So it’s the New Year again! Minds turn from work to weather, from schedules to socialising, from frantic to family. Many of us will reflect on the year just been, and set expectations for next year. Christmas and the New Year is a great time for socialising with friends and family, and much of that centres around food.

We are lucky in New Zealand that we have an abundance of summer’s fresh produce to indulge in. Cherries, stonefruit, new potatoes, peas and salad vegetables. Our Christmas food is so different to those in the Northern Hemisphere; it feels fresher – maybe because we are often outside beside the BBQ or down at the lake or beach.

Lately I’ve been looking at beverage alternatives for the festive season. There seems to be two types of beverages around us. One is high calorie and nutrient poor, has a robust marketing budget to drive summer sales. This type I’ll call ‘commercial’. These drinks are formulated to appeal to our demand for taste (ie. sugar) and frequently associate themselves with a well-marketed ‘lifestyle’ or ‘emotion’ so that you choose their product over their competitors.

The other type is low kilojoule (calorie), and are sometimes nutrient rich. These may have a small, if any, marketing budget.  If they are sold in your supermarket they could be on a small section of shelving either way above eye level, or way below (or in the tea section). This type I’ll call ‘energetic’. While they have less ‘energy’ in the calorie sense of the word, you’ll feel more energtic for consuming them! And they are not the ‘energy’ drinks that use funky youth and adventure sport marketing, loaded with caffeine and either sugar or sweeteners (energy for five minutes perhaps).

In fact, because this term ‘energy’ can get confusing in this space, I am going to refer to ‘kilojoules’ when I refer to food energy here. Kilojoules is the term that we use for the energy that you eat in your diet. Americans (on the imperial system) use the term calories. There are 4.18 kilojoules in one calorie (Fact of the Day!).  If I refer to kilojoules as the food energy, I can reserve the term ‘energy’ for how energetic you feel – it should be a positive word!

At this time of year it is easy to get into the habit of drinking more of these high calorie drinks (and more alcohol) than usual. In Table 1 I have put together a list of beverages, their energy content, and their cost. I found this exercise really interesting! Soda water and sparkling water have piqued my interest, and I’ve also been looking for recipe ideas to jazz these up a bit. Some ideas include serving your water with ginger, mint, lemon or herbal/fruit teabags. A good project to do with the kids one day can be to chop up pieces of summer fruit or mint and and pop into ice cube trays to freeze.

One of my favourite websites for recipes is Healthy Food Guide NZ, here is the link for their beverage recipes in case you would like a browse: http://www.healthyfood.co.nz/meals-and-occasions/drinks

Table 1: Approximate kilojoule (kJ) content and price per 200mL serve of various beverages