It's summertime and grabbing a cold beverage is kind of standard, right? You get tired of drinking just plain water and seltzer is often something that I grab and a beverage a lot of my friends regularly drink. I thought I would break down what to avoid in your typical seltzer.
How Healthy is Seltzer? What to Avoid When Choosing a Bubbly Water or Soda Alternative
There are so many different seltzer brands these days. It's interesting how trends happen, right? For years, it was just regular plain old Coca Cola or Pepsi, right? And then you’ll see new trends in the market, like Pepsi One, or Coke Zero and then a bunch of different brands follow suit. Seltzer has been like that over the past few years.
It’s likely caused by people trying to choose healthier and not consume as many calories in their drinks.
Soda water is typically zero calorie and often has flavors. Have you ever thought about how healthy flavorings or even the packaging of you seltzer is?
For example, natural flavors are very poorly regulated. When I first learned about, it made sense that the term natural flavors really doesn't disclose what those flavors are. It just says “natural flavors” on the ingredient list.
It wasn't until I listened to a podcast with the founder of Spindrift, a soda water mixed with actual juice to give it that hint of flavor. But it still has very low calories, because it's just a little bit of juice and the rest is water. I listened to this interview with the founder of Spindrift Bill Creelman on one of my favorite podcasts, How I Built This. Near the end of the podcast, he talks about why he chose to use true real juice versus natural flavors and it's really quite fascinating the way he describes it. He talks about how natural flavors are very similar to the fragrance loophole that I often talk about. He spoke with a contact in the industry and this person told him that he had to go into a closet to talk about what was in the natural flavors because he would get in trouble if he was found out as telling the truth!
I highly encourage you to listen to this podcast episode again on How I Built This. It's about 53 minutes into the podcast, where he starts talking about the natural flavors, and why he chose not to have natural flavors in his seltzer.
This first hand example about the lack of transparency with “natural flavors” is why I really try to minimize drinking or eating anything that has the term natural flavors in it. Again, it's just not regulated, and we really don't know what actually is in natural flavors. You'll see natural flavors in almost every typical flavored soda water that's on the marketplace. Spindrift does flavor their soda water with actual juice but I have yet to see any other brands that are doing that. But if you know of one, I would love to see the brand and be aware of other seltzer companies that are actually flavoring with real juice instead of natural flavors. You're also going to find natural flavors in your alcoholic seltzers and that is something to might want to pay attention to.
Another thing that you might want to consider with seltzers is the can or packaging. Modern aluminum cans are typically treated with some sort of plastic lining, it helps prevent the aluminum taste from getting into your drink. The industry is changing a bit and hopefully for the better, but often they are using a BPA lining.
One way around this is to create your own seltzer by using a Soda Stream and adding a little bit of lime juice.
As I talk about here on the podcast all the time, I really try to follow a 90% healthy 10% not as healthy model because we can't be 100% all the time. If you're a person who loves their seltzer and drinks it every single day, you might choose making your own with a Soda Stream. If it's something that you just have occasionally and if you're living a 90/10, like me, and you just drink it occasionally maybe you choose one that has natural flavors because it’s something you don’t drink very often.
Before we say goodbye, I just wanted to share that I'm sitting here in my shed, which is where I run my podcast and my online store. I created this store because I know that choosing the right products for you and your family can get a little bit overwhelming. I knew that if I made it easier for you, then maybe you would choose a healthier product instead of leaning back on your old favorites. My store is not very big and the reason is, I just want to make things simple and less overwhelming for you. So you will find in my store only one kind of laundry detergent, the brand that I use in my own home that I know works well. And then I just have a few other cleaning products, really all purpose products that really eliminate the need for having a different cleaning product for a different purpose. Because really, we can get away with just having fewer things. I tend to be more of a minimalist when it comes to my products, including my makeup routine, I just like things simple. And so that's what you'll find in the store is really just a few simple things. I also have lotions and deodorants and body oils. I also have a passion for cooking and for kitchen gadgets that really work and so I do have a partnership with an importer of these awesome kitchen gadgets.I have a few of their products and I just absolutely love them, especially the cube cutter that makes cutting my vegetables so easy. So I just wanted to talk a little bit more about my store because really I created it to provide a service for you to find toxin free products that are easy to implement into your daily lives. If you are curious and you want to go check it out just go to www.detox.design/thebox.
