Healthy Homemaking Series: Pop and Juice Addict

Baby Step 20 - Kick the Pop or Juice Habit (Only 6 steps left!)

Challenge: Make a plan to get your family off of regularly drinking pop, powdered beverages, and juice.

Why: Pop is full of sugar, caffeine, artificial colours and flavours, and preservatives.  Powdered beverages are similar because they are completely artificial, there is no real juice in them.  Juice on the other hand can be good for you, but it depends on the type and the quantity that you drink.  The problem with juice is that it contains all the natural sugars of the fruit with none of the fibre to slow the body's consumption of the sugar.  One glass of apple juice would have even more (natural) sugar than just one apple, but without being slowed down by the fibre, it will act similarly to white sugar in the body and blood sugar levels will spike.

How: The easiest way to remove anything from your diet is gradually.  Cut intake until you can begin to live without out, and just stop buying it after that.  This can be difficult.  Sugary drinks are more addictive than we think.

Brad and I got rid of any juice and pop or powdered drinks (ice tea and hot chocolate mix) when we did the Lighten Up Your Pantry challenge.  We found that we needed to get rid of it cold turkey because if it was in the house at all, we would drink it all the time.  We do buy juice to have at home on very rare occasions, and Brad will have the odd Coke if we are out to dinner at a restaurant, but overall it has been a huge improvement.  Now we are at the point where we don't miss it or think about it at home.  Along with rice milk, and herbal tea, the beverage of choice at our house is now water, water, water.  As for the hot chocolate mix, my sister blessed us with a homemade batch of hot chocolate mix.  Here it is.

So tasty!

Ingredients:
-cocoa
-sugar
-nutmeg
-skim milk powder

Directions:
Mix 1 1/2 tbsp of hot cocoa mix into 1 cup hot water.  Stir.

What do you drink at home?

PS - I have been noticing that my comments have really been dropping.  I hope I don't sound needy and desperate, but this really makes me wonder if anyone is reading or enjoying my blog as of late.  I spend time publishing content that I like in hopes that you'll like it too, and receiving a comment is the hugest encouragement.  Of course, you don't have to comment on every silly post but you connected with something, have a question, or more information, I would love to hear it!

So, I want to ask you, the readers, if you're out there, what can I do to encourage more comments?  I realize that answering this question will require leaving a comment, but I would so greatly appreciate any and all feedback.  Thanks!