You are getting ready to go to the gym and want a bottle of water. You stand at the refrigerator in the store and wonder if you should buy regular bottled H2O, or 'fortified' water with vitamins, minerals, herbs and other dietary-supplement ingredients. What about a drink 'enhanced' with nutraceuticals or herbs? How do you choose, and are the fortified waters and nutraceutical beverages as helpful and healthy as their labels advertise? Do these products really help you improve your workout, lose weight, think better and ease countless other ills?
Look on store shelves and you'll see dozens of choices including:
Propel Fitness Water, a low-calorie flavored water fortified with moderate levels of four B vitamins (to aid in energy metabolism) and vitamins C and E (to help neutralize free radicals).
Think Drink, a juice blend with an added 250mg lion's mane mushroom mycelium and 120mg ginkgo biloba.
"Enhanced" Drinks are expensive; on average $3 will get - for example - a few ounces of juice with added ginkgo and mushroom extract. In actuality, the drink contains only a few cents worth of added supplements that won't make a difference, as there is too little of the supplement in the drink to have any impact.
The amount of ginseng in your water, ginkgo in your iced tea or echinacea in your juice is far below the recommended levels claimed to affect energy, memory, immunity or anything else. Often, adding enough would affect taste.
Sometimes, even if nutrients are added in large amounts, they won't do what's claimed. For example, large amounts of B vitamins won't give you extra energy, even though some of them are involved in energy metabolism.
As for herbs, the form is often unknown, making it impossible to gauge effectiveness. With ginkgo, for example, potential benefits have been seen in extracts standardized to contain a certain percentage of active ingredients. If the ginkgo in a drink is not of this kind - you typically can't tell from the label - it will be ineffective no matter how much is added.
Vitamins, minerals, herbs and other dietary supplements are potentially powerful medicines. They should be taken as needed, and only with the appropriate research and guidance. If you think you may get a benefit from echinacea, ginkgo, ginseng or glucosamine (used to treat osteoarthritis of the knee), explore buying them as supplements. That is the best way to get the right dose in a form your body can easily use.
To sum up, the best you can expect from any fortified drink is that it will quench your thirst - but so will water.
You are getting ready to go to the gym and want a bottle of water. You stand at the refrigerator in the store and wonder if you should buy regular bottled H2O, or 'fortified' water with vitamins, minerals, herbs and other dietary-supplement ingredients. What about a drink 'enhanced' with nutraceuticals or herbs? How do you choose, and are the fortified waters and nutraceutical beverages as helpful and healthy as their labels advertise? Do these products really help you improve your workout, lose weight, think better and ease countless other ills?