People all around the world fill their bodies up with empty calories every day. Empty calories are drinks loaded with sugar, aspartame, caramel color, preservatives, etc. People who follow the Standard American Diet tend to include liquid beverages to cover their recommended daily calorie consumption. That’s not a good strategy at all.

2. Fruit Juice

The majority of available fruit juices have an excessive amount of sugar (the fructose in fruit juices can be especially bad), artificial flavorings and preservatives, which make them nutritionally different than fruit you get in natural form. When fruit juices are exposed to oxygen, they start to lose their nutritional value hours after the production. This is why you’ll see fortified fruit juices, loaded with minerals and vitamins and are stripped of their fibers, starches and other important components that let people eat it without causing the blood sugar or insulin levels to spike.

What does it mean? It’s best to eat fruit in the natural form. If water isn’t enough to satisfy your thirst, reduce your consumption amount by drinking a glass of freshly-squeeze juice. Read this post for more information about juicing and Paleo diet.

3. Coffee and Caffeine

Coffee and other kinds of caffeinated drinks can tire out the adrenal glands and negatively impact the insulin levels. This will also increase the body’s feeling of drowsiness and fatigue. If you really need to drink coffee, at least you should try to find some organic brands that are free of mold toxins, and other types of contaminants.

4. Milk

If you’re doing the Paleo Diet, dairy products must be avoided. Milk tends to have extraneous hormones and can possibly spike insulin levels, causing a multitude of health problems like cancer, acne, etc. The chances of the hunter-gatherers of drinking milk is fairly low. Besides pasteurized milk has additional health problems when compared to raw milk. If you have to use dairy, at least try to find raw milk and raw dairy products, preferably goat or sheep milk.

5. Soda: Regular and Diet:

Regular and diet sodas have copious amounts of sugar, corn fructose syrup, preservatives and other toxins that is detrimental to one’s health. Excessive carbon dioxide levels can also cause osteoporosis and various other health problems. Even though we are led to believe that Diet soda is much healthier, it can be even worse than the sugar loaded regular soda. You can read about the adverse effects of drinking soda here.

6. Toothpaste

Toothpaste is not a drink in the technical sense. But it should be mentioned here anyhow because some people tend to swallow their toothpaste. According to various studies, the typical toothpaste has artificial sweeteners and other compounds in them, which can cause cancer for some folks. If you don’t swallow your toothpaste, there’s no real fear in suffering with long-term health effects. If you’re worried about your toothpaste’s ingredients, be sure you read the label and switch to a saccharin-free or natural toothpaste.

7. Tap water

If you are on Paleo Diet, one of the most important things is to stay hydrated. But not with tap water. Especially not if your tap water is fluoridated. What you need is clean water without the added fluoride, chorine, or other toxins. Mineral or spring water in plastic bottles isn’t really the real alternative to tap water because the plastic packaging contains various harmful chemicals. Use this source only if you can find spring water packaged in glass bottles. In addition to mineral water in glass bottles, the best way to get clean water is by using a water filtration system.

Stay Hydrated but not Overhydrated

As we said, dehydration is bad in any type of diet, but overhydration is also not good. Don’t drink too much water, because your body can only process and excrete a certain amount of water daily. Otherwise, the kidneys will work too hard to regulate and maintain the balance of fluids in the body. Don’t force yourself just because someone has told you to drink so many cups of water every day. Listen to your body. Ask your thirst.  Our bodies really hate to be without water. It’s very hard to stop someone from drinking water when they need to.

In this post we have talked about 7 types of drinks you should steer clear of when on the Paleo Diet, or should we say, when on any type of healthy diet really.

Cheers!