Bitter drinks are healthier according to your rational thinking and analysis. Funnily enough, that’s a fallacy. You only came to this conclusion based on common sense not based on verified facts. This is anecdotal evidence which I explained in my last post here. I’ve heard people say things like ” Oh. I’ve taken a lot of sugary things today, let me have this bitters or bitter lemon, so that it can neutralize all the sugars.” That line of thinking is laughable and I will tell you why.
The bitter lemon drink has just a tinge of bitterness even though you are made to believe that it is made from Quinine and some lemon juice. Have you tasted quinine before? It is extremely bitter, the amount of sugar added to dilute the bitterness of quinine enough to make it just a tinge is humongous.
When you check labels on those bitter lemon drinks, you will see that the sugar and invariably, calorie content is on the high side. The bitter taste needs to be diluted. Now, that’s for bitter lemons. Processed sugars without fiber will spike up your blood sugar levels and you get hungry again after a few minutes to hours. Then you look for another food to eat or drink to take. That means nothing is neutralized, instead you further increase the amount of sugar taken.
Another bitter drink actually called bitters is being marketed as healthy because it contains some herbs which are claimed to help boost immunity and improve performance in the other room. The target market is the menfolk. Marketers say it will help them keep ‘it’ up for minutes or even hours.
Well, I’m not surprised that people would flock like flies to rotten mangoes. Nobody wants to be called a 2-seconds-man. People need to prove their prowess in the other room. And since it is bitter, you erroneously believe that the claims must be true. Have you ever had a look at the labels on these drinks?
A bottle of 200 mls contains 30- 40 percent alcohol. This means that every 100mls contains 40 grams of alcohol. A 200ml bottle contains 80 grams of alcohol. Let’s not even consider the harmful effects of alcohol to your liver, brain and nerves. I’ll probably write about it in another post. This is about the bitterness of a drink and sugar content.
Alcohol is made from fermented sugars such as glucose, fructose and sucrose. A gram of alcohol contains as much as 7 calories. Multiply 7 by 80 and that gives you 560 calories, inside a 200mls bottle!
Calories from sugar only, and that is more than a quarter of your 2000 calories daily requirement. It’s likely you will take more than a bottle and you will still take your meals for the day. You see why it is difficult to maintain a healthy weight with this?
If I were you, I would rather take water. Lots of it. It is the healthiest drink you can find anywhere. Instead of indulging, and then letting guilt get the best of you while you find a way to reduce the effect of your sweet tooth, why not place a limit on your indulgence and drink water.
So you tell me. After my exposition, what do you think? Are bitter drinks actually healthier than sweet drinks? 1 … 2… 3… 4… 5… time up.
The answer to this question lies in the label. What are the constituents of the bitter drink? After you check that, then you can get a more accurate answer. For the most part, bitter is not equivalent to absence of sugar. The lesson here is to read food labels before consumption.