If your health drinks of choice are those colorful vitamin waters and sport drinks, you will want to read this and pass it on, especially to anyone concerned about consuming more alkaline foods.

Look at the ingredients in most commercially advertised sports drinks and vitamin waters, and you will quickly see they are far from being really healthy drinks.

When shopping for health drinks or alkaline foods, here are a few things to avoid:

• Phosphoric Acid is just what it says it is - acid.  This is a definition of phosphoric acid: "A clear colorless liquid used in fertilizers, detergents, pharmaceuticals and food flavoring, irritating to the skin and eyes and moderately toxic if ingested."  When your diet is supposed to be 80% alkaline foods and only 20% acid forming foods for proper pH balance, this really puts you upside down quickly.

• High Fructose Corn Syrup – This is concentrated sugar that contributes to weight gain and abnormal blood sugar levels, which can also lead to diabetes.  Excess sugars have no place in health drinks, and you certainly won’t find processed sugar in any alkaline foods.

• Artificial Flavors - We call them Excito-toxins!  When artificial flavorings are in health drinks, they begin to resemble sugary juices, soft drinks and candy.  These artificial substances will interfere with your pH balance and force you to consume more alkaline foods to neutralize the acid from the toxins in your blood.

• Artificial Sweeteners – These are so unnecessary in health drinks today.  In addition to the acid forming properties of artificial sweeteners, nutritionists express concerns about their effects on the human body.  Many consumers now believe that artificial sweeteners may play a factor in diseases of the brain, such as Alzheimer's.  That is one reason why corporations such as Pepsico and Coca Cola are beginning to market health drinks and other products containing Stevia, an all natural sweetener that is actually good for people.  You can learn more about Stevia Sweetener and discover other alkaline foods for pH balance by taking the Alkaline Food Test at BestHealthFoodStore.net.

• Isolated Vitamins - When isolated, processed, heated, liquefied and bottled, vitamins and minerals break down before your body can use them.  You need vitamins and minerals from whole foods, not from so called health drinks that are really bottled, heated, highly processed waters with colorful dyes and artifical ingredients.

Someone showed me a well known sports drink the other day and I couldn't believe the ingredients! This tropical mango flavored health drink didn't mention mango anywhere in the ingredients. Let's take a look at what it did list, along with some things to think about when choosing health drinks:

• Sucrose Syrup (this is sugar)
• High Fructose Corn Syrup (more sugar) - A total of 56 gms of sugar
• Phosphoric Acid (the opposite of alkaline foods)
• Glycerol ester of wood rosin (acid forming)
• Modified Food Starch (how was it modified?)
• Natural and Artificial Flavors (your guess is as good as mine)
• Yellow 6, Yellow 5 and Red 40 (artificial dyes)

Another bottle of this not so healthy drink says "Specially Formulated for Tiger Woods" with the same ingredients, but blue dye instead of yellow.  I guess that secret blue stuff is what makes Tiger play so well.  In fact, experts could argue that Tiger's recent knee problems are because of too many acid forming foods and not enough alkaline foods in his diet.  Many medical and health specialists now believe that an acid/alkaline imbalance can contribute to weak bones and damaged joints.

When shopping for a good health drink, here are some important considerations to keep in mind.

• Is it liquefied, pasteurized or otherwise heated in the bottling process? If so then the enzymes have been destroyed and the nutrients are not easily absorbed by the body.
• Does it give you chlorophyll from plants to help your cells absorb more oxygen?
• Does it provide natural antioxidants to destroy free radicals? Natural antioxidants are essential for anti-aging.
• Is it made with whole food ingredients like real fruit or other alkaline foods?

Now, let's take a different look at health drinks on the market today that are not advertised with flashy TV ads or filled with colorful dyes:  Here are some of the characteristics of these truly healthy drinks:

• Not liquefied or bottled, but in powder form
• Processed at low temperatures
• Contain live enzymes from whole alkaline foods and chlorophyll from plants
• Complex structures of the whole food ingredients are fully intact
• Loaded with natural antioxidants to combat free radicals

Do your health drinks do that? 

Not if you bought them in a convenience store, a grocery store or the health food store at the mall, and not even if it is just plain old water.

Author Profile--Cliff Smith, as owner of an online health food store, is constantly researching the latest nutrition information.  His Alkaline Food Test is a must for anyone who wants to know if they are eating enough alkaline foods.  Cliff's personal success story is highlighted by his natural weight loss and athletic achievements through a combination of concentrated health drinks, all natural foods and alkaline drinks for pH balance.

***Feel free to reprint any of our original articles authored by Cliff Smith, but please include a link to our online health food store in return. Thank you!