Are You Drinking Too Many Calories?

About one-fifth of the calories we consume come from liquids. The worst offenders are sodas, sports drinks, fruit drinks, and sugary tea and coffee drinks. Some drinks at Starbucks can have as many as 700 to 800 calories--and a lot of fat.

The American Journal of Nutrition has published out some guidelines.

Healthy Beverage Options

So what should we drink?

• Water. It quenches thirst and still has zero calories. Even with water, however, too much is -- well too much. "Drinking for thirst is sufficient," Fernstrom says.
• Unsweetened tea and coffee. These beverages contain caffeine. A little caffeine is good for you, Popkin says. But don't consume more than 400 milligrams per day (8 ounces of brewed coffee has 132 milligrams of caffeine; 8 ounces of tea has about 40 milligrams).
• Skim or low-fat milk or soy beverages, up to 16 ounces a day.
• Artificially sweetened beverages, up to 32 ounces a day. If you choose coffee, tea or soda, watch the caffeine. Popkin says there's no proof that artificial sweeteners are bad for you -- but because the data are slim, the panel was "uneasy" about recommending them.

What drinks can we enjoy in strict moderation?

• Alcoholic beverages (adults only). Moderation is the key word here. The guidelines advise no more than one drink per day for women, two for men. A drink is one 12-ounce beer, one 5-ounce glass of wine, or one 1.5-ounce drink of distilled spirits. And remember, alcoholic drinks are high-calorie drinks.
• Fruit juice. Fruit juice has nothing in it you can't get from whole fruit -- and it has a lot more calories. But if you aren't getting enough whole fruit in your diet, one 4-ounce glass of juice per day is OK.

What drinks should we avoid? The guidelines say we should cut back on these things by at least 75%:

• Whole milk. It's a huge source of saturated fat -- and who needs that?
• Sweetened soft drinks, sweetened sports drinks, and fruit drinks. If you have to have one, limit yourself to an 8-ounce glass.
• Sugar-sweetened tea and coffee drinks.

Fernstrom worries that the guidelines will confuse consumers. She says it may be better simply to stress the fact that many beverages contain calories.

"If you are trying to lose weight, you must be mindful of all the calories you consume, particularly those in beverages -- they all count," she says. "The positive message from the guidelines is you don't have to limit your noncalorie liquids to water. Tea, diet beverages, noncalorie sports drinks, flavored waters -- all are equivalent. That is the way to save calories. There are a lot of options."

Popkin and colleagues were funded by Unilever, which makes Lipton Teas. Popkin says the company had no input on the guidelines and saw them only in their final form. Lipton is using the guidelines to promote its products, but Lipton says this choice was made by the company and not by the panel.

The guidelines appear in the March 1 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

I'm on board with these recommendations. I always tell my clients to aim for a gallon of water a day, or more (we live in the desert). I tell them to stay away from alcohol, soda, fruit juice, and whole milk.

I'm a bit of a renegade when it comes to fruit juice. This stuff has a lot of calories, but the real problem is that the liver processes fructose into triglycerides immediately and stores them as fat rather than burning the calories for energy.

I'm not saying don't eat fruit, but just know that it will be stored as fat and not burned for energy.