Sometimes when I take the bottles in I’m amazed at whats in the bags…pop, iced tea, weird things I’ve never seen before, sweetened fruit juice and even sugar water.  Sugar water?  Yes, sugar water.  Oh sorry, I mean “Vitamin Water”.  The empties of this have been quite plentiful as of late so I figured its time for some investigation as I’ve never had it myself.

Ok stop rolling your eyes, not everything you eat is bad for you and I know I slam a lot of things and here goes another rant, but I feel it is my job and even my duty as your coach and trainer to let you know about the crap thats out there…and yes a lot of times the good.

I’m gonna make this pretty short and sweet and then I’ll let you suckers read for yourselves…START READING THE F-ING LABELS ON THE THINGS YOU PUT IN YOUR BODY.  Whew, I feel much better now.  It really is quite simple folks - if you aren’t seeing the results you want and you’re at the gym regularly and you bust ass while you’re there I have four words for you that will probably fall on deaf ears but maybe it’ll sink in with one or two of you, and yes you can quote me:

“You eat like shit”.

Seriously, for all of you that eat “pretty good” and blah blah blah I have two more words for you “SUCK IT” (oh wait, sorry I had a flashback to my days when I watched WWF)  the words are, “You Don’t”.  Case in point, Vitamin Water.  You just aren’t paying enough attention.

Anyway, here is what I’m getting at.  Read this article and then start trying a little harder.  I PROMISE it will make a difference in how you feel, how you perform and how you look.  And just read than dang article…its not that long and clearly you aren’t working when you probably should be anyway.  You might just learn something.

The Dark Side Of Vitamin Water - John Robbins (no Jonny, this isn’t a Star Wars reference)

Now here’s something you wouldn’t expect. Coca-Cola is being sued by a non-profit public interest group, on the grounds that the company’s vitaminwater products make unwarranted health claims. No surprise there. But how do you think the company is defending itself?

In a staggering feat of twisted logic, lawyers for Coca-Cola are defending the lawsuit by asserting that “no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking vitaminwater was a healthy beverage.”   (Yes, I added the bold, underline and italics…I wanted to make sure you saw it).

Does this mean that you’d have to be an unreasonable person to think that a product named “vitaminwater,” a product that has been heavily and aggressively marketed as a healthy beverage, actually had health benefits?

Or does it mean that it’s okay for a corporation to lie about its products, as long as they can then turn around and claim that no one actually believes their lies?

In fact, the product is basically sugar-water, to which about a penny’s worth of synthetic vitamins have been added. And the amount of sugar is not trivial. A bottle of vitaminwater contains 33 grams of sugar, making it more akin to a soft drink than to a healthy beverage.

Is any harm being done by this marketing ploy? After all, some might say consumers are at least getting some vitamins, and there isn’t as much sugar in vitaminwater as there is in regular Coke.

True. But about 35 percent of Americans are now considered medically obese. Two-thirds of Americans are overweight. Health experts tend to disagree about almost everything, but they all concur that added sugars play a key role in the obesity epidemic, a problem that now leads to more medical costs than smoking.

How many people with weight problems have consumed products like vitaminwater in the mistaken belief that the product was nutritionally positive and carried no caloric consequences? How many have thought that consuming vitaminwater was a smart choice from a weight-loss perspective? The very name “vitaminwater” suggests that the product is simply water with added nutrients, disguising the fact that it’s actually full of added sugar.

The truth is that when it comes to weight loss, what you drink may be even more important than what you eat. Americans now get nearly 25 percent of their calories from liquids. In 2009, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health published a report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, finding that the quickest and most reliable way to lose weight is to cut down on liquid calorie consumption. And the best way to do that is to reduce or eliminate beverages that contain added sugar.

Meanwhile, Coca-Cola has invested billions of dollars in its vitaminwater line, paying basketball stars, including Kobe Bryant and Lebron James, to appear in ads that emphatically state that these products are a healthy way for consumers to hydrate. When Lebron James held his much ballyhooed TV special to announce his decision to join the Miami Heat, many corporations paid millions in an attempt to capitalize on the event. But it was vitaminwater that had the most prominent role throughout the show.

The lawsuit, brought by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, alleges that vitaminwater labels and advertising are filled with “deceptive and unsubstantiated claims.” In his recent 55-page ruling, Federal Judge John Gleeson (U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York), wrote, “At oral arguments, defendants (Coca-Cola) suggested that no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking vitamin water was a healthy beverage.” Noting that the soft drink giant wasn’t claiming the lawsuit was wrong on factual grounds, the judge wrote that, “Accordingly, I must accept the factual allegations in the complaint as true.”

I still can’t get over the bizarre audacity of Coke’s legal case. Forced to defend themselves in court, they are acknowledging that vitaminwater isn’t a healthy product. But they are arguing that advertising it as such isn’t false advertising, because no could possibly believe such a ridiculous claim.

I guess that’s why they spend hundreds of millions of dollars advertising the product, saying it will keep you “healthy as a horse,” and will bring about a “healthy state of physical and mental well-being.”

Why do we allow companies like Coca-Cola to tell us that drinking a bottle of sugar water with a few added water-soluble vitamins is a legitimate way to meet our nutritional needs?

 

I can speak the truth when I say that 95% f the time I drink something it is water.  And yes once in a while I just want something with flavoe so what do I do?  I shoot a squirt of Pure Lemon juice into the bottle…gives it some zip.  ANd don’t ask about the little flavor packs, I’m likely to puch you in the back of the neck while you walk away.

Discuss.