What are the most healthy energy drinks on the market?
We're glad you asked.
We've answered in the past if energy drinks are bad for you. The answer? It sort of depends. Some are great for you, some are bad for you and some have good base level ingredients that are then covered up with tons of extra added sugar.
That said, there are some healthy options there out on the market, so let's investigate.
Unhealthy Ingredients to Avoid in an Energy Drink
Sugar
Sugar might juice you quickly, but it's going to have a strong crash and screws up both your glucose and energy levels throughout the day. Unfortunately, most drinks are packed with these.
"Proprietary" Blends
Proprietary blends are often stood up to sound impressive or scientific, but they're usually a way to group a bunch of trace amounts of minerals together and act like it's going to be more effective than it actually is.
Healthy Ingredients to Look for in an Energy Drink
Caffeine
Caffeine is a known stimulant and proven to improve focus and work capacity. However, overdoing caffeine can make people nauseous or jittery thoughout the day.
Taurine
Taurine is known to help increase work capacity and blood flow. It's the primary ingredient that gave red bull it's name (taurine comes from the latin "taurus").
L-Theanine
L-theanine is often paired with caffeine to help "take the edge off" the caffeine jitters and give you more of a smooth, easy focus.
CoQ10
CoQ10 is a great ingredient that can increase blood flow, testosterone, and exercise capacity. However, it's gotten increasingly expensive over the past couple years and the majority of mixes that use this don't use it to it's clinical effective dosages.
Creatine
Creatine is a great performance enhancing compound known to help improve exertion in exercise. However, most drinks that claim this as an ingredient don't have enough for it to be effective.
Here's our top list of the most healthy ones in existence with some caveats along the way. Let's get started.
The Most Healthy Energy Drinks (Top 7 Energy Drinks)
IMPOSSIBLE Energy
Cost: $39 for 21 packs (<$2/drink) (buy online here)
Caffeine: 200mg (per drink)
Sugar: 0g
Important Ingredients: Caffeine, Taurine, Tyrosine, L-Theanine
Proprietary Blend: no
Impossible Energy is a new energy drink mix supplement from IMPOSSIBLE ®. Formulated to have all the bang of your favorite energy drink, with better taste and "less junk that's bad for you" - IMPOSSIBLE Energy has been designed for elite athletes and high performance humans - it creates a long lasting level of energy with zero crash.
Impossible Energy is a drink mix that's low sugar, keto friendly, but still packs a punch. Also, because there's no sugar to spike your blood sugar levels - you avoid the crash that comes with most standard energy drinks (even healthy ones).
You can get Impossible Energy here.
→ You can also buy Impossible Energy on Amazon
Caveman Coffee Nitro
Cost: $3.33/can
Caffeine: 200mg
Sugar: 0g sugar
Important Ingredients: Nitro cold brew
Proprietary Blend: No
If you want a blast to the face of 200mg of caffeine without all the sugar - pick up some Caveman Nitro Cold Brew. I know what you're thinking - coffee as an energy drink? Most of the coffee I've had in can form is just lacking - but however Caveman did it - they did a great from the flavor, to the mouthfeel, to the fact that you're loaded with energy with absolute zero sugar.
It sounds weird, but in some respect, your best bet for an energy drink is...a bomb-ass coffee? Hey - it works.
Buy Caveman Nitro Here.
Runa
Cost: $2.33
Caffeine: 150mg
Sugar: 2g
Important Ingredients: Guayasa
Proprietary Blend: No
Runa is a guayasa based tea drink. They sell tea, but their energy drinks. The big drawback is that they have a huge. Their non-sweetened ones frankly - don't taste very good - but if you're willing to switch up your caffeine source - they're worth a shot.
Jocko Go
Cost: $2.62
Caffeine: 95mg
Sugar: Zero
Important Ingredients: Alpha GPC, Bacopa Monerri, Choline
Proprietary Blend: No
Jocko - you know Jocko - has launched his own energy drink - Jocko Go. I'm not sure we can actually call it healthy, but we don't want to piss Jocko off and have him get after us - so we're going to leave this one here.
NOCCO
Cost: $2.49/can180mg
Caffeine: 180mg
Sugar: Zero
Important Ingredients: BCAAs, B Vitamins
Proprietary Blend: No
Nocco stands for the no carbs company. While we can get behind that - the majority of their sweeteners are sucralose instead of more natural ones like monk fruit or stevia. Because of this - and our tendency to avoid artificial sweeteners - NOCCO gets knocked down the list a little bit. Their flavor choices seem "off" a little bit - but that's likely due to the artificial sweetener that we are not used to.
Celsius
Cost: $1.79/can
Caffeine: 200mg (12 oz can)
Sugar: 0g
Important Ingredients: Caffeine, Green Tea Extract
Proprietary Blend: Yes
Celsius is a new player on the block and pitches themsevelves as a healthy alternative to red bull. While, they've been around since 2005, they started making noise in the past year.
While we like the zero sugar angle, the proprietary blend they tout makes ourselves squint as we like the transparency that comes with be clear about exactly how much of each ingredient is in each drink.
Also - while the zero sugar is a great move, it does come at the expense of them using sucralose to sweeten it with - which depending on your own personal proclivities - not everyone will be happy with.
Red Bull
Cost: $4/can
Caffeine: 111mg (12 oz can)
Sugar: 39g (!)
Important Ingredients: Caffeine, Taurine, B Vitamins
Proprietary Blend: no
We are literally giving Red Bull a pass because they encourage a lifestyle that is healthy, adventurous and if energy drinks are going to kill you - you might as well die early doing red bull types of things - like skydiving from the edge of space.
The drink itself though? Not good for you at all.
Middle of the Road
These are "okay" but we certainly wouldn't call them "healthy energy drinks" by any imagination.
3D Energy Drinks
These are pitched as "clean" or "smooth" energy drinks. The low calorie count is helpful but it does contains sucralose and erithytol (be careful as this can reek havoc on some people's stomachs).
We will give them this - their can branding is great.
Bang
Sold in gyms with creatine, BANG is likely to be thought of as the "healthy energy drink" for bodybuilders, etc.
To be quite honest, this would go higher on the list, but 1) the creatine content is not reported as is the CoQu10 quantity. CoQu10 in any efficacious dosage is very expensive and the amount included in these drinks is likely not enough to be seriously helpful.
Great concept though...
Reign
Reign markets themselves to Crossfitters. To be honest, it just sort of feels like a gym version of Monster. Avoid these and don't bother with them.
The Worst of the Worst Energy Drinks
Don't drink these. Not even once.
UpTime
UpTime has a higher end brand. To be honest, we almost included it in the tier above, but then we read it has 39g of sugar in it! We like the l-theanine and CoQu10, but again - these are in small enough doses not to matter. The sleek can somehow did it's job in making us think it was healthier (for a half second) - which is a good reminder to always read the labels.
Monster
Not only do these come in oversized cans, but almost every variation is packed with sugar or sucralose. It covers up the taste, but man - it's not even a little healthy for you.
Rockstar
Monster but with illustrations. Same issues from a formula perspective and not any improvement on the taste profile.
5 Hour Energy
Shot to death. Literally. I know people are mixed on energy drink taste - but this one doesn't even taste good. The one benefit is that it's less liquid - so I guess there are less calories? They're also in stock everywhere so that can be a bonus in the clutch - but I've had this one time to taste it out and that was enough for a lifetime.
So what do you think? Did we miss any? What's your favorite healthy energy drink out there?
Other Healthy Energy Drink Opinions
Other opinions on healthy energy drinks from around the internet. Have a look: