I am looking for an alternative to drinking just plain water, any suggestions?

Iced tea. There’s tons of varieties to choose from: green, jasmine, passion fruit, black teas…

@tinyfaery: do you make it yourself? what’s your favorite? passion fruit sounds delicious! (any particular brands?)

You don’t need to drink 8 glasses a day.
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4174

A carbonating siphon and a squeeze of lemon is nice, and nearly as cheap as plain water after the initial investment.

I love pink grapefruit juice. It’s naturally sweet, no artificial flavors. I’m not so crazy about the white grapfruit juice, it’s not sweet.

Iced solar tea is very refreshing and you can down a whole glass with ease!

GA for @Cruiser – it’s easy to make, too.

Cold, sparkling water is my preferred method of imbibing H2O. A squeeze of lime in there is extra nice.

I’m a huge fan of iced tea… and I like to make my own. It’s difficult to find different flavors of unsweetened ice tea in the stores, but if I make my own, I can pick any flavor I like. And even if you don’t like yours unsweetened.. you can still make it to taste.

Vitamin Water try the XXX blueberry pomegranate….it’s really good.

Wine

@cheebdragon good call, that stuff is amazing.

@Lightlyseared: I’m not sure if you were joking; but alcohol and caffeine are diuretics, and therefore contribute to dehydration. When you drink them, you need to consume extra water to make up the difference. Green and black tea do have caffeine, but markedly less than coffee. Green tea especially has additional health benefits, so I drink that earlier in the day, and try to cut off any caffeine after 2:00 p.m.

The Vitamin Water and Sobe Life Water low-calorie options use Stevia for sweetener, rather than aspartame (NutraSweet) or sucralose (Splenda). Stevia is natural, but still somewhat controversial as a sugar alternative. I find there is still an after-taste to it, but of all the sugar-substitutes, I find it the most tolerable.

Celestial Seasonings has powdered packs – also with Stevia – like the Crystal Light packs that you mix in with a bottle of water – but they’re ridiculously hard to find. They had 2 herbal and 2 green teas, initially; now it appears they only have the herbal varieties available. I also found similar green tea packets – unsweetened – by Rishi Tea at a Wegmans about a half-hour away from where I live.

I always put a slice of lemon or some squished apple slices in mine.

Caffiene free ice tea.

Liquid is liquid, even if you are drinking a diuretic, it is probably fine. Most people drink more of a tasty fluid than water anyway, so it is easily compensated for in my opinion. I guess I am just saying that don’t be under the impression that drinking coffee or tea is actually making you more dehydrated than if you drank nothing, because that is simply not true.

Are you opposed to using sugar, or some other real sweetner?

I second the iced tea. Make some sun tea then ice it. Oh that is delicious! I particularly like this one I had last summer. Can’t remember the official tea but can remember it had a hint of vanilla. I made that as sun tea added a lemon and lime to the bottom of the pitcher then chilled it. I got tons of compliments :).

You can also do club soda or sparking water. Mix that with low sugar juice.

Then there is also Soda! Hehe ~

iced tea

Sparkling water or seltzer with lime is nice.

nestea…pepsi..chocolate milk…grapefruit juice…and water

I got into Green drinks a few months and it has sure changed my health. I find them very refreshing! Need a good blender though… Like a Vita-Mix

I love the Multi-V from vitamin water, which is like lemonade.
I think I’ll get some tomorrow

I just put a whole lot of ice cubes in my water. I also drink a lot of milk as well.

If you tend to drink bottled water, swap to tap: the extra minerals in the tap water will give it a different flavor.
Be warned: while most all tap water is potable, it isn’t all very tasty.

I drink diet Lipton green tea with citrus. It’s so light and crisp and yummy.

Club soda or seltzer with a squeeze of lime in it is my favorite. Iced herbal tea is also great for mixing it up without getting all the caffeine. Gourmet tea shops have some seriously awesome blends if you aren’t a celestial seasonings fan, and most of them let you order online if you don’t live right near their one store. Tazo also has some great teas (including that passion tea.)

Water with a slice or two of cucumber in it is amazingly refreshing.

Ditto for water with fresh mint in it.

I’m cutting down on soft drinks by mixing less and less of the flavoring powder (Gatorade) until I get to the point where I’ve reached the minimum concentration acceptable to me. I’m at about 1/8 strength now. Pure water makes me nauseous.

@stranger_in_a_strange_land I always take soft drinks to mean carbonated beverages. I guess it can be used for non-carbonated?

Did anyone mention a packet of lemon/lime Emergen-C with ice, water and a sprig of fresh mint?

I always find those packets you add to water bottles end up making me more thirsty. They actually work for some of you?

Only the Emergen_C. It’s got vit. C, B and some enzymes in it.

I also buy serious organic grape, blueberry and pomegranate juices (separate bottles) and use as flavouring for iced water. They’re too sweet and overbearing if drunk neat.

there are other packets for green teas.

@jazmina88: Could you kindly share with us the brand, so we know what to look for?

I enjoy a slice or two of cucumber in my water. It’s surprisingly refreshing.

http://www.truetex.com/carbonation.htm
Or I get Gerolsteiner, which is somewhat hard to find in regular US markets right now…

I exercise more which makes me crave water.

Sometimes I like GuS or sparkling water or club soda or seltzer water. If you mix club soda with your favorite juice you can make your own “soda”.

I just can’t stand Coca Cola / Pepsi soda products and the like because they are way too sweet for me, and I hate the taste of HFCS.

I really like Vitamin Water because it’s not as horrendously sweet as most other drinks. But I wait till it’s on sale cuz it is ridiculously expensive. Heck, it’s still expensive even when on sale but it is really refreshing.

But what I usually do is probably not the healthiest, but it works for me. And I heard that the major soda companies are going to be offering versions with regular sugar instead of that High Fructose Corn Syrup crap.

Anyhow, I discovered rather accidentally several years ago that diluting regular lemon lime soda slightly less than half and half with filtered water is actually quite refreshing and surprisingly palatable.

Regular soda is just way too horribly sweet, but diluted it has just enough lemon flavor and sugar taste without being overpowering.

It’s actually quite similar to Vit. Water in that regard. But I can usually stock up on big 2 liter bottles of Sierra Mist when they’re on sale for 99 cents or less, so that’s a whole lot more economical.

As I said, probably not the healthiest, but at least I’m only drinking half the amount of soda that I used to and it really is refreshing without rotting out my teeth totally.

You know, when mixed with fresh lemon juice and sparkling water Splenda Brand Artificial Sweetener™ isn’t half bad, assuming you cut the recommended dose in half.

Did we find out if the OP is against sugar for some specific reason? She said she was not happy with ingredients she has never heard of. All of these artificial sweetners are kind of like chemicals in my book. .

Splenda is made from sugar.

@dpworkin I know, but what do they do to it? A chemical process of some sort? Just asking, I really don’t know.

Hmm, my nutrtionalists recommended it to me when I was actively losing weightt, saying that it was “not artificial”, but you’re right, I’m not sure what they meant by that. They cautioned me against other sweeteners, so I got the idea that it was “healthy” to use.

I think they say Equal is not artificial because it is amino acids or something like that. Meanwhile, Equal sticks in my throat, I always know when Equal is in something. I use sugar. But, I am interested to know more about Splenda. I’ll have to google it.

Kindly let me know what you discover. I have just been taking it on faith.

Actually, coffee is diuretic, but tea is the opposite. But drinking either makes me more thirsty. It’s the tannins in the tea that make the mouth feel dry. (Sometimes knowing a lot about food science is annoying because I think too much about what I eat.)

When I moved to NZ I discovered lime and water… YUM… If you can get Roses Lime cordial it is very good, and just a squirt in the bottom of the glass and some ice water on top and it makes the water go down very easily.

BEWARE drinks claiming ‘no added sugar’ because they may contain FAKE sugar and that’s not something you want to consume in any quantity. Ick.

I like to keep a variety of juice concentrates in the fridge. Just a cm or two on the bottom of a big glass and top it up with ice water and it’s a refreshing drink and the natural fruit sugars give the brain a boost.

@JLeslie Technically, a soft drink is any beverage that does not contain alcohol.
@gailcalled That sounds good, too.

@stranger_in_a_strange_land I looked it up when I saw your post, I had not known. I don’t think most people use the term that way, I think most people use the term for soda, but it might be a regional thing, or it might be I was simply mistaken all along in my interpretation.

I mix 15% pure fruit juice with tap water.

@JLeslie Sucralose (Splenda) is made by chlorinating sucrose ie sugar. (No, I have no idea what theat means or what it involves). However, I have to admit I have a particular fondness for sucralos as it was discovered at the universtiy I attended. A student was asked to test some substances but misheard the professor and thought he was supposed to taste them.

I have never used Splenda. Does it taste the same as sugar?

@jnabb I find it has no bitter aftertaste and it the most sugar-like of all the artifical sweetners I have tried.

@Lightlyseared I like that story. I know what you mean AlsoSalt was created at my university and is used in the sodium free Heinz Ketchup :). So do you feel chlorinating would be considered a chemical process? I think most people who are sensitive to the idea of all natural would think so. I am not sure where I stand to be honest, I am not clear on whether we are actually ingesting the chlorine, I would guess not. As I get older it seems to me more and more that using foods closest to the way we find them in the ground is probably the best way to go. Meanwhile, I am far from perfect in executing this ideal.

@JLeslie I suppose it all depends on how you look at life. Cheese making involves a chemical process as does baking a cake. Whether you would consider that reason to stop eating cheese and cakes (and cheesecakes) is another thing.
Sucralose tends not to be absorbed by the body with the vast majority of it being excreted in the faeces, and even of the small amount that is absorbed most is excreted in urine without being metabolised (or to put it another way it just goes straight though you).

@JLeslie I tend to go with the “everything in moderation” theory and having the real foods isntead of substitutes myself. (Except for my one can of Diet Cherry Coke every day, which ismy substitute for a cigarette.)

Back to the original question, I also like club soda with just a little lemonade powder mixed in. I probably use about a tablespoon per 8 ounces, so a glass is about 40 calories, much less than soda. When I make it with flat water I want it sweeter for some reason, and more calories obviously.

I also like to put in a squirt of honey, pinch of salt and a splash of fruit juice for my own homemade Gatorade.

wow! amazing amount of answers… i never would have thought! and no, i am not against sugar, per se, but i was wondering about alternatives. limited sugar would be best and idk how i feel about sugar substitutes, most of them taste yucky to me.

thanks everyoneeee :)

@Cruiser How do you make solar iced tea? Do you have to buy one of those huge, fragile jars?

@dpworkin From wiki:
Sucralose is made by replacing three select hydrogen-oxygen groups on sucrose (table sugar) molecules with three chlorine atoms. The tightly bound chlorine atoms create a molecular structure that is remarkably stable. Sucralose itself is recognized as safe to ingest as a diabetic sugar substitute, but some Splenda products may contain sugars or other carbohydrates that should be evaluated individually. Research as of 2003 suggested that the amount of sucralose that can be consumed on a daily basis over a person’s lifetime without any adverse effects is 15 mg/kg/day, or about 1 g for a 70 kg (150 lb) person. This was revised downward in 2008 to 9 mg/kg/day, or about 0.6 g.

Technically, nobody has “just plain water.” Besides water we’ve got traces of metals, minerals, dissolved gases, residue from the treatment plants, fluoride, etc.

Elderflower infused water served over ice with mint leaves.

@Lightlyseared : how the hell do you do that? and what is elderflower??? i’m very intrigued!