Whether you are on a hardcore diet trying to lose major pounds or just someone trying to stay in good shape, you should be aware that there are a lot of so-called “healthy” drinks out there that will do you more harm than good. To help you steer clear of these devilish drinks, Men’s Health has compiled a small list of 5 of some of the most unhealthy drinks. The drinks, inside…
5. Worst “Healthy” Drink
Glaceau VitaminWater (any flavor 20oz bottle)
130 calories, 33 grams of sugar.
Vitamins and water might seem like a good idea but what they don’t advertise is that this water contains nearly as much calories and sugar as a can of soda. It should be no surprise that this stuff is made by The Coca-Cola Company.
4. Worst Juice Imposter
Arizona Kiwi Strawberry (23.5 oz can)
360 calories, 84 grams of sugar.
These bottles which are just 5 percent juice cost 99 cents which makes them one of the cheapest source of empty calories in the country.
3. Worst Smoothie
Jamba Juice Peanut Butter Moo’d Power Smoothie (30 oz)
169 grams of sugar, 30 grams of fat
Whether you call it a smoothie or a milk shake, it has more sugar than a bag of chocolate chips.
2. Worst Summer Cocktail
Pina Colada
625 calories, 75 grams of sugar
Because of the super sweet pineapple juice and fatty coconut milk, the only wise thing to consume here may be the garnish. Try a lime daiquiri or mojito instead and save 400 calories.
1. The Unhealthiest Drink In America
Baskin Robbin’s Large Heath Bar Shake (32. oz)
2,310 calories, 266 grams of sugar, 108 grams of fat
73 ingredients go into this milk shake.
66 teaspoons of sugar.
11 Heath bars equal the calories in this shake
8-12 minutes to consume this drink.
240 minutes on a treadmill running at a moderate pace to burn it off.
America’s Unhealthiest Drinks Exposed [Men's Health] (Thanks to Robert!)
(Photo: Getty)
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glaceau is very very popular with teens, too bad they dont know they are rotting their teeth out…
oh wait….maybe they do….
makes a can of coke look good doesn’t it?
160 calories for a can
42g of sugar
best of all it’s fat free!! and safe for carb enhanced diets!
@44 in a Row: This explains why my friend and his bro are so healthy, it’s all the Guinness!
The average beer has 5 calories, all your daily vitamins, and the protein you need to workout the next morning. At least thats what I tell myself. Mind over body.
Did they ask if any of these drinks have electrolytes ?
Electrolytes are good for you …right ?
@darkryd: the Baskin-Robbins shake doesn’t claim to be healthy. Why do you think they do make such a claim?
It’s a HEATH BAR shake, not a “health bar” shake.
Also for all you jagermeister abusers out there, it’s good for settling your stomach. Germans take a shot after a big meal. They don’t really binge drink that stuff.
@Front_Towards_Enemy: Are you quoteing “Idiocracy?”
I’m sorry guys, but the Vitamin Water that I have shows only 18 grams of
sugar, not 32.
@44 in a Row: Vitamin B also keeps mosquitos away. Guinness FTW.
@silencedotcom: I’ve always wondered that also.
Remember. Cookies are a sometimes treat.
@opsomath: Nope. Crystalline fructose is indirectly made from corn, in that it’s made from a fructose-enriched corn syrup. In my mind crystalline fructose is worse than HFCS – at least HFCS is metabolized in a way similar to sugar. High-fructose diets have been implicated in all kinds of bad physiological effects.
And recently I’d started getting Vitamin Water because I wanted SOMETHING healthy going into me. WTF.
It’d be interesting to see where Starbucks and all of its clones fall into the “worst drinks” category.
Vitamin water = Get some water, drop some vitamins in it. solved.
@Bladefist: I like the cut of your jib.
@battra92: Try drinking water without ice at room temperature. That might help.
@Bladefist:
Ha ha. Vitamin Water: It’s what plants crave!
@Ash78: I remember UltraFuel. I used to drink it during football games, tasted like Gatorade syrup but not as sweet. Like if you added 2 gallons of water, you’d get gatorade.
@synergy: Not really a good argument. Some people die from eating nuts, but that doesn’t mean they are bad for you, only the people with the allergy. Same goes for diabetics.
If something is “almost as unhealthy as soda,” then I expect to see soda further down the list. If I don’t, you are a moron.
@Front_Towards_Enemy: I prefer Brawndo myself.
This whole movement to ‘expose’ how bad fast food and drinks are for you is kind of silly IMO. What, you don’t notice the fact that your clothes don’t fit and/or you have trouble walking up stairs or getting through doorways? Your mind can’t easily associate that with your diet of McDonald’s and Jamba Juice? Really?
This BR shake is a monster.
check out its “Nutritional” values on the BR site: [www.baskinrobbins.com]
it is 32fl oz!! its like almost a liter!!!
@rmz: What the hell?? You don’t put sugar in green tea!!! What are these companies thinking?
The local paper did an article like this not to long ago.
It was the same type of thing saying you don’t realize how many calories in a day you drink. Funny thing is even though one of the big sticking points of the article was how serving size on drinks doesn’t corelate to bottle size when they did their little compare and contrast on drinks they made vitamin water look much better then it is because they used the serving portion for it and bottle portion for every other drink.
I hate to say it, but that BR shake sounds really good…
Vitamin Water’s basically a substitute for Gatorade as far as I’m concerned… and it’s worlds better than Gatorade. It only has half the sugar of a same-size Coke, too, despite what the original post says.
Cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup? No artifical coloring? Yeah, it has sugar. This is good, at least for what I use it for.
If people don’t realize it has a decent amount of sugar after drinking it -and- they don’t read the bottle, that’s their fault.
@lastingsmilledge: Sobe Lifewater tastes like Robitussin though. I haven’t tried H20. Vitamin Water is still the cheapest of the bunch unfortunately. I get them for like $.75/each at BJs… sadly I was living a lie. Back to Propel or (god forbid) tap water for me.
I’ve never heard of any of these libations, except generic pina coladas — and I hate coconut. I enjoy Sam Adams beer and an occasional Coke Zero. Hands off these, food fascists!
@44 in a Row: I usually drink a Guinness or any draught beer whenever I have an upset stomach since it actually soothes the pain.
Lite beer will always taste terrible no matter how few calories it has.
@Bladefist: Yep Idiocracy it is.
What is making me giggle right now is when they quote the contents of the BR Heath shake, all I can think of is the Shit demon from “Dogma” is really that shake.
@ViperBorg: unfortch, snapple is also full ‘o sugar (of the high fructose corn syrup variety). so snapple is not my friend : ( it does taste yummy though…
one of the awful things many of the drink companies do that irritate me is to label a bottle you would naturally think of as a “serving” (no matter what the size) and list that bottle as multiple servings. someone above mentioned their vitamin water having less grams of sugar than cited in the post. i don’t have one in front of me, but i know each bottle of VW is listed as at least two servings. so whatever is in the breakdown of calories & vitamins & stuff has to be multiplied by the number of servings.
i think they do it so they can appear to be low- or moderate-calorie drinks — if you only do a quick scan of the label.
i’m a big-time label reader.
I drink filtered tap water. And I use gatorade powder mixes for electrolytes for my marathon training runs. And I have a reuseable sports bottle. It costs me about 10 cents a serving.
Buying the bottled stuff is 10-20x more expensive and wasteful.
@wallapuctus: tap water isn’t bad once you get used to it
You can flavor it with slices of lemon or cucumber to spice it up. Plus, it saves on all those empty plastic bottles.
OH. It took me a couple minutes to realize I was reading “health” instead of “Heath.” The 2k calories now makes sense, but still makes me vomitous.
@amyschiff: Often cases, tap water is actually healthier than bottled water since it has the minerals that the bottled kind lacks. Most bottled water is basically “dead water.”
I allow myself two Jones sodas (180 calories a can) a day, because I only drink water otherwise and the flavor is worth it.
This is mainly because Jones uses real sugar and has been anti-HFCS for years.
I don’t expect the Arizona fruit drinks to actually have a lot of fruit juice anyway.
I don’t really trust Vitamin Water because of the distilled water part.
My favorite drink, Sierra Springs Water. Ah how refreshing.
@amyschiff: I recycle my bottles but not buying them in the first place is probably the best, environmentally.
*sigh* Damn you delicious poison.
It should be illegal for any restaurant to offer anything like the Health Bar shake, that is beyond ridiculous.
uh, opsomath, sucrose is still sucrose whether from a beet or cane. fructose is still fructose whether from tuti fruity or corn. both are metabolized in our amazing bodies the same way. both contain calories to operate our amazing bodies. both can make us chubby. some fruitcakes out there seem to think sucrose is good, while fructose is bad. can’t have it both ways, friends. sucrose AND fructose are either good or bad, NOT either/or. the fruitcakes need to do a little research.
Breach, making them illegal is a bit too far. They should have a
health warning on them. I’d rather smoke a pack of cigarettes than drink
one of those.
@LVP: Try drinking water without ice at room temperature. That might help.
Yeah, I’ll have to try that. I will sometimes throw a lemon in there or so a 10/90 mixture of grapejuice and seltzer.
@Breach: WHOA, whoa, illegal? Why should it be illegal? I workout 6 days a week and have a very active job. I can do 50 pull-ups. Why shouldn’t I be able to buy one of these if I want it? Fatties should be held accountable. Maybe it should be illegal for fatties to buy this item versus being illegal to offer it for sale. But no, too many fatties would be embarassed when they were refused. “I’m just big boned, GIMME HEATH BAR SMOOTHIY NOMNOMNOMNOMNOM!”
Wow, what a blatant bias against Vitamin Water.
I don’t drink it but why do they compare 12oz of Coke vs 20oz of Vitamin water? It still has 1/2 the sugar of Coke and slightly more than 1/2 the calories ounce for ounce.
To add, Sobe Lifewater and Snapple antioxidant water have 31/30 grams of sugar and 150/125cal per bottle (20oz). Im not sure how Vitamin water is so evil now.
Vitamin Water wasn’t always made by Coke; Coke just recently bought them out. Not that I’m defending them; their stuff tastes nasty.
If I want flavored water, I tend to go with Bot Water (sure, it’s aimed at kids, but it kills my post-workout headache crazy quick). Found it at Whole Foods a little while back and have been addicted.
[www.botbeverages.com]
12 oz, on 9g of sugars, 40 calories, no fat (aside from sugar, but they never list that), and some B vitamins thrown in. I’m in love with the Grape and Berry flavors.
I’d like to know where you guys got that info on Vitamin Water. I’m staring at one right now and the label says 50 Calories and 13g sugar.
No surprise on Jamba Juice — all their stuff is terrible. They add a couple of scoops of ice cream or sherbet to everything and call it “healthy.”