Top Trash Panda Beverage Picks

The beverage aisle at the grocery store can be a little daunting, with a lot of healthy-looking drinks that are loaded with sugar, natural flavor, or other potentially harmful ingredients. But sometimes we’re craving something other than water, and we like to find drinks with great flavor and healthy ingredients. We’ve done the scavenging for you and rounded up some of our favorites!

The only thing we love more than the ingredients list for Spindrift is its taste. You really have to keep an eye out for natural flavors in sparkling water brands, but Spindrift is a great example of the front of the packaging telling the whole truth. It’s made of only water and fruit juice! We have a hard time deciding between the grapefruit and the lemon flavor, but you can’t go wrong with any of the varieties.

Kombucha is a fermented tea beverage that contains probiotics, which are great for the health of your gut. Our favorite brand is GT’s Synergy Raw Kombucha. All of their flavors taste amazing, and only contain juice in addition to their kombucha (made from live cultures, green tea, and black tea.) Avoid any brands that are pasteurized, since that process kills the live cultures, and also keep an eye out for added sugar or artificial sweeteners.

The bottled tea options can be a minefield of added sugar, natural flavors, citric acid, etc. Tejava Origins Hojicha Green Tea stands out for being organic, and having no added sugar or sweeteners. It is organically grown in Japan, then roasted and brewed in small batches.

In contrast to the big soda brands, Olipop only has 2-5g of sugar (compared to up to 39g in other brands.) Each can is also packed with ingredients such as plant fiber and prebiotics to help fuel the microbiome and encourage digestive health. With fun flavors like Classic Root Beer, Ginger Lemon, and Orange Squeeze, we think it’s an excellent alternative to traditional soda.

Do you have another drink you love? We’d love to hear about it over on Instagram!