You eat healthy and certainly not too much. Yet you are not happy with your health or weight. Have you ever asked yourself:am I drinking healthy?
Not only food influences your weight and your health, your drinking behavior also counts. The drinks you tap down in a day can affect how you feel and whether you can still fit in your pants. Without realizing it, you can get a lot of calories and unhealthy nutrients from a few glasses. Waste of your healthy diet! So time for a check:which drinks are good for you and which are less healthy?
Read also: '11 reasons to drink ginger water or tea'
Drinking has two purposes:on the one hand you regulate your fluid balance, on the other hand drinking supplies certain substances to your body. Marianne Geleijnse is professor of nutrition and cardiovascular disease at Wageningen University.
According to her, by drinking sufficient and healthy water, you can not only prevent dehydration, but also reduce the risk of diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity.
Geleijnse:“For a healthy fluid balance you need an average of one and a half to two liters of fluid a day. Your body loses moisture through breathing, going to the toilet, sweating, and so on.” To supplement this, it is therefore important that you drink enough. “The first signal that your body is not getting enough fluids is that you will urinate less,” says Geleijnse. “If the moisture deficiency lasts for a long time, you slowly start to dry out. More and more, until you get symptoms. You will feel drowsy, your skin will become less elastic. Drinking is especially important during intensive exercise or in hot weather. Then you lose moisture even faster.”
It is clear that moisture is vital for a healthy body. But what is healthy to drink and what is not?
Chances are you think water is the best choice. But is that true? Geleijnse:“It is not necessary to drink only water. All drinks count, because everything contains moisture.” According to her, water is certainly healthy because it is low in calories, which is beneficial because many people are overweight. In addition, water does not contain any unfavorable substances such as sugars.
But according to Geleijnse, water also contains no substances that really benefit your body. Water is neutral; coffee and tea, on the other hand, are plant products that contain bioactive substances and are useful. Geleijnse:“When you drink coffee or tea, you get extra healthy nutrients in addition to moisture. Coffee and tea contain polyphenols, which are substances that can be good for your blood vessels or can protect against diabetes.”
The Health Council also calls coffee and tea healthy drinks. According to Geleijnse, three to six cups of coffee or tea a day are an excellent choice. With coffee, however, you should make sure that it is filtered coffee, from a device with a paper filter. “Coffee from the percolator or an espresso machine is less healthy, because it contains fatty substances that you cannot catch with a machine without a filter. If you ingest these substances, the risk of elevated cholesterol increases. Even if it is only in small quantities. You can of course make coffee and tea very unhealthy yourself by adding sugar and bad types of milk powder. Black coffee or regular tea in particular count as healthy drinks.”
There are also negative stories about coffee and tea, for example they have a diuretic or constipating effect. Nonsense, according to Geleijnse:“Caffeine in coffee and tea stimulates your bladder a bit, so that you have to go to the toilet faster. But you don't lose any more moisture because of them and they don't dry you out either." You don't have to be afraid of an overdose of caffeine, says Geleijnse. “You can suffer from caffeine, because not all people break it down equally quickly. People who spend longer with caffeine in their blood can become overstimulated. They may feel agitated or have trouble falling asleep.”
With how many cups of coffee or tea this effect occurs, differs per person. But according to the professor, caffeine is not bad for your health. “Tea contains less caffeine, about 30 mg per cup compared to 80 mg in coffee. Some people don't want to drink coffee before going to sleep and therefore make tea. But with a few cups you get the same amount of caffeine.”
What about fruit juices? Geleijnse:“It is better to just eat fruit out of hand. Fruit juices are high in sugar and they are quick calories. They are also not very satiating. If you eat the fruit yourself, at least your body still has work to chew, digest the fiber, and so on. As a result, you eat a lot of it less quickly, which is ultimately better for your body weight.”
According to Geleijnse, many fruit juices, fresh or not fresh, fall into the soft drinks category, and they are not healthy. Is there a difference between regular and light drinks? Geleijnse:“It is better to take the diet soft drinks. Then you don't get all the added sugars that contribute to the risk of obesity and diabetes. What about the sugar substitute aspartame? “There have never been any indications that aspartame is unhealthy,” says Geleijnse. “We do not see anywhere in long-term studies that people who drink diet soft drinks develop cancer or other conditions.”
Good to know:diet soft drinks do contain acids, just like regular soft drinks. Those acids can cause dental erosion. That means that you dissolve tooth enamel.
Finally:is that glass of red wine healthy or not for your blood vessels? Geleijnse:“It used to be thought that drinking a glass of red wine every day would reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. We now know that the wine that is supposed to be good for your heart does increase the risk of breast cancer.” Geleijnse's advice:“Don't drink if you've never drunk. If you already did this, have a good glass of wine (or beer), but stick to one.”
Energy drinks provide a lot of useless calories. According to Geleijnse, it contains a lot of sugars. The caffeine boost doesn't do anything special for your health either. “You are a little extra alert, which can be an advantage when you have to concentrate. But that effect is short-term, in the long term an energy drink does nothing for you."
Some drinks can even be dangerous due to a large amount of stimulants. “That's why you should always check the label to see what exactly is in such a can.”
If you exercise intensively, it is best to supplement with salts in addition to moisture. Isotonic sports drinks are suitable for that. According to the Nutrition Center, the carbohydrates in these drinks can be absorbed relatively quickly, you use them immediately during exercise. According to Geleijnse, a basic sports activity can do your body just fine on water, coffee or tea. “Drinking extra is a good idea,” she says. “You sweat more, so it's best to supplement that with some water.”
What's healthier? Water with or without carbon dioxide? Researchers from the Palestinian Birzeit University discovered that carbonated water can trigger your hunger hormone. It will make you eat more, but the water itself is just as healthy as water without bubbles. According to British researchers, it is a myth that carbon dioxide in sparkling mineral water can damage your tooth enamel if you drink a lot of it.
Black tea and green tea contain about the same amount of caffeine (30 mg per cup). If you want to moderate with caffeine, drink herbal tea. It contains no caffeine, because it contains no leaves of the tea plant. Herbal tea is an infusion of dried plants, herbs and/or spices, such as rooibos or chamomile.
