All week we’ve been talking about healthy substitutions! Substitute homemade crackers for store bought ones. Substituting vegan sugar free jello, for traditional jello made with dyes and sugar. Today, we’re substituting a soft drink with a fun bubbly drink! Not only is this drink delicious, but it contains WHOLE FRUIT! I don’t know any soft drinks that could say the same thing.
This was super simple, and could literally be done with any fruit. We started with 2 cups of watermelon in our blender. We added 1/2 cup white grape juice (I used Welch’s White) to really liquify it. If you use fruit other than watermelon, use enough juice to thin out the fruit so it is very smooth.
Then, we combined the fruit juice with some sparkling water. First put the fruit juice in, (about half the cup full), then fill the rest of the cup or jar with the sparkling water. Serve with a cute and colorful straw.
Why watermelon? We love watermelon right now! It’s the perfect summer fruit, making this the perfect summer drink!
Watermelon is:
- High in lycopene (just like tomatoes!) Lycopene is vital for cardiovascular health and also bone health!
- Watermelon is high in Citruline. This is super interesting about Citruline:
The flesh of a watermelon contains about 250 millligrams of citrulline per cup. When our body absorbs this citrulline, one of the steps it can take is conversion of citrulline into arginine. Particularly if a person’s body is not making enough arginine, higher levels of arginine can help improve blood flow and other aspects of our cardiovascular health. There’s also some preliminary evidence from animal studies that greater conversion of citrulline into arginine may help prevent excess accumulation of fat in fat cells due to blocked activity of an enzyme called tissue-nonspecific alkaline phosphatase, or TNAP. (source)
We love this Sparkling Watermelon drink! Not only is it fun to be fancy on a summer afternoon, you can serve it at parties and gatherings as well!
Our other fun drink ideas includes this one with whole fruit:
Sparkling Watermelon Sippers
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup white grape juice i used welch’s
- 2 cups watermelon
- 1 cup sparkling water
Instructions
- Combine watermelon and grape juice in a blender, and blend until smooth.
- In a glass, pour watermelon juice till the glass is half full.
- Top off the glass with sparkling water.