How Beverages Impact Health and Nutrition

Abstract

Good nutrition remains the single most cost-effective way to improve the health and well-being of the greatest number of individuals on our planet. Over seven billion people on the planet will drink some sort of beverage today as part of their daily nutritional requirements leading to tens of billions of servings per day. Beverages are of many types, including water, coffee, tea, fruit juice, alcohol (beer, wine, hard liquor), milk, soda, energy drinks, or any combination of ingredients found in water. Human life occurs bathed in a sea of fluids; indeed, as a fetus we begin to drink even before birth. Beverage consumption starts immediately after we are born, usually with breast milk, and continues until death.