Pg. 16 2025-26 Health & Wellness Magazine Lincoln Daily News Nutrition and Beverages It is likely that sometime in your life, you have seen an advertisement for a drink that is supposed to be good for your health. Gatorade and other sports drinks are branded as great for rehydration. What Gatorade does not tell the consumer is just how high in sugar it is. A twenty ounce bottle of Gatorade’s LemonLime flavor contains 34 grams of sugar, nearly seventy percent of your daily recommended amount. Naked Juice is branded as a catch all, with different drinks offering different health benefits. While you can buy naked juices with various fruits and vegetables in them, you can also buy some with more specific advertised health benefits, such as extra protein or probiotics. While these seem beneficial, they fall into the same trap that Gatorade does. In one bottle of Probiotics Tropical Mango Naked Juice, there are 53 grams of sugar, or 108 percent of your daily recommended intake. While in the case of Naked Juice, all of these sugars are natural sugars, the amounts are still troubling. Even though natural sugars are a healthier alternative, consuming over the daily recommended amount is not going to necessarily be the best move. You are likely consuming other types of natural sugars in the other foods you consume throughout the day. That 108 percent could shoot up to a much higher number if you are not keeping track. If only natural sugars and added sugars were the only things people had to keep track of for a healthy diet. There are all kinds of vitamins and minerals, fats, cholesterol, sodium, carbohydrates, and fiber to keep track of as well. Some of these things, such as saturated fats, are generally considered bad and are recommended to be consumed in low amounts. Others, such as fiber, are generally considered good, with their being light limitations to how much you should consume. The old adage remains true, however, everything in moderation. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has a website to help guide people on their diets. It is called the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. On this website is an infographic that shows updated guidelines (as of December 2020) for what Americans should be eating. Some of the highlights are that 75 percent of Americans have diets that are low in fruit, vegetables, and dairy. Seventy-seven percent of Americans are exceeding their recommended intake of saturated fats. Also, Continued --
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