Smart Choices: Beverages

Many people focus on how much food they eat in their count of daily calorie intake for weight loss but often forget that the beverages drank also contribute to additional calories. While cutting on calories for food may take more time and effort to plan and follow, luckily, choosing the right beverages to help weight loss is much easier. In this article, we will help you to identify the type of beverages to avoid to help with your weight loss journey. 

Beverages certainly contribute to your total calorie intake per day, your daily mood, and in long term will affect your body weight and can compromise your health. Many beverages like caffeinated or carbonated drinks contain a high amount of fats and sugar. Sugar is the main contributor to weight gain and obesity. Not only does sugar make it easier for you to gain weight, but it also makes it harder for you to lose it, and that is why the majority of diabetes type-2 patients are overweight or obese.  Reducing your sugar habit can be accomplished with small daily changes. Do you know how much additional sugar you have in your beverages? Research shows that reducing or eliminating sweetened beverages in daily meals will help you cut more than 50% of added sugar daily.

Here is a detailed overview of the amount of sugar in Malaysia's most popular beverages:

Hidden Sugars

Next, let’s learn to differentiate and choose the better options for sugar-free and no sugar added labelled food & beverages. 

No Sugar Added  

According to the FDA, the statement "no sugar added" can only be used if no sugar or sugar-containing ingredient is used during processing. Sugar-containing ingredients covered under this standard include honey, molasses, high-fructose corn syrup, malt syrup, and cane syrup.

Sugar-Free 

The FDA guidelines require that a food must contain less than 0.5 grams of sugar per serving to be labelled as "sugar-free." This includes naturally occurring forms of sugar and any ingredient that contains sugar. Technically, the food product does not have to be completely free of sugar, as long as it meets the per-serving requirement.

Plain water is always the healthier choice but that does not mean you cannot occasionally enjoy your favourite drinks. There are many ways to enjoy plain water and to increase its benefit. You can try:

• Adding lime juice or lemon juice to your plain water can improve digestion, boost your body immune & metabolism as well as help to curb your cravings. 

• Infused water is beneficial to improve digestion, boost your energy and tastes better than plain water. You can try to infuse different types of fruits and vegetables for different benefits. 

If you are concerned about the calories on different types of beverages, you can refer to this table to guide your choices.

Also bear in mind that labels on beverages only indicate the amount of calories per serving. You must look closely at how many servings you have during your meal time.