If our article on America’s most unhealthy drinks left you confused and thirsty, Health Magazine has assembled a list of the 10 healthiest beverages. The list is primarily based on each beverage’s concentration of anti-oxidants. Anti-oxidants are thought to neutralize free-radicals which can cause cell damage. One good rule of thumb is that fruit with a vivid color will be high in anti-oxidants. Be careful of over-consumption because many of the juices on the list contain a lot of natural sugar, so at some point you can mitigate a juice’s health benefits if you drink excessive amounts. Experts recommend drinking 1 to 2 six-ounce glasses of juice a day in combination with whole fruits for optimal health benefits. The list, inside…
10. Apple juice
Clarified apple juice is thought to have less nutritional benefit than unclarified apple juice.
9. Tea
Tea is said to do everything from inhibiting bad breath to boosting the immune system.
8. Orange juice
Oranges and other citrus fruits are a rich source of Vitamin C and flavanoids.
7. Cranberry juice
Cranberries are also a good source of Vitamin C. There is research to support the myth that cranberry juice can help prevent urinary tract infections. It is thought to help prevent bacteria from sticking to the bladder wall.
6. Açaí juice
Pronounced (ah-sci-ee), it is a rainforest berry that grows on palm trees the Amazon.
5. Black cherry juice
There is evidence that black cherry juice may diminish exercise-induced muscle injuries.
4. Blueberry juice
Blueberries are high in fiber and low in calories. Be the life of the party with funky blue teeth.
3. Concord grape juice
There is some research to support that grape juice is good for the heart and helps reduce blood pressure.
2. Red wine
What’s better than healthy booze? Does this mean you should drink a lot of wine? No, experts recommend no more than 2 glasses a day since too much alcohol can create health problems.
1. Pomegranate juice
According to CBS, “Pomegranate is the healthiest of them all because it contains the most of every type of antioxidant. It wins in all categories. And it’s thought that it might do some very good things; it may protect against some cancers, such as prostate cancer. It might also modify heart disease risk factors, and it could be healthy for your heart. So pomegranate was the clear winner. “
Pomegranate Ranked Healthiest Fruit Juice [CBS]
Pomegranate Juice is Packed With Antioxidants [Health Magazine]
Fab 4: juices that serve up a bounty of health benefits [BNet]
(Photo: Getty)
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What about lemonade? Its got fruit!
@trioxinaddict: You need to watch store-brand generic tea, lots of it is made from powder.
Publix is brewed, Red Diamond is brewed, T.G. Lee is made from mix and tastes like it’s made from dirt.
@Ssscorpion: no. no it does not.
I was hoping to see water on here-but it does it not count? Is it like calling white a color or something?
I drink mostly water, occasionally sweet tea. But I fill up my Brita pitcher just about every day, and I live alone. I stopped drinking soda and tried to drink some a day or two ago and it tasted OK, but then I got the weirdest headache and felt crappy after less than half a can of Diet Coke with lime. So I tossed it. Not saying I’m superior to anyone else, but it’s weird how your body gets used to certain things and punishes you if you deviate from it.
Wasn’t there just a study recently that showed that anti-oxidants have a much lower impact on total heath that previously thought. I recall that it said something like as long as you have enough of them that you don’t get scurvy, you don’t get any benefit from having more. It seems like new research is pointing towards Vitamin D as being the new “wonder nutrient,” but this stuff all seems to change and end up being pointless in the end.
@darkryd: Only if you overdo it. Anything with calories will make you fat if you eat/drink too much of it and aren’t active.
Açaà juice? Really, now. I only ever see that stuff at Jamba Juices and listed in products that contain GUARANTEED 100MG NATURAL ANTIOXIDANTS IN EACH SERVING!!!!!!!111LOL. Somehow, people managed to be more-or-less healthy for hundreds of years without pomegranite juice or açaà extract.
What ever happened to just eating a balanced diet? It’s not like that açaà smoothie you just drank is going to offset the extra value meal you have for lunch, folks.
Also I would be willing to be that just about any kind of fresh fruit is probably better for you than açaà or pomegranate juice, both of which are usually heavily sweetened. Even unsweetened fruit juice still has a lot of calories – drinking it as a beverage along with food is a good way to gain weight.
It’s all about the tea, baby! I’m a big tea drinker. Though frankly I don’t do it for the health. It just tastes great and it amazes me how many flavor varieties you can make out of the exact same plant.
I’m terribly picky mind you. I just buy my tea from a fancy costly tea shop. Aren’t I classy.
They left out coffee, which is very high in antioxidants. Is this an anti-java prejudice?
[www.physorg.com]
As others have said: this list is pretty lame. There isn’t even any discussion of what antioxidants *are* or what health benefits they might confer. And the idea of drinking juice for fiber is mostly ridiculous. What do you think you’re straining out of the plant to make the juice? It’s hard to imagine someone being better off drinking any of these juices than if they’d simply eaten the fruit instead — it’d mean less sugar and more fiber at the very least.
More to the point, this piecemeal approach to health is silly. There is the question of *enough* with respect to vitamins and minerals, but that is irrelevant for anyone eating an even vaguely balanced diet (or capable of downing a multivitamin). Once you satisfy that condition, the idea that getting more of a particular food will improve your health is, by and large, pretty dumb. Changing the proportion of various foods in your diet — juice instead of soda, say — may be a good idea. Simply downing an extra “healthy” item is unlikely to do much of anything.
Those looking for healthier beverage options would probably be best-served by training themselves to enjoy the taste of water (forgetting about the “triple osmotic” ridiculousness mentioned above, to which minerals are actually reintroduced — perfectly pure water tastes awful, as anyone who’s bought a jug of distilled H2O from the grocer can attest). It’s not hard! I don’t mean to imply that water will help you live forever, but at least it’ll provide something to drink that won’t make you any fatter, unlike the juices listed above. Seriously: do you really think those antioxidants are so good for you as to offset the insulin shock produced by all that sugar? Or, if you drink enough of that stuff, the negative cardiovascular effects related to the weight produced by all those extra calories?
FWIW, I’m also a fan of black coffee, which has been shown to have hepatoprotective effects (minimizes cirrhosis in alcoholics) and neuroprotective effects (there’s indication that coffee drinkers are less likely to suffer from Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s). Hey, look at that — actual, specific health benefits rather than vague allusions to antioxidants!
There’s no such thing as “boosting the immune system”. It has no medical meaning.
Shouldn’t this list be nothing but teas?
@The Master of Reason: There’s ways to get the juice not smushed up in that smoothie. I drink and sell the stuff on the side. Costco also has a blueberry acai blend now. Pretty expensive stuff to drink, but you’d be surprised at how good you feel after stickin with it everyday.
I feel so run down after missing a day.
Ahh, water did not make the list ? What the heck is wrong with just plain high quality H20 ?
i bet pomegranete juice companies paid for this
@RodAox: Water sucks it really really sucks…
@darkryd: Yes, but that’s only really critical if you’re already eating badly and not getting exercise. The difference between, say, a glass of red wine and a pint of Guinness is actually fairly negligible. Granted, there can be massive caloric differences between beers (I don’t even want to think of how many calories a Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA has!), but unless you’re drinking several glasses of barleywine per night beer isn’t that much worse.
On another note, I’m with everybody else who’s wondering why good ol’ water isn’t on this list. I cut down on drinking juice, tea and coffee and completely eliminated soda from my diet, and started drinking water all the time instead. I lost almost 20 pounds within a few months just by doing that, and if you’re not dumb enough to keep buying bottled water constantly (use a Pur/Brita filter and keep a water bottle on you!) it’s far cheaper as well.
And pomegranite juice winning this is mostly hilarious. It may do this, it could do that, but what it’ll certainly do is hit your a) wallet and b) waistline, unless you buy fairly specialized drinks or prepare your own. One small container of POM has just as much sugar as a can of Coke, for crying out loud!
No Mountain Dew on the list?
It’s made of dew … from the mountain, fer Chrissakes!
How much healthier can you get than that?
@Caslonbold: When I need life in my juice, I drink the blood of virgins, but the god damned economy is so screwed up that virgins come at a premium, that is, if you can even find one…
@lalaland13: White IS a color. It’s every color to boot. Now black, black is’nt a color. It’s the lack of color. Unless you start talking about black in fabrics. Then it’s just really alot of purple.
@donkeyjote: In printing it is quite the opposite, you know.
Did anyone actually read the attached article? The only criteria used for the rankings was the amount of antioxidants in the drink, hence the absence of water and milk in the list. And the article gives no evidence that antioxidants are good for you.
I’m surprised yerba mate is not on the list. It’s packed with dozens of vitamins and minerals.
I am addicted to lipton tea in the glass bottles! Lipton sweetened tea (with NO lemon) to be specific. I cant stand the taste of green tea…. its disgusting.
I like juice, but most are just too sweet/tart & just assaults my tastebuds.
No word yet from the pro-oxidants contingency. man do they have a terrible lobby.
Blueberies may have lots of fibre but I kinda doubt blueberry juice does.
pomegranate/grape/blueberry wine…
Uh, wtf? Where’s coffee? Sure, fruit juices are probably better for you overall, but coffee beats the pants off tea in terms of antioxidants. [www.webmd.com]
Also, I don’t know what it is, but I can drink coffee in the AM no problem. But if I have a cup of tea before noon, I basically feel like I’m gonna die for about 2 hours – extreme nausea and headache. In the afternoon it’s ok. So in short, no coffee? screw this list.
@MrEvil: Pearl pomegranate vodka.
It probably has to do with the woman who owns the POM company doing a PR blitz…she owned a big PR company before getting into the juice biz.
I knew about pomegranate juice back in the 70s….although I thought it was a silly word Timer made up on those “Sunshine on a stick” commercials…
Hurray for red wine! I’m so glad it made the list. I also like cranberry juice but would like to warn others to read the labels — some “cranberry cocktails” are nothing but a trace of cranberry mixed with a ton of flavorings and high fructose corn syrup.
So skim milk didn’t make the top 10?
@libbybee: I’ll let you know next time my neighbor is out of town and ship you a bunch of them. He never picks them and the bush is right next to the wall…
@cubensis: There’s a Pomegranate lemonade out there that supports that…
But MAN I like sour stuff!
Uh, WATER, hello? Most of the above is loaded w/sugar.
One thing to note: while all these juices are very nutritious, you still need to be vigilant about sweeteners and additives. For things like cranberry juice though, you NEED the sweet–trust me! I would recommend eating the fruits listed when/if you can. Drinking calories is still not as good as eating them: your body reacts better to a belly full of blueberries than one of blueberry juice, trace amounts of fiber being present in a lot of whole fruits.