Soft Drink Alternatives

I apologize in advance to all of you who are in love with your sodas. If you can't handle it, please don't read any further.

I used to have Diet Coke every day. I can't do it now, because I found out how bad it is for your body.

According to many sources, it can take up to 32 glasses of alkaline water to neutralize the acid in 1 glass of cola. As your body is trying to neutralize all the phosphoric acid from the soda, it robs alkaline material (calcium) from your bones and other parts of your body. It is one of the reasons there is a much higher rate of osteoporosis in this country than ever before. Have you ever used cola to clean the corrosion off the battery of your car? Hmmm...wonder what it's doing inside your body? There's not enough room here to go into all the dangers of soda -- and I haven't even mentioned the high fructose corn syrup, msg, and aspartame. You can research it yourself if you really want to know.

But the purpose of this post is to give you some alternatives to soft drinks. You do get tired of drinking water all the time, so here are some options.

• Fresh lemon or lime squeezed into water (wash the fruit first). Sweeten some stevia if desired. Not only does this drink taste good, but it has a cleansing effect on your body, with or without the sweetener.
  
• True Lemon and True Lime are found in the baking section of Kroger stores. I'm sure they're available elsewhere, but I don't know what section of the store they'll be in. To make a nice, quick lemon or lime drink, sprinkle it in water and add a little stevia to sweeten. They come in serving size packages, but I like to use more than comes in one packet, so I buy the bottles. It's more economical, too. You can use it in recipes as a substitute for lemon or lime juice also. The ingredients are: Citric Acid, Maltodextrin, Lemon or Lime Juice, Lemon or Lime oil, Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C). [They make True Orange, too, but it's not my favorite.]
  
• Keep some real 100% cranberry juice in the refrigerator. Put about 1/2 inch of juice into the bottom of your glass, fill with water, sweeten with stevia, and stir. This is very good for you, tastes good, and is said to help rev up your metabolism. You can do it with other juices, too.
  
• Iced herb tea or green tea.

Readers, if you have other good alternatives, would you post them to the comments? I've got some cold raspberry green tea in the fridge and suddenly I'm thirsty. Have a great weekend!