Drink to Your Health (& Giveaway!)

They always say that you are what you eat, but you’re also what you drink. In fact, beverage manufacturers are banking on this and creating new (usually fortified) drinks that claim to improve your health or even improve your skin tone. Read on for three different beverages that claim to do much, much more than quench your thirst!

SnapDragon Beauty Beverage

If you believe that beauty comes from the inside out, this one may be for you. The high-end (and expensive) beauty company Votre Vu makes this drink that blends “super fruits and botanicals,” including mango, pomegranate and acai berry juices as well as green, white and red teas, and vitamins, Collagen, aloe vera, foti, ginkgo biloba and baobab fiber. I’ll be honest. I have no idea what a few of those are (or what they do for that matter).

I had one bottle to try, and I can vouch that it has a delicious fruity taste. A two-pack of 30-ounce bottles goes for about $23 and a four-pack will run you $39, so it’s not cheap. Per 30-ounce bottle, you get four8-ounce servings. Each serving has 70 calories and less than 1 gram of fiber. Again, tasty, but you’re mostly paying for the fancy juices and the supplementation. Who really knows if drinking it daily makes your skin beautiful (I credit my good skin days to a diet of whole foods, lots of water and sunscreen), but it certainly can’t hurt.

POMx Tea

According to the POM makers, POMx Tea isn’t just your average tea, it’s Antioxidant Super Tea! I just imagine the bottle with a little red cape flying about. It comes in both regular and light varieties (I prefer the light becauseit has 70 cals per bottle, half of the 140 cals in the regular)  and is made from whole-leaf, handpicked tea that’s gently brewed. Then the tea is combined with pomegranate juice and either berry, hibiscus, lychee or peach.

I liked the unusual hibiscus flavor (almost flowery in its taste) and the blackberry best. The peach was pretty good, and the lychee…was well lychee, a distinctly flavored berry. You either like it or you don’t, and apparently I don’t. On the whole though, these were a nice freshing treat after a long run when water just didn’t sound good, but I wanted a little more than just iced tea or juice.

Silk Heart Health

I’ll be up front here. I’m normally an 8th Continent Light Vanilla Soy Milk drinker, but when Silk asked us if we wanted to try itsnew Silk Heart Health, I though to myself: “Oooh, fun! A taste-test!” And so I recruited my husband for a blind taste test that paired the 8th Continent Light Vanilla vs. Silk Vanilla Heart Health. The verdict? The 8th Continent was definitely sweeter, but the Silk was, well, like silk, and much, much richer (which would make sense because the Silk has 30 more calories per 1-cup serving).

Plus, the Silk Heart Health peepsboasts that their soy milk combines the heart-health benefits of soy protein and plant sterols, both of which can help reduce the risk of cholesterol and heart disease. In fact, a recent study found that people who enjoyed three servings of Silk Heart Health per day for four weeks, as part of a sensible diet, lowered their cholesterol by 7 percent. High cholesterol runs in my family, so my ears perked up at that. Even though Silk hasmore cals than a light soy milk, I liked that it was only mildly sweet, and I liked the creaminess. So if you like your soy milk to have some legs, this might be your ticket.

Do you drink anything specifically for its health benefits? Leave us a comment with whether you do or don’tand be entered to win some free Silk Heart Health so that you can taste-test it for yourself! —Jenn

Disclosure: All beverages were provided by their respective manufacturer, but in no way is this post or our review of products sponsored, influenced or paid for by any company. We tell it like it is!