Is Vitamin Water as Healthy As We Think It Is?

Vitamin water has been at the forefront of the healthy drink revolution for some time now, gaining widespread popularity among health-minded individuals. The colorful drinks are said to be healthy alternatives to soda and juices, packed with vitamins and antioxidants that are supposedly good for your health. But is this just clever marketing? Are we really supposed to believe that something branded with word vitamin in it is automatically healthy? Let’s take a look at just how healthy Vitamin Water is.

There’s a reason why Vitamin Water tastes so good to us. Each bottle is packed with almost as much liquid sugar and fructose as is found in a can of Coca-Cola. Coincidentally, Vitamin Water is owned by Coca-Cola, and they certainly have mastered the deceptive art of getting consumers hooked on their products due to their high sugar content and society’s addiction to sugar. Vitamin Water is sweetened with crystalline fructose, which has been shown to lead to weight gain, increased risk of obesity, and a variety of other diseases. In other words, it is exactly the opposite of what we think of when it comes to Vitamin Water.

When it comes to drinking excess amounts of sugary liquid drinks, our body is not properly nourished, causing us to want to eat more to fulfill our appetites. Calories consumed from sugars is added on top of the calories you eat during the day, which over time can lead to dire health consequences.

Another deceiving aspect of Vitamin Water is that while it promises to deliver a daily dose of essential vitamins in a convenient beverage, most of the vitamins found in it are nutrients that people get enough of. Consuming an excess amount of vitamins has absolutely no benefit to your body, as it is washed out of the body via urine. While there are still several important vitamins that some people may lack, including folate and B12, getting these vitamins by drinking a sugar drink makes little sense, as your body needs the proper enzymes found in food to break these vitamins down and distribute them throughout the body. Taking supplements and sticking to whole foods is a much healthier and more cost-effective alternative that does not flood your body with unnecessary processed sugars. 

Still, this hasn’t stopped Vitamin Water from becoming a multi-billion dollar brand. It goes to show how far deceptive marketing can really go in making us believe that we are making a healthy choice with the beverages we decide to consume. In the end, drinking Vitamin Water or any similar vitamin-enhanced beverage is the same as drinking a soda, but if you’re doing so to make a positive impact in your overall health, you’re better off with sticking to plain old H2O.