Water, iced tea (the crappy juice mix stuff). Orange juice, and fruit smoothies. Like a lot of students, I used to have a fixation on caffeinated drinks, and especially the new energy drinks craze that is all over the market. I feel much, much, much better after cutting caffeine from my diet. Do try to cut that out.

I have a soft-spot for sweet drinks, and a soft-spot for all sorts of breads, cakes, and pastries. I haven’t completely shed any of them, but as long as I steer towards healthier forms of these things, like bran muffins or such, I’m okay.

Actually, it rather depends on the water itself. There’s nothing quite like a tall glass of very cold water up where my grandparents live, but I absolutely hate the flavor of the water where I live. So if you’re not liking the water, it might be the water itself. Mineral water tastes best, especially cold, but if you can’t get it without expense…

Well, you can always try a good tea. Done right (Splenda instead of sugar), it can make a healthy alternative to pop. And to coffee as well, by the way. Tea doesn’t have quite as much caffeine or caffeine precursors as coffee does.

I’ve currently cut sodas from my diet which left me in a similar boat as you Les.  I hate plain tap water unless it is from specific areas of Texas. I’ve recently been drinking a lot more tea whether it be hot tea in the morning or iced tea at lunch.  Mornings I’ll brew my own, afternoons I’ll drink something premade.  Arizona Sweet Tea is pretty good, also tried Tradewinds (decent) and Red Diamond (not that good).  Otherwise it’s milk or gatorade or juice (if we’ve got it).

My girlfriend drinks Vitamin Water, but that can be a bit expensive at no less than a dollar for 20 ounce bottle. 

I’m thinking I’m gonna bust out the Kool-aid before long.  The fruit punch (kind where you just add water) was always pretty good and was a staple in my roommate and my fridge in college.

You should check out one of these, Pur flavor water system. They also make a flavor water filter for the faucet.

I drink Kroger bottled water. We have well [or simply “hard”] water at our apartment so we usually buy bottled water. For some reason Kroger water just taste the best to me. Mostly because it’s so unremarkable, other bottled water brands taste like plastic to me, or sometimes a bit grainy [hard to describe but there is slight texture].

I also buy a lot of Simply Orange orange juice. It’s in my opinion the best tasting pure orange juice you can buy. When I’m at home with the parents I drink Arizona Diet Green Tea with Ginseng and Honey. They are obsessed with it and buy it in the big gallon jugs like 3 at a time. I love it too and before I started drinking it I was never a big fan of tea.

I bought an ice tea maker that works sort of like a coffee pot. You pour water in it, fill the pitcher with ice, pop in a family-size tea bag and a little sugar, and are ready to brew. I’m also trying to reduce the pop intake, and this has been helping a lot. Very inexpensive, and tea is supposed to have some health benefits.

I’ve never been a soda drinker, because I don’t like to use sugar passively.  I drink too much coffee, and break it up by drinking Lipton tea.  I’ve been in search of something different to drink also, but find it hard.  I tried Postum and don’t like it.  Sometimes I drink plain hot water to avoid so much caffeine.  I won’t drink decaf or anything fake.  In hot weather, I’ve tried flavored bottled water - lemon, orange or lime, but I forget the brand name.  It looks like a liter bottle and costs around 89 cents on sale.  For those who do like lemon in their water or tea, getting one of those plastic lemons in the produce department - ours has real lemon juice from Italy - is a good alternative to a real lemon, as they don’t yield enough and I am prone to waste them.

I mix water with juice.  I get a little “flavor” but not the full serving of sugar that comes with straight juice.  My favorite juices to cut with h20 are cranberry and pomegranate.  My preferred ratio is about 1/3 juice and fill the rest of the way with ice water.  I can no longer stand to drink juice that isn’t cut with water because it seems way to sweet.  Those big jugs of juices go on sale all the time in my area, plus I’m making it last twice as long than if I were to drink it straight.

Water, only water.  If you don’t like the taste you can get a Brita filter which will eliminate chlorine and other bad flavors.  Just water.  It’s the best thing for you.

Science Goddess

A little side note here.

I used to drink about 2 liters of pop (Pepsi) a day.

A few years back, I was diagnosed with high blood pressure. The doctors never bothered to ask about my caffeine or pop intake. They put me on medicine that was occasionally effective.

I took the medication for two years with mixed results. Then (at someone’s suggestion) I stopped drinking the pop. I also stopped the medication. Within two weeks my blood pressure was back to normal and has remained there ever since.

The thing about soft drinks is they are high is acidity, so even the no sugar ones are bad for teeth and digestive tract.

I drink far too much tea at work, so at weekends get ‘caffine headaches’, part due to lack of caffine, part due to the fact I just drink far less at the weekends.  My tea intake is directly related to the boredom/annoyance I am undergoing- you know when I am enjoying a task, because I don’t stop to make tea!

I’m also not great on plain water- try adding a hint of lemon squash (yes I know what you said about lemon, but I mean ‘squash’- do you have this in America? Basically mixed 1:4 or 1:5 with water- I use 1:10 for a ‘water’ drink).  I have this as a bedside drink (low sugar as I have brushed my teeth) ok not great, but it is really just a splash to take the ‘non taste’ away- I have normal strenth in the day- try lemon barley water (a bit more expensive, but really nice). 

Also how about proper lemon tea- make the tea as normal, but add 2 slices of lemon instead of milk- I find it’s great for colds (or make a Hot Toddy like my mum- add honey and whisky (no ‘e’ is best for this)- seriously nice- almost worth catching a cold for). Also hot blackcurrent- blackcurrent squash (or Vimto if you are feeling extravagent) made as normal, but with boiling water.

If I drink water I prefer mineral water- proper mineral water from a spring- not the fake ‘desani’ stuff- Perrier, Buxton spring- the sort of stuff that you know is pure because it has about a gram of dirt in every litre (look at the boil off stats they give to see what I mean).- Sparkling is my choice (yes I know thats artificial).

A good summer drink (not for work) is Pint glass, ice cubes, bottled (not draught) Guiness, and top up with ginger beer (not ale, beer- see previous thread)- seriously nice on a hot summer day, plus half the alchol of a normal pint.

I’d avoid fruit teas- smell great, no taste.

Some very interesting suggestions in here. And I promise, SG, that I will try to drink more plain old water, but even the filtered stuff is BLEH!

Try drinking nothing but water or tea (decaf after noon) for a month.  I normally drink water at room temperature because it’s easier on my teeth. 

You can make a gallon of tea by filling a gallon jug with water, drop in four teabags, and let stand until morning.  Use a dessert tea like Republic Of Tea Vanilla Almond Decaf and you won’t need any sweetener.  Refrigerate > brewing.  Cost 64 cents per gallon.

I just endlessly refill an old coke bottle from the drinking fountain. But here in Normal we are blessed with excellent tap water. If the tap water in your area is contaminated with nitrates or metals then yes, it should be filtered.  If you must drink bottled water, Sam’s club is excellent.

Best of luck!

I switched off soda also and on to tea. I drink English Breakfast or English Teatime hot and for iced I recommend Luzianne. I avoid Lipton and Nestea because I find them bitter. You could always order “Earl Grey, HOT!“ (I do drink Earl Grey but not for every day.)

I’m going to have to agree with lots of people here that tea is the way to go but I’m more partical to the green teas than many of the blacks.  When thirst is needing quenching, the greens have a much mellower taste and don’t remind me of bottled nestea so much.  I recommend gunpowder or another fancy type for picky tea drinkers but try to find an inexpensive one; with green tea being all the rage right now I would be surprized if someone wasn’t making it cheap.

I’m picky about water taste too, can’t stand the chlorine taste of filtered water.  Given that most bottled water is filtered, most of it doesn’t taste much better than tap (undrinkable by my standards) but i love Distilled water.  It’s the cleanest tasting water you can get, mostly because it’s clean water.  And it only costs a couple bucks for a 2 1/2 gallons.

I think the chlorine will outgas if you let the water stand for 24 hours or so.

Also those bottled-water services that drop off 5-gallon bottles of filtered water are fairly reasonable.

Dude! MetroMint water is DA BOMB! No sweeteners, just water with a hint of mint and orange or lemon. ice cold (or actually, frozen and drunk while it melts), way better than any pop ever invented.

Kinda expensive @ $1.25 per bottle, but it waned me off my addiction to Diet Pepsi.

Failing that, Tequila Herradura Anejo does the trick for me every time

Get better from that cold!

I never drink soda except when going out. At home, I like drinking plain tap water (though I will agree that local quality is important - thankfully, even in the “Big Smoke” of Auckland, tap water in NZ tastes well enough).

But when I’m bored of water, or have no milk/juice left, i use tap water plus vitamin tablets (the fizzy, orange or whatever-taste types). Acquired taste, and a bit of a ‘seasonal’ like, but good enough for a quick drink.

Recently I got up to one or two bottles of beer a day, and my waistline was noticing it.  Now I’m off all alcohol, and am slimming down.  I’ll probably gain it all back this summer in California, though, with salsa and chips…

In Vienna, I drink a lot of water, which is very good here: no chlorine, fresh from the mountains.  I also drink a lot of herbal tea- there are so many different kinds and combinations, you can probably find something you like.  There’s a blend of cacao and spices I’m partial to.

For your cold, I recommend a very strong ginger tea.  Cut thin slices of fresh ginger, a piece about the size of your thumb for a pint, steep for at least half an hour in hot water, add lemon and honey to taste.  Really clears out the sinuses.

San Pellegrino sparkling mineral water with a slice or two of lime. Very refreshing, plus vitamin C and a nice flavor.

San Pellegrino (from the Italian Dolomite mountains) is the ‘Champagne’ of mineral waters in my opinion, but any good quality sparkling should be just as good.

See http://www.sanpellegrino.com/

Research has just been published (sorry, forget the source), that says that diet drinks break the link between the occurence of a sweet taste and the body preparing to process calories. The same research shows that diet soda drinkers consequently eat more carbs at their next meal - effectively overcompensating for the ‘sugar hit’ they were deprived of earlier.

San Pellegrino is nice, but expensive to drink all day.  I still like the reaction Coke got when it brought Dasani to Europe. Basically ‘Fuck off’.  The funny thing was that there is an episode of “Only Fools and Horses” where Del-Boy sells tap water, after faking it to the testers as natural mineral water, as Peckham Water, and when the news broke that all Coke used was filtered tap water it only took a few days to find out that their bottling plant was near Peckham.  I believe they lost a fortune on the whole thing.

In the UK there should be no need to drink bottled water as the filtering system you get on tap water makes it very pure.  The biggest problem is the hardness of the water.  Here in the south the aquifers are in chalk, so it does pick up a lot of calcium carbonate.

I know there is a legal difference here between spring and mineral, one is more ‘straight from source’ than the other, but I can never remember which way round.  There are no health benefits, but I do like the ‘sulphury’ taste of some.

Everything in moderation, I say. I think most of these “studies” and “shock revelations” about diet drinks are totally bloated up in sensationalism. I mean sure, they aren’t exactly good for you I admit, but when drank in moderation with other drinks I doubt they do any harm.

I’m a big fan of Pepsi Max (I think it’s known as “Diet Pepsi Max” in the States) but one 1,5 liter bottle lasts me 2-3 days. Also I drink milk, juices and water in between my Pepsi. I’m in good health(well, I got the same cold as Les now, but other than that) and my teeth haven’t rotten out.

Pretty much with everything in life, just walk the middle path and you should be fine. Oh, and lots of teas have MORE caffeine than a cup of coffee, so if you choose to go the tea side of life, pick your teas carefully.

The fizzy drink thing isn’t really over hyped. ‘Fat’ Coke contains about 40g (8 teaspoons) of sugar per can.  My wife bought me a 500ml bottle of ‘lower sugar’ fanta Lemon Ice, and it contained half my RDA of sugar. My kids dentist said even no sugar pops are bad for teeth, because one of the major contributors is the acidity.  Plus there is a reason they have to warn of phenylalanine on artificial sweetened products- some people have a genetic defect which makes it dangerous - Phenylketonuria.  Incidence (according to the wiki) is between 1:4,500 (Ireland) and 1:100,000 (Finland)- with an average of 1:15,000, which actually makes it more common than many of the recent health scares over-hyped by the press.

The thing about tea/coffee caffine is a partial myth.  While tea leaves contain more caffine by weight than coffee beans, because more beans are used to make a drink, a cup of coffee has about 3 times the caffine. (Book of General Ignorance, Lloyd/Mitchinson- one of the holy books of The Church of Jenkinites, even if Les doesn’t know it.)

Last Hussar. I can’t agree more about the water hardness. I grew up in Northern Ireland where the Mourne mountains and resevoirs are granite. When I moved to south east england, I found it hard to take the film that floats on tea, and the sludge at the bottom of the cup!

San Pellegrino has a beautiful taste of its own, but is expensive, so Highland Spring (organic) is my next best choice. With lime, sparkling mineral water is an unbeatable thirst quencher.