5 Natural Energy Drinks To Buy Slideshow
Bean & Body Coffee
Imagine your typical Starbucks bottled Frappuccino, with the added benefits of acai berries or coconut water. That's what you get with the Body & Bean coffee beverages, made with antioxidants, teas, and herbs to turn your coffee into a superfood. Take the Coffee Anti-Ox flavor, made with the same antioxidants found in blueberries and acai berries, or the Coffee marTEAni, made with antioxidants, polyphenols, and green tea leaves. Each of the seven flavors combines the natural properties found in food (i.e. yerba mate, dark chocolate, and honey) to make a naturally sweet, and healthy, drink. And the drink isn't just for the health-minded, but also the ethically minded: the Peruvian coffee used in Bean & Body is made from fair-trade certified, organic, shade-grown beans. The drinks range from 36 to 135 milligrams of caffeine.
Celsius
We admit it, we were skeptical that the benefits of the newest energy drink, Celsius, were too good to be true. The world's first and only "negative calorie" drink, the company says, can help you burn up to 100 calories if you drink it before your workout. Crazy, right? But the studies support their claim: six separate studies tested the effects on about 100 adults, and found that Celsius helped improve the participants' metabolic rate and body composition in a mere 28 days. The Celsius Sparkling Wild Berry drink contains vitamins B6 and B12, vitamin C, riboflavin, calcium, and caffeine from green leaf tea extract and guarana. One can of Celsius contains about 200 milligrams of caffeine. (One drawback: the ingredients label shows sucralose and two artificial colorings in the drink.)
EBOOST
The EBOOST dietary supplements have a long list of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants on their ingredient lists — and as a bonus, it's easy to understand what the ingredients are. Take the EBOOST Acai Pomegranate dietary supplement: made with real acai fruit, green tea leaf extract, pomegranate fruit extract, mango, resveratrol from red grapes, Stevia leaf extract, and agave. And each supplement has about 110 to 150 milligrams of caffeine. Not to say you should do everything that Jillian Michaels and Oprah Winfrey tell you to do, but we think if they like it — it's a pretty solid choice.
Frava
Combine "fruit" and "java" and what do you get? Frava, a natural fruit juice that uses green coffee bean extract for its punch of caffeine. With flavors like Pomegranate Acai (a powerful kick of antioxidants) and Peach Mango (with a powerful kick of vitamin C), you're getting the true benefits of juice with about two coffee mugs worth of caffeine. (One drawbacks of the drink: the use of sucralose and acesulfame potassium, two artificial sweeteners that some frown upon.)
Scheckter's OrganicEnergy Drink
It's being hailed as the world's first 100 percent natural energy drink that uses all organic, vegetarian, and fair-trade ingredients. The drink, founded by former race car driver Toby Scheckter, is free of synthetic caffeine, artificial sweeteners, colors, and flavors, and toxic chemicals. And its ingredients read like a garden: organic raw Brazilian coffee seed, organic ginseng, organic gingko biloba, and organic guarana, among others. The drink delivers a 135-milligram dose of caffeine.