Spinoff: DD loves lemonade: The lesser of two evils??

[JMS]

By and large my kids eat a very healthy variety of foods. When the do get juice, it's extremely watered down organic apple juice. DD's new favorite thing is lemonade and I hate to say NO all day. I found at Whole Foods "Whole Kids Organic Lemonade" which is 73% white grape juice and 10% lemon juice. It also has no added sugar and I water it down slightly.
Lately she probably has 2-3 sippy cups of this lemonade concoction a day. I'm wondering if I should try something like Crystal Lite lemonade instead. Would artifical sweeteners be better or worse than empty calories?
TIA!

[brittone2]

Personally, I'd rather have the real stuff than artificial sweeteners any day.

One thing to consider if you haven't already...citrus-based drinks are really, really rough on teeth. DS had a cavity when he was 15ish months and I bumped into this info. We've tried to avoid them for that reason, and if he has OJ at my parents' house or something, we try to brush right away. Even in adults, I remember reading citrus sodas, gatorade, lemonade, etc. can be really damaging to teeth...more than even regular juice. Of course, it sounds like the whole foods stuff is mostly grape juice.

I sometimes get tired of water and will drink a lot of flavored iced tea (something like rooibos which is naturally decaf and high in antioxidants) or take seltzer and add a splash of juice or limeade. I don't do it often, but once in a while it is nice for variety. Maybe you can water it down more and more?

ETA: when I was first looking into insulin resistance-related stuff for my own health, I found numerous resources saying that while artificial sweeteners don't contain calories, they can still cause an insulin spike. Your body still thinks you consumed sugar. That can set people up to want/crave more sugar/carbs within a short period of time after consuming the artificial sweetener. So yes, you get to skip the calories, but you still get some of the not-so-desirable biochemical consequences of eating sugar.

[JMS]

Thank you Beth. You are always such a wealth of great knowledge. I think I'm just going to try and water it down more and more. She really probably only has about 8 ozs / day and it's mostly organic grape. Maybe I'll get lucky and she'll just start getting sick of it :)

[kijip]

Toby likes lemonade too. We get the RJ Knutsen's 100% lemon juice and pour a little into a glass of water with a tiny bit of honey and Toby thinks it is great. We could also just get lemons but J and I don't tend to drink it ourselves and 1 whole lemon makes a lot. So we get the juice already squeezed for convenience. Toby's teeth are very good, no cavities, but that is mostly just his dad's good genes (J has perfect teeth and no cavities) and my flossing obsession...