I was in one of our W3 locations the other day, and a member approached me with a nutrition question. She asked me what I thought about diet green tea and is it good for you? Interesting question I thought…. Anything with the word “diet” in it is usually altered in some way, usually more than one, so no, it’s not good for you. I went on to explain…
Natural green tea has zero calories in it. “Diet” usually means that it is reduced in calories, oftentimes to zero, so if natural green tea has zero calories, diet green tea shouldn’t exist. She looked perplexed.
Basically, it’s backwards, and kind of sad that the food/diet industry would take such a great, natural product and morph it into something unhealthy… and then marketing it to the public as if it’s going to help them lose weight. WRONG!
Basically, unnatural green tea products, so any type of bottled green tea that is sweet, was created by adding tons of sugar. This sugar=calories. In today’s world, every sugary drink needs a diet version, right? So the food/drink industry went on to create a diet version of green tea, so they basically do the same thing that you would do to make Coke “diet.” You take out the cane sugar and replace it with additives and fake sugar/aspartame, making it zero calories and extremely (unnaturally) sweet…. basically this makes drinking diet green tea equivalent to drinking diet coke. I don’t recommend it.
It’s unfortunate that it’s marketed in such a way that it’s good for you. Green tea IS good for you and has great health benefits; it’s even linked to helping you lose weight! But that’s natural green tea. I have a great recommendation for you. Buy unsweetened, natural green tea. The bottle should literally read 0 calories and the only ingredients should be green tea and water. If you don’t like the way it tastes, add zero calorie, natural sweetener, such as Truvia or Stevia. It has zero calories and doesn’t include the dangerous aspartame. It’ll make it sweet and keep it healthy!
There you go- hopefully that answers the question!
Stay focused, stay fit~
