago. We would publish the results each week as to the percentage weight loss. Four weeks into the contest one of our clients was lagging at the bottom of contest. She really hadn’t bought into our pep talk about weight loss strategies but she decided to do just one thing; stop drinking beer for the duration of the contest. At the end of the 12 weeks she had gone from second last out of 25 participants to a 2nd place finish leapfrogging 22 people! Most people that I train who drink alcohol have amazing weight loss results if they can cut it out for a specific period or at least cut back over the long term.

Let’s switch gears and get onto diet soda. If you are a soda drinker and don’t mind the taste of diet soda you are probably thinking I will just make the switch. But here’s where it starts to get complicated. Most of us are aware that sugar substitutes aren’t too healthy. After all didn’t they prove that if a mouse drinks the equivalent of 100 diet pops a day they will develop cancer in 40 years or something absurd like that? I used to tell my clients if they wanted something sweet after dinner to eat those 5 calorie Jellos sweetened with sucralose. I would eat them too. If one wasn’t enough to satisfy my sweet tooth, I would eat a second or a third one. Why not, it would only be 15 calories. Probably more calories burned getting up to go the fridge right! After a while I stopped eating them though, because after two or three I would start to get dizzy. I didn’t know why but that was enough to tell me maybe eating something that made me dizzy wasn’t such a great idea. As you will see later in the article there was a lot happening in my body after consuming those little jello packs.

With new research out it seems not only is diet soda or artificially sweetened products not healthy but they can give you a pretty big belly too. A new study just released found people who drink diet soda put on three times as much belly fat as those who don’t. Three times!! And I thought I was doing my self a favor at the movie theater just drinking a diet soda all these years. Should have had a Snapple with an extra large popcorn with butter. I would have been better off! The San Antonio Longitudinal Study of Aging ( http://professional.diabetes.org/Abstracts_Display.aspx?CID=864889 ) spanned a period of nearly 10 years and tracked 750 people.

Another 14 year study of 66,118 women published in the American Journal of clinical Nutrition ( http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2013/01/30/ajcn.112.050997 ) found the following:

1. Diet sodas raised the risk of diabetes more than sugar-sweetened sodas!

2. Women who drank one 12-ounce diet soda had a 33 percent increased risk of Type 2 diabetes, and women who drank one 20-ounce soda had a 66 percent increased risk.

3. Women who drank diet sodas drank twice as much as those who drank sugar-sweetened sodas because artificial sweeteners are more addictive and are hundreds to thousands of times sweeter than regular sugar.

4. The average diet soda drinker consumes three diet drinks a day.

The theory is that the sweetness of diet drinks tricks the body into thinking its ingesting sugar, causing a release of insulin (fat store hormone) that just loves to store that fat in your belly. In a related article by Dr. Mark Hyman he also states “It (artificial sweeteners) also confuses and slows your metabolism down, so you burn fewer calories every day”. And if that’s not bad enough, he says “It makes you hungrier and crave even more sugar and starchy carbs like bread and pasta”.

What’s that question I hear you asking? “What can I drink then?” “How about water? Just kidding”!!! Although if you are cutting out other drinks you have to make sure you are getting enough liquid in your day. If you like averages, men should drink about 13 – 8 ounce cups, and women 9 cups per day.

Let’s go back to the types of drinks from above and give you some new strategies.

Beer

• Cutting consumption in half to three beers per week would save you 6 lbs per year.

• If it’s more of a social thing consider light beers (apologize for non-Canadians) like Molson Canadian 67. You guessed it – 67 calories per beer. If you are still drinking your 6 pack per week it saves you 6 lbs per year

Wine

• There is really not a low calorie substitute that I know of. Skinny Girl products get some press but they only save you 10 calories per 5 ounce glass of wine. Best we can do with wine is cut back on consumption.

Alcohol General

• If you cut back or eliminate your alcohol prepare to start looking around the kitchen for sweets. Alcohol loads a lot of sugar in our bodies and when it’s not being delivered any more the body is going to start asking you to replace it. It will take about two weeks of will power to get over this initial sugar urge.

Soda

• If you like the fizz you can go with an unsweetened sparkling water that you can get at any grocery store • Whole Foods have a lot of sugar free and artificial sweetener free sodas.

Juice

• If you are like me and you can’t stomach water in the middle of the night or first thing in the morning. I mix 8 ounces of water with two ounces of non-sweetened cranberry juice which is only 26 calories. It gives me a little of the sugar my body wants in the morning with a fraction of the calories. I could never go back to drinking full strength juice now. I find it overwhelmingly sweet. Try diluting your favorite juice a little bit at a time over the coming weeks until you get used to it. Eventually like me I bet you will prefer it that way.

Coffee

First off let me say I have not found a good sugar substitute for your coffee. And cream is just too calorie dense. The double cream in a Tim Horton’s medium double double coffee accounts for 150 of the 210 calories. Go with a medium double milk for 40 calories and you have saved yourself 90 calories or 9.38 lbs over the year if you have one everyday.

• At home you can go with almond milk. 2 ounces of unsweetened almond milk is only 8.6 calories. My wife loves this in her coffee or tea. I on the other hand find it disgusting. Give it a try and see for your self.

• If you like the creaminess of cream then you may want to go with unsweetened coconut milk. 2 ounces will give you only about 10 calories.

So let’s have a toast to not drinking our calories! Toasting with that water bottle though just doesn’t have the same ring as a nice crystal wine glass. Oh well.

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Want to Lose Weight? Don’t Drink Your Calories

Have you heard the adage don’t drink your calories? Good advice actually. If you want to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight looking at what you drink is a good starting point. Maintaining a healthy weight for most people is really just tweaking a few things in their diet, and eliminating a drink here or there will be hardly noticeable after a few weeks of practice.

Let’s look at some examples of drinks and their calorie contributions over a year:

Beer – Do you enjoy a 6 pack over the week? 135 calories (avg) X 6 X 52 weeks = 42,120 calories or 12 lbs per year.

Wine – Do you savor an 8 ounce class of wine 5 days per week? 200 calories X 5 days X 52 Weeks or 52,000 calories or 14.85 lbs per year.

Soda – 1 can per day? 140 calories X 365 days = 51,110 calories or 14.6 lbs per year

Juice – Pour an 8 ounce glass of unsweetened O.J. every morning? 105 calories X 365 days = 38,325 calories or 10.95 lbs per year

Coffee – Are you like all those other bleary eyed customers waiting in line for your daily morning Tim Horton’s medium double/double Coffee fix? 210 calories X 365 days = 76,650 calories or 21.9 lbs. Much better off having a can of Soda at 6:30 am at least you only gained 14 lbs.

Now, do you get why looking at what you drink can make all the difference in the world to whether or not you are successful in weight maintenance! It really is that simple. People suffer by going on these crazy starvation diets. They lose the weight but eventually find themselves back at the same weight and not wanting to go back to the drudgery and pain of the diet again. Who would? If it’s as easy as cutting out one drink per day why wouldn’t you consider it? Let’s say you have been putting on 8 lbs per year for the last 5 years and have gained 40 lbs. This might seem like you have become the biggest glutton in the world right? Not really. It means you consumed only an extra 77 calories over your daily limit per day. A half a beer, 3 ounces of wine, a half can of soda per day. Not much. Take the can of soda as an example. If you are putting on 8 lbs per year and you now eliminate that can of soda per day you will lose 6.6 lbs in one year by doing nothing else but that. Yes it sounds simplistic I know, but you can’t really argue with the math.

As a trainer I see how not drinking your calories works all the time. We had a 12 week weight loss contest at our studio a couple of years ago. We would publish the results each week as to the percentage weight loss. Four weeks into the contest one of our clients was lagging at the bottom of contest. She really hadn’t bought into our pep talk about weight loss strategies but she decided to do just one thing; stop drinking beer for the duration of the contest. At the end of the 12 weeks she had gone from second last out of 25 participants to a 2nd place finish leapfrogging 22 people! Most people that I train who drink alcohol have amazing weight loss results if they can cut it out for a specific period or at least cut back over the long term.

Let’s switch gears and get onto diet soda. If you are a soda drinker and don’t mind the taste of diet soda you are probably thinking I will just make the switch. But here’s where it starts to get complicated. Most of us are aware that sugar substitutes aren’t too healthy. After all didn’t they prove that if a mouse drinks the equivalent of 100 diet pops a day they will develop cancer in 40 years or something absurd like that? I used to tell my clients if they wanted something sweet after dinner to eat those 5 calorie Jellos sweetened with sucralose. I would eat them too. If one wasn’t enough to satisfy my sweet tooth, I would eat a second or a third one. Why not, it would only be 15 calories. Probably more calories burned getting up to go the fridge right! After a while I stopped eating them though, because after two or three I would start to get dizzy. I didn’t know why but that was enough to tell me maybe eating something that made me dizzy wasn’t such a great idea. As you will see later in the article there was a lot happening in my body after consuming those little jello packs.

With new research out it seems not only is diet soda or artificially sweetened products not healthy but they can give you a pretty big belly too. A new study just released found people who drink diet soda put on three times as much belly fat as those who don’t. Three times!! And I thought I was doing my self a favor at the movie theater just drinking a diet soda all these years. Should have had a Snapple with an extra large popcorn with butter. I would have been better off! The San Antonio Longitudinal Study of Aging ( http://professional.diabetes.org/Abstracts_Display.aspx?CID=864889 ) spanned a period of nearly 10 years and tracked 750 people.

Another 14 year study of 66,118 women published in the American Journal of clinical Nutrition ( http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2013/01/30/ajcn.112.050997 ) found the following:

1. Diet sodas raised the risk of diabetes more than sugar-sweetened sodas!

2. Women who drank one 12-ounce diet soda had a 33 percent increased risk of Type 2 diabetes, and women who drank one 20-ounce soda had a 66 percent increased risk.

3. Women who drank diet sodas drank twice as much as those who drank sugar-sweetened sodas because artificial sweeteners are more addictive and are hundreds to thousands of times sweeter than regular sugar.

4. The average diet soda drinker consumes three diet drinks a day.

The theory is that the sweetness of diet drinks tricks the body into thinking its ingesting sugar, causing a release of insulin (fat store hormone) that just loves to store that fat in your belly. In a related article by Dr. Mark Hyman he also states “It (artificial sweeteners) also confuses and slows your metabolism down, so you burn fewer calories every day”. And if that’s not bad enough, he says “It makes you hungrier and crave even more sugar and starchy carbs like bread and pasta”.

What’s that question I hear you asking? “What can I drink then?” “How about water? Just kidding”!!! Although if you are cutting out other drinks you have to make sure you are getting enough liquid in your day. If you like averages, men should drink about 13 – 8 ounce cups, and women 9 cups per day.

Let’s go back to the types of drinks from above and give you some new strategies.

Beer

• Cutting consumption in half to three beers per week would save you 6 lbs per year.

• If it’s more of a social thing consider light beers (apologize for non-Canadians) like Molson Canadian 67. You guessed it – 67 calories per beer. If you are still drinking your 6 pack per week it saves you 6 lbs per year

Wine

• There is really not a low calorie substitute that I know of. Skinny Girl products get some press but they only save you 10 calories per 5 ounce glass of wine. Best we can do with wine is cut back on consumption.

Alcohol General

• If you cut back or eliminate your alcohol prepare to start looking around the kitchen for sweets. Alcohol loads a lot of sugar in our bodies and when it’s not being delivered any more the body is going to start asking you to replace it. It will take about two weeks of will power to get over this initial sugar urge.

Soda

• If you like the fizz you can go with an unsweetened sparkling water that you can get at any grocery store • Whole Foods have a lot of sugar free and artificial sweetener free sodas.

Juice

• If you are like me and you can’t stomach water in the middle of the night or first thing in the morning. I mix 8 ounces of water with two ounces of non-sweetened cranberry juice which is only 26 calories. It gives me a little of the sugar my body wants in the morning with a fraction of the calories. I could never go back to drinking full strength juice now. I find it overwhelmingly sweet. Try diluting your favorite juice a little bit at a time over the coming weeks until you get used to it. Eventually like me I bet you will prefer it that way.

Coffee

First off let me say I have not found a good sugar substitute for your coffee. And cream is just too calorie dense. The double cream in a Tim Horton’s medium double double coffee accounts for 150 of the 210 calories. Go with a medium double milk for 40 calories and you have saved yourself 90 calories or 9.38 lbs over the year if you have one everyday.

• At home you can go with almond milk. 2 ounces of unsweetened almond milk is only 8.6 calories. My wife loves this in her coffee or tea. I on the other hand find it disgusting. Give it a try and see for your self.

• If you like the creaminess of cream then you may want to go with unsweetened coconut milk. 2 ounces will give you only about 10 calories.

So let’s have a toast to not drinking our calories! Toasting with that water bottle though just doesn’t have the same ring as a nice crystal wine glass. Oh well.

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Source by Roy Gowans

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