Are nutrient-enhanced waters just 'expensive lolly water'?

by Oliver Kitchingman | Monday, January 17, 2011

The following post was written by nutritionist Dr Rebecca Reynolds, of Nutrition Undressed.
A recent article on SMH online reported that Choice consumer group has described nutrient-enhanced ‘water’ drinks as ‘expensive lolly waters’ and cautioned that ‘the labelling on several nutrient drinks created the impression they are healthy when often an apple and a glass of water is more beneficial’.

For example, Nutrient Water's catchphrase is ‘Be Bad, Drink Good’. Nutritionally, however, these drinks aren't that ‘good’ for most people (‘most people’ being overweight or obese in Australia: in 2004/05, more than half of Australian adults were overweight or obese). There is evidence that liquids do not fill you up as much as solids – consider the chewing and the fibre in an apple – processes which make you feel full – compared to a nutrient-enhanced ‘water’. It should be noted, however, that the evidence for liquid- vs solid-induced fullness is not conclusive.

Most nutrient-enhanced ‘waters’ are definitely NOT water – they are water with ‘added bits/nutrients’, much like cola! These ‘bits’ are usually sugars like sucrose (table sugar) and fructose, vitamins and colours/flavours.

It should be remembered that sugars are not necessarily bad for you – and that we are all designed to like sweet, sugary foods. However, some sugary foods are better than others; for example, solid foods such as floral honey and fruit (both of which are full of naturally-occurring fructose) are better than sugary drinks and have a lower glycemic index (GI) than other sugars like glucose (see www.glycemicindex.com).

If you have a balanced diet, you do not need vitamin supplements in the form of pills or ‘waters’. Let's compare the energy and sugars provided by 575mL of two Australian nutrient-enhanced ‘waters’ (Vitamin Water and Nutrient Water), generic orange juice and Coca-Cola:

You can see that the ‘waters’ provide about half the energy and sugars that Coca-Cola does and about two-thirds the energy and sugars that orange juice does. They're definitely not water! Note that the nutritional labels on all these products do not differentiate between the different types of sugars, and that their GIs and hence ‘healthiness’ varies (fructose has the lowest GI, followed by sucrose and probably high-fructose corn syrup, followed by glucose).

In summary, it's better to save your money by not buying ‘over-nutrient’ waters (full of unnecessary sugars and vitamins) and to drink some tap water and eat a couple of apples instead. Two apples, weighing around 220g, will provide you with about 450kJ, plus naturally-occurring vitamins and fibre, and probably more fullness and longer-lasting energy. So, get over nutrient waters!

What do you think? Do you or your clients drink these ‘expensive lolly waters’ and have you found any benefits from doing so?

Posted by: Brendan Rigby - www.inspire-fitness.com.au | 25-Jan-2011 03:30 PM |

Great article to de-bunk the advertising surrounding 'nutrient water'. Better health and fitness can be achieved by getting back to unprocessed 'foods'... plain water will do!


Brendan Rigby

Inspire Fitness for Wellbeing

Posted by: Anonymous | 25-Jan-2011 08:36 PM |

Stick to water, want nutreints, then eat the right foods.

Posted by: SJ | 24-Feb-2011 11:18 PM |

this is great! thanks for sharing

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