New beverages enter the marketplace on a regular basis but one that has been enjoyed for its natural benefits is birch water or birch sap, and boy is it enjoying a resurgence. Forget coconut waters and sports drinks, try something which those of us in the Nordic countries, Russia and the Baltics and even China have been glugging for centuries. Birch water is literally collected as sap from the bark of what is a flagship sustainable source – birch trees. Nothing then needs to be added to it. Mind you, there are only three weeks at the beginning of Spring in which to collect it so it’s a bit more precious than your average hydration drink.
Taste wise, birch water has a refreshing softness and sweetness on the palette without possessing any overpowering flavours. It is certainly a sap but not acidic or cloying or having the glue like notes which come with maple for example. It needs to be sterilised to make sure it keeps its shelf-life and doesn’t lose its taste.
I was fortunate enough to try a new organic birch water from Amazing Forest which is 100% birch sap. Well – what is there to be excited about ? Check the ingredients list for a start. Many products have an energy content of 17 kilocalories/100ml but the birch water drink from Amazing Forest hardly has any calorific sugar (5 kilocalories/100ml) but is still sweet because the one sugar it does contain, xylitol, is never going to be taxed, make you fat or spoil your teeth. It’s the one sugar that is used in zero-calorie confectionary. Birch water also contains another precious nutrient, a mineral element called manganese (0.74 mg/100ml, 37% RDA) which admittedly is not that well known but we would soon regret not having it. Manganese is found in a number of enzymes which not only help us build healthy bones but there is one enzyme in particular called SOD or superoxide dismutase which might sound like science fiction but helps us kill bacteria or remove unwanted cells that have outlived their usefulness. It means birch sap helps us support a healthy immune system by providing a valuable nutrient not readily obtained elsewhere.
Beyond this, nutritionists have been assessing birch sap’s higher level benefits such as being able to help us maintain a healthy blood cholesterol level because of some other useful componentry, the saponins. It also helps us maintain healthy skin by removing some of those damaging free radicals and which gives it some cosmetic ‘magic’. So, when you choose birch water to drink as your tipple of choice, just think of what it can be doing for you and why your body will thank you for it. helping it to protect itself.
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