Rocky Mountain High

Rocky Mountain High touts their beverages as “a natural high like no other” directly on their cans.  If they are referring to a sugar high, they may be onto something. A TINA.org reader recently alerted us to the supposedly healthy alternative to non-natural options on the market.

However, is this high all it’s made out to be? The beverage company takes pride in the fact that its drinks contain hemp — an ingredient it heavily markets as being healthy and beneficial to a wide variety of people. On its website, the company advertises:

Our hemp products help deliver the healthy punch of vitamins, minerals, proteins, and fats that your body needs at an affordable price, and in a tasty way.

A closer look at the label of the “Hemp Iced Tea” reveals that the product contains 50mg of hemp seed extract, 25mg of ginseng extract, as well as a whopping portion of another ingredient. That ingredient would be sugar, weighing in at 29 grams per 12-ounce can. That’s more sugar than an 8-ounce bottle of Coke (26 grams), 19 pieces of Brach’s candy corn (28 grams), and almost as much as a Milky Way chocolate candy bar (31 grams).

According to the World Health Organization, an adult of healthy body weight, that typically consumes 2,000 calories a day, should ideally limit their daily sugar intake to 5% of total energy intake.  That equates to 25 grams, which is four grams less than a single can of this product. The effects of over consumption of sugar are well known and include diabetes, tooth decay, obesity, and heart disease.

Check the labels to find out for yourself if a product is as healthy as it claims.

For more on hemp, click here.