While researchers always find ways to contradict one another, everyone agrees that water is good and drinking it (when needed) is important. Yet, for many people, drinking a plain old glass of water isn’t enough. Now the trend to make water edible has gone to the next level.
Plain water is the vanilla of water flavors, well at least that’s what Tonya Spanglo and many other TikTokers think. With ever increasing followers, Tonya rose to TikTok fame by posting daily water recipes, during videos which she named WaterTok. From her water recipes, Tonya has garnered well over 12 million likes.
After undergoing gastric sleeve surgery, Tonya’s medical team advised her to drink 64 ounces of water per day. Like many people, that same-old-same-old wasn’t enough, and drinking plain water made her sick.
Leading the trend of this WaterTok, Tonya’s videos show recipes of filtered water, large scoops of ice, and a cascade of flavored syrups and powders mixed like colorful magical potions. So what are the flavors?
Think of your wildest dreams. There are tropical cocktail flavors, colorful candy rainbow drinks, and dessert-flavored waters (yes, like birthday cake, pineapple upside-down cake, and cinnamon roll). The talk is positive, and the comments are bubbly —- overall, the community of people is as sweet as the syrups they use.
To make all of these flavors, many fans of the trend have created Water Bars, where they carve out a space in their kitchens to have colorful and coordinated mugs, straws, and syrups. The brands like Stanley Cup and Skinny Girl syrups have seen an increase in sales. The mug cup once marketed to farmers became popular among these WaterTokers, some of the cups are out of stock and a waiting list is piling up. Skinny Girl syrups which are the syrups you frequently see Tonya use, reported certain flavors like their vibrant mermaid syrup to sell out at a rapid pace.
And while people have been flavoring water for decades (remember Crystal Light and Kool-Aid?), some of the water recipes made by TikTok users are sweeter than they are hydrating. Drinking sweet beverages can make you feel dehydrated which kind of defeats the point of drinking water in the first place.
Many of these drinks are low or zero-calories, but the sweet flavor does interact with the body. While our brains know it’s sugar-free, when our taste receptors taste sugar, the body initiates a process to anticipate the intake of sugar, balancing out our hormones to uptake and regulate the anticipated sugar. When your body doesn’t get the sugar from sugar-free drinks, your blood sugar levels can rapidly drop almost like you had a sugar crash. People that are insulin-sensitive or have symptoms of metabolic disorders may react badly to sugar-free or sucralose-based zero-calorie alternatives.
When you feel nauseous from drinking plain water, try changing the temperature of the water. As much as everyone loves an ice-cold glass of water, the cold temperature can create a nauseous sensation for some. If this sounds like you, you can try to drink more of a tepid cold or room-temperature glass of water. Infusing the water with ingredients like mint or ginger (which won’t affect blood sugar or your sense of hydration) will reduce nausea.