UrbanKitchen: Refreshing Drink Infusions To Get You Drinking More Water

We all know how important it is to get at least 8 glasses of water a day—it’s great for your skin, helps you loss weight and, in these summer months, keeps you cool and hydrated. But what if you just aren’t a water person? What if you struggle to drink one glass let alone 8 a day? This latest food trend is for you.

Infusing your water is a great way to spice up your water without losing any of the health benefits.

It’s all about incorporating fruits, vegetables and herbs into our water consumption not only as a refreshing change of taste but as an alternative to sweet sugary soda pop. Also, depending on what you infuse with, there are even more added health benefits.

For someone like me who likes the fizziness of sparkling drinks, a sodastream comes in really handy and doesn’t take up much space on the kitchen counter. We’ve been a fan of the at-home water carbonation machine for a couple years now but recently  I’ve been discovering ways to create tasty infused drinks at home and loving the endless options. And it’s not just me who is into these new water infusions. My kids have been concocting their own, too.

In the two weeks since we started playing around with different varieties, we’ve also cut down the sugary pop consumption dramatically. Here are a few simple recipes to create all natural at home drinks with healthy benefits that also taste amazing.

Infusing simply means to add the ingredients to the water and let it sit and basically steep. But, I prefer to slightly muddle the fruits or roughly chop all my ingredients together before adding the sparkling water to let the natural flavours really blend in. The recipes here call for a variety of easy to find fresh produce and you can adjust the flavours to your liking.

For digestion and tummy troubles: ginger, grapes, mint, watermelon, lemon, cantaloupe

Can’t sleep? Try this mash up: Cherries, grapes, kale, pineapple, lemon balm, orange

Too much exercise? Reduce inflammation by trying these: spinach, strawberries, ginger, thyme, blueberries

Stressed? No worries: blueberries, spinach, oranges, lemon balm, kale

Some interesting tidbits of info…

Lemon Balm is actually a member of the mint family and is considered a calming herb. It’s known to reduce stress, promote sleep, easy pain and discomfort from indigestion including gas and bloating.

Ginger is well-known for helping with indigestion and offering gastrointestinal relief as well as motion sickness helping to reduce symptoms like dizziness and nausea. It also contains anti-inflammatory properties to help reduce muscle soreness and arthritis.

Kale is rich in antioxidants, anti-inflammatory and studies show that kale ‘s cancer preventative benefits have been clearly linked to its unusual concentration of two types of antioxidants: carotenoids and flavonoids, according to the site whfoods.com