I've read more beverage labels in the past year than most people will in a lifetime. That's what happens when you build one.
Creating a drink means months with FDA labeling rules, supplier spec sheets, ingredient documents, and formulators. The longer I worked on it, the more I noticed how easy it is to recognize an ingredient on the front of a can without really knowing what it does, why it's there, or what the number next to it actually means.
Most labels aren't designed to teach you that. There's only so much room on a package, and the useful details usually sit in the Nutrition Facts panel or the ingredient list.
So, this is the reference I wish I'd had when I started. Thirteen ingredients that show up constantly in functional drinks, what each one does in the body, why beverage companies use it, and what's worth looking for when you read the label.
Written by Justin LindholmFounder, Nuvora
There are no product recommendations on this page. The figures and nutritional guidance come from the FDA, the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements, federal dietary guidance, and published clinical research. The main sources are listed at the bottom so you can read them yourself.
Caffeine
You might also see caffeine listed as caffeine anhydrous, or coming from ingredients like guarana extract, green tea extract, or yerba mate.
What caffeine does
Caffeine is best known for supporting alertness, attention, and mental performance.
It works largely through a molecule called adenosine, which builds up in your brain across the day and contributes to feeling tired. Caffeine binds to many of the same receptors, which temporarily reduces the effect of that signal.
That's why caffeine makes you feel more awake and focused. It can also improve reaction time and reduce how difficult physical effort feels, which is one reason it's been studied so heavily in sports and exercise.
Why companies use it
Caffeine is the central functional ingredient in most energy drinks.
Companies use it because the effects are noticeable, well studied, and genuinely useful when someone wants to feel more alert, whether that's before a workout, during a long workday, or early in the morning.
What's worth knowing
The FDA cites 400 milligrams per day as an amount not generally associated with negative effects in most healthy adults. That's roughly four or five cups of coffee, though the caffeine in coffee varies considerably.
Caffeine also stays in your body longer than most people realize. Its half-life runs around five hours, so timing matters, particularly if you're sensitive to it or you have trouble sleeping.
Recommended limits during pregnancy are considerably lower.
An interesting caffeine fact
Coffee plants were producing caffeine long before anyone discovered espresso.
Caffeine works partly as a natural defense against insects. In the much smaller concentrations found in nectar, though, research suggests it can improve a bee's memory of a flower, which may make the bee more likely to return.
It's a useful reminder that caffeine is a naturally occurring plant compound rather than something invented for energy drinks.
What to look for on the label
Check the milligrams of caffeine per serving, then check the number of servings in the container.
A bottle listing 100 milligrams per serving with two servings inside contains 200 milligrams if you drink the whole thing.
Caffeine content isn't always required to be disclosed the way calories or sugar are, so products getting their caffeine from guarana or tea extracts can take a closer look at the package or the manufacturer to pin down.
Collagen peptides
You might also see them listed as hydrolyzed collagen, collagen hydrolysate, bovine collagen, or marine collagen.
What collagen does
Collagen is the most abundant protein in your body and one of the main structural materials in skin, tendons, cartilage, bone, and other connective tissue.
You make collagen naturally throughout life, though production changes with age. That's one reason it's become such a widely studied ingredient in products built around skin, joints, connective tissue, and healthy aging.
Collagen peptides supply amino acids and small peptide fragments your body can use as part of its normal collagen-building processes.
Research also suggests certain bioactive collagen peptides may do more than provide building blocks. Some fragments appear to act as signals involved in your own collagen production, which is why specific peptides have been studied for skin, joint, and connective-tissue support.
What collagen peptides actually are
Collagen is naturally a large protein.
Hydrolysis breaks those long chains into much smaller pieces called peptides. The smaller peptides dissolve more easily, which makes them especially useful in powders, foods, and ready-to-drink beverages.
Without that step, collagen behaves much more like gelatin.
Why companies use collagen
Collagen generally shows up in products built around skin, hair, nails, joints, connective tissue, or healthy aging.
It also contributes protein, which makes it unusual among functional beverage ingredients. Rather than appearing in milligram quantities, collagen is normally measured in grams.
What's worth knowing
Collagen comes from animal sources. Bovine collagen usually comes from cattle, and marine collagen comes from fish.
Different collagen ingredients also carry different peptide profiles, source materials, and recommended serving sizes, so the number of grams alone doesn't always tell the whole story.
An interesting collagen fact
Collagen accounts for roughly one-third of the protein in your body.
It's also related to the reason gelatin sets. When collagen-derived proteins cool under the right conditions, they form a network that traps water and creates that familiar texture.
The structures in your skin and connective tissue are far more sophisticated, but they rely on the same remarkably versatile family of proteins.
Branded and bioactive collagen peptides
You'll sometimes see a trademarked ingredient name instead of generic collagen peptides.
Verisol, Peptan, Fortigel, and similar ingredients are specific collagen peptide preparations, manufactured with particular peptide profiles and often studied for particular uses.
Verisol, for example, has been studied primarily in relation to skin and is commonly used at 2.5 grams per day, which is considerably lower than the serving sizes on many general collagen powders.
In placebo-controlled studies of women aged 35 to 65, supplementing with Verisol over eight weeks was associated with improvements in measures including skin elasticity and eye wrinkle volume.
Those studies were conducted by Gelita, which manufactures Verisol. That's common with branded ingredients, and it's useful context when you're looking at the research.
What the research looks like
Clinical studies have examined collagen peptide supplementation across a fairly wide range of serving sizes and applications.
Research has reported benefits in areas including skin elasticity, skin hydration, wrinkle appearance, and joint comfort, though the dose used depends on the ingredient and the outcome being studied.
That's why it's worth looking past the total number of grams and asking whether the specific collagen ingredient has research behind the serving size being used.
What to look for on the label
Start with the amount of collagen per serving.
Then look for the source and, if the manufacturer gives one, the name of the specific collagen ingredient.
Terms like Type I and Type III refer to types of collagen, while a trademarked ingredient like Verisol identifies a particular peptide preparation.
That distinction is useful, because some branded collagen peptides have been clinically studied at specific serving sizes.
Electrolytes
Electrolytes are a group of minerals rather than a single ingredient. The ones you'll see most often in beverages are sodium, potassium, and magnesium.
What electrolytes do
Electrolytes help regulate some of the most basic processes in your body.
Your nerves and muscles depend on electrical signals, and minerals like sodium and potassium help those signals move across cell membranes. Electrolytes also play an important role in fluid balance, muscle contraction, and normal cellular function.
That's why hydration involves more than simply drinking water. Water replaces fluid, and electrolytes help your body regulate where that fluid goes while supporting the electrical processes running through your muscles and nervous system.
Why companies use them
You lose electrolytes through sweat, sodium most of all.
How much you lose varies considerably with the person, the temperature, how long the activity runs, and how heavily someone sweats.
During exercise, outdoor work, travel, heat exposure, or anything else involving significant sweating, an electrolyte drink puts fluid and minerals in the same place.
An interesting electrolyte fact
The name is literal.
An electrolyte is a substance that produces electrically charged particles when it dissolves in water. Dissolve salt in a glass and the solution can conduct electricity.
Variations of that same basic chemistry are running constantly inside your body.
What to look for on the label
The word "electrolytes" tells you the category. The Nutrition Facts panel tells you what's actually in the drink.
Look at the individual amounts of sodium, potassium, and magnesium.
Different beverages are built for different purposes, so there's no single electrolyte profile that makes sense for everyone.
Sodium
What sodium does
Sodium plays a central role in fluid balance, blood volume, nerve signaling, and muscle function.
It also helps your body retain fluid and feeds into the mechanisms that regulate thirst.
That matters most when you sweat, because sodium is the primary electrolyte you lose through sweat.
Why it matters for hydration
If you lose a meaningful amount of sodium while sweating, replacing fluid and sodium together helps restore what was lost.
That's one reason sodium shows up prominently in sports drinks, oral rehydration products, and most newer hydration beverages.
How much someone needs depends heavily on the situation. A long run in summer heat is a very different thing from sitting at a desk all afternoon.
What's worth knowing
Federal dietary guidance recommends limiting sodium to 2,300 milligrams per day for adults.
That recommendation applies to overall daily intake. Sodium consumed while replacing substantial sweat losses is doing a different job from sodium that simply accumulates across an otherwise sedentary day.
An interesting sodium fact
Salt has been economically important for thousands of years.
The word "salary" is commonly linked to the Latin salarium, which carried an association with salt. Historians debate the precise nature of that relationship, but there's no question salt was an unusually valuable commodity in the ancient world.
What to look for on the label
Look at the actual milligrams of sodium rather than judging the product by a broad hydration claim.
Sweat sodium concentrations vary enormously between individuals, with reported values from roughly 200 to 2,000 milligrams per liter.
That wide range is exactly why individual circumstances matter so much when you're thinking about sodium replacement.
Potassium
What potassium does
Potassium is one of the major electrolytes inside your cells.
Sodium concentrates mostly outside cells while potassium concentrates mostly inside them, and the movement of the two across cell membranes is fundamental to nerve signaling, muscle contraction, and normal heart function.
Potassium also plays an important role in cardiovascular health and blood pressure regulation.
Where you get it
Unlike sodium, potassium losses through sweat are generally modest.
Most people get the majority of their potassium from food, particularly fruit, vegetables, potatoes, beans, and other whole foods.
Functional drinks can contribute additional potassium alongside the rest of the diet.
What's worth knowing
People with certain kidney conditions, or those taking medication that affects potassium levels, should pay closer attention to supplemental potassium.
For most healthy people, the bigger nutritional issue is simply getting enough potassium across the whole diet.
An interesting potassium fact
Bananas are very slightly radioactive.
A small fraction of naturally occurring potassium is potassium-40, a radioactive isotope. Physicists occasionally reach for the informal idea of a "banana equivalent dose" to explain extremely small radiation exposures.
The amount is harmless, and your own body contains potassium-40 for the same reason. A potato, incidentally, usually contains more potassium than a banana.
What to look for on the label
Potassium is listed with a percent Daily Value on the Nutrition Facts panel.
Use that number to see what the beverage contributes to your overall daily intake rather than looking at the ingredient in isolation.
Magnesium
You might also see it listed as magnesium citrate, magnesium oxide, magnesium glycinate, or magnesium malate.
What magnesium does
Magnesium takes part in hundreds of biochemical reactions throughout your body.
It plays a role in muscle function, nerve signaling, energy metabolism, protein synthesis, and several other basic processes. It also works closely with the other minerals involved in muscle contraction and relaxation.
That broad role is one reason magnesium now turns up in hydration drinks, sports products, nighttime products, and general wellness beverages.
Why the form matters
Magnesium can be supplied in several different forms.
Citrate, oxide, glycinate, malate, and others differ in properties like solubility, absorption, cost, and how well they're tolerated.
For a beverage developer, the choice also affects taste and formulation, which is part of why you see different forms in different products.
What's worth knowing
Higher supplemental doses of magnesium can have a laxative effect, particularly with certain forms.
The NIH sets an upper intake level of 350 milligrams per day from supplemental magnesium for adults. That limit covers magnesium from supplements and medication, not the magnesium naturally present in food.
An interesting magnesium fact
Every green leaf owes part of its color to magnesium.
A magnesium atom sits at the center of chlorophyll, the molecule plants use to capture light.
Hemoglobin, which carries oxygen in your blood, uses a broadly similar molecular structure but places iron at its center instead.
What to look for on the label
The Nutrition Facts panel tells you how much magnesium is present.
The ingredient list tells you which form the manufacturer used, which gives you additional context about the formula.
Vitamin C
You might also see it listed as ascorbic acid or sodium ascorbate.
What vitamin C does
Vitamin C is essential to normal collagen production.
Your body uses it while forming and stabilizing collagen throughout skin, connective tissue, blood vessels, and other structures. That relationship is one reason vitamin C and collagen so often appear together in functional products.
Vitamin C also works as an antioxidant and supports several aspects of normal immune function.
Why it's often paired with collagen
Collagen peptides supply amino acids and peptide fragments, and vitamin C is an essential nutrient your body uses during its own collagen-building process.
Putting the two together has a clear biological rationale behind it.
What's worth knowing
Vitamin C is water-soluble.
The NIH lists an adult upper intake level of 2,000 milligrams per day, above which gastrointestinal discomfort becomes more common.
For a formulator, vitamin C also has a practical effect. It brings acidity and tartness, which has to be accounted for when you're developing the flavor.
An interesting vitamin C fact
Most animals produce their own vitamin C. We can't.
A gene involved in the final stage of vitamin C production became nonfunctional somewhere in our evolutionary history. Guinea pigs and certain bats share the same limitation.
For humans, that means vitamin C has to come from food, drinks, or supplements.
What to look for on the label
Vitamin C is listed as both an amount and a percent Daily Value.
Functional beverages often provide a significant portion of the Daily Value, because relatively small quantities meet normal nutritional requirements.
B vitamins
Common examples include B3 as niacin, B5 as pantothenic acid, B6 as pyridoxine, and B12 as cobalamin.
What B vitamins do
B vitamins help your body convert the nutrients in food into forms your cells can use.
They're involved in metabolism, red blood cell production, nervous system function, and plenty of other essential processes. That's why they appear so often in products associated with energy.
They don't provide calories themselves. They take part in the processes your body uses to access and use the energy already sitting in carbohydrate, fat, and protein.
Why companies use them
B vitamins fit naturally into energy and functional beverages because of their role in normal energy metabolism.
They're also needed only in relatively small quantities, which makes them practical ingredients to include in a drink.
What's worth knowing
B vitamins sometimes appear at several hundred percent of the Daily Value, mostly because normal daily requirements are small.
High supplemental intakes of certain B vitamins deserve more attention than others. Large amounts of niacin can cause temporary flushing, and chronically excessive vitamin B6 intake has been associated with nerve problems.
An interesting B vitamin fact
If you've ever noticed unusually bright yellow urine after taking a vitamin, riboflavin, or vitamin B2, is usually responsible.
Riboflavin is naturally fluorescent and intensely yellow. The excess leaves in your urine, which creates a much brighter color than most people expect.
What to look for on the label
Look at the percent Daily Value, then think about the rest of your diet and supplements.
If you regularly use several fortified products, the total you consume matters more than any single label.
Biotin
You might also see it listed as vitamin B7 or vitamin H.
What biotin does
Biotin is a B vitamin involved in normal metabolism.
Your body uses it in the processes that handle fats, carbohydrate, and amino acids. It's also involved in normal hair, skin, and nail biology, which is why it shows up so frequently in beauty-focused supplements and beverages.
Why companies use it
Biotin became closely associated with beauty products because deficiency can affect hair, skin, and nails.
It's also required only in very small quantities, which makes it straightforward to include alongside other vitamins in a drink.
What's worth knowing
Most functional beverages use biotin at relatively modest amounts.
Very high-dose biotin supplements are a different category. At sufficiently high supplemental doses, biotin can interfere with certain laboratory blood tests.
The FDA has issued safety communications about this, particularly for people taking high-dose biotin supplements. If that's you, it's worth mentioning before you have blood drawn.
An interesting biotin fact
Raw egg whites contain a protein called avidin that binds to biotin in the digestive tract and reduces its absorption.
Eating very large amounts of raw egg white over long periods has historically been associated with biotin deficiency.
Cooking changes the structure of avidin and largely eliminates the effect.
What to look for on the label
Biotin is usually listed in micrograms, because the amount your body needs is small.
If you also take a high-dose biotin supplement, that's the amount worth paying particular attention to.
Added sugar
You might also see sugar listed as cane sugar, glucose, dextrose, high-fructose corn syrup, honey, agave, or fruit juice concentrate.
What "added sugar" means
Added sugar refers to sugar introduced during processing rather than sugars that occur naturally in foods like whole fruit or dairy.
The FDA requires Added Sugars to appear on its own line on the Nutrition Facts panel, which makes the two easy to tell apart.
What sugar does
Sugar is a carbohydrate, which means your body can use it as fuel.
During prolonged or intense exercise, carbohydrate provides a readily available source of energy for working muscles.
Sugar also has a useful relationship with hydration. Glucose and sodium are absorbed together in the intestine through a transport system that also promotes water absorption, and that mechanism is one reason traditional sports drinks and oral rehydration solutions contain both carbohydrate and sodium.
Why companies use it
In an ordinary beverage, sugar contributes sweetness and mouthfeel.
In a sports beverage, it can also supply carbohydrate fuel and assist with fluid absorption.
The role it plays depends heavily on the type of drink and the situation someone is using it in.
What's worth knowing
The Daily Value for added sugar is 50 grams on a 2,000 calorie diet.
Someone drinking during prolonged exercise has different nutritional needs from someone drinking the same amount at a desk, so context matters.
An interesting sugar fact
The relationship between glucose, sodium, and water is the basis of oral rehydration solution.
These formulas use carefully chosen amounts of glucose and electrolytes to help the intestine absorb fluid efficiently.
Oral rehydration therapy has saved millions of lives, particularly among children with severe dehydration caused by diarrheal illness.
What to look for on the label
Read the Added Sugars line, then check the number of servings in the container.
That tells you how much sugar was introduced during processing, and how much you'll consume if you drink the whole package.
Stevia, monk fruit, and allulose
Other sweeteners you might see include steviol glycosides, Reb A, mogrosides, erythritol, sucralose, and acesulfame potassium.
What these ingredients do
They let beverage companies create sweetness while using much less traditional sugar.
Stevia and monk fruit are plant-derived sweeteners that are substantially sweeter than table sugar, so only small quantities are needed.
Allulose is different. It's a type of sugar that occurs naturally in small amounts in foods like figs and raisins, but your body handles it differently from ordinary sugar, so it can contribute sweetness and some of the mouthfeel of sugar while providing considerably fewer calories.
Why companies use them
Building a zero-sugar or low-sugar beverage is more complicated than simply removing the sugar.
Sugar affects sweetness, mouthfeel, acidity, and how flavors are perceived.
Different sweeteners solve different parts of that problem, which is why formulators often end up using more than one.
What's worth knowing
Different sweeteners carry different flavor profiles and properties. Some work better in combination, and others contribute more body or leave less of an aftertaste.
Sugar alcohols like erythritol can also cause digestive discomfort for some people in larger amounts.
An interesting sweetener fact
Several widely used artificial sweeteners were discovered accidentally.
Saccharin, cyclamate, aspartame, and sucralose were all identified after researchers unexpectedly noticed that compounds they were working with tasted intensely sweet.
Some of the biggest ingredients in the modern sweetener industry started as laboratory surprises.
Why a sweet drink can legally say "zero sugar"
Allulose is treated differently from ordinary sugar on US nutrition labels.
The FDA allows allulose to be excluded from the Total Sugars and Added Sugars declarations, because your body metabolizes it differently. It still contributes to Total Carbohydrate, and for calorie calculations it's generally treated as providing roughly 0.4 calories per gram, compared with about 4 for ordinary sugar.
So, a beverage can contain allulose, taste sweet, and legitimately list zero grams of added sugar.
What to look for on the label
If a beverage tastes sweet but contains little or no sugar, the ingredient list will usually tell you what's providing the sweetness.
Look for stevia, monk fruit, allulose, sucralose, erythritol, or combinations of them.
Natural flavors
What natural flavors do
Natural flavors are used to create or refine the taste and aroma of a beverage.
The FDA defines natural flavoring primarily by its source. These flavors can originate from fruit, vegetables, spices, herbs, roots, meat, seafood, eggs, dairy, and other naturally occurring materials.
Why companies use them
A real piece of fruit contains hundreds of aroma compounds.
Creating a stable beverage that tastes the same from the first can to the ten-thousandth often means isolating and combining the compounds responsible for the flavor people recognize.
Natural flavors let beverage companies do that while holding consistency from batch to batch.
What's worth knowing
The word "natural" refers primarily to where the flavoring material came from.
A natural flavor may contain several individual components working together to reproduce a particular taste or aroma.
Flavor formulas are often proprietary, so the label generally won't list each individual component.
An interesting flavor fact
A real strawberry contains hundreds of aroma compounds.
That's why convincing strawberry flavor is harder to make than it sounds. The taste people recognize as "strawberry" is actually the result of many different compounds appearing together in the right proportions.
What to look for on the label
For most people, "natural flavors" simply indicates the flavor system used in the product.
If you have a serious allergy, or you avoid particular sources for dietary or religious reasons, contacting the manufacturer directly gives you more specific information than the ingredient list alone.
Carbonation
You might also see it listed as carbonated water, sparkling water, or carbon dioxide.
What carbonation does
Carbonation changes the way a beverage tastes and feels.
Carbon dioxide creates the familiar bite of a sparkling drink and can make flavors feel brighter, lighter, and less syrupy.
It also changes how you perceive sweetness and acidity, which is why the same beverage tastes noticeably different once it loses its carbonation.
Why companies use it
Carbonation is partly about texture.
A lightly carbonated functional drink can feel crisp and refreshing without the aggressive carbonation of a traditional soda.
The level of carbonation is an important part of beverage formulation, the same as sweetness or acidity.
What's worth knowing
Carbonated water hydrates your body just as still water does. Carbonation doesn't make a beverage dehydrating.
Some people find heavily carbonated drinks less comfortable during intense exercise, particularly when drinking large volumes quickly, though that's mostly a matter of personal preference and gastrointestinal comfort.
An interesting carbonation fact
The familiar sting from carbonation isn't simply bubbles hitting your tongue.
When carbon dioxide dissolves in water, some of it forms carbonic acid. Receptors in your mouth detect that chemical change, which contributes to the sharp sensation you associate with sparkling drinks.
Researchers have shown the sensation can remain even in conditions where ordinary bubbles don't form.
What to look for on the label
Plain carbonation doesn't meaningfully change the nutritional content of a beverage.
If a sparkling drink also contains minerals or electrolytes, those appear separately on the Nutrition Facts panel or ingredient list.
How much sodium do you actually lose when you sweat?
Sweat rates and sodium losses vary substantially from one person to another. Someone exercising for an hour in mild weather has very different needs from someone working outside for several hours in summer heat.
If you want a rough estimate based on your own activity and conditions, we built a calculator for that.
U.S. Food and Drug Administration, "Spilling the Beans: How Much Caffeine is Too Much?"
U.S. Food and Drug Administration, safety communications regarding biotin interference with laboratory tests, including troponin assays
U.S. Food and Drug Administration, final guidance on the declaration of allulose and calories on the Nutrition Facts label
U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Nutrition Facts labeling requirements, including the Added Sugars line, and 21 CFR 101.22 regarding natural flavors
National Institutes of Health, Office of Dietary Supplements fact sheets for magnesium, vitamin C, vitamin B6, biotin, potassium, and other nutrients discussed above
Dietary Guidelines for Americans, recommendations regarding sodium and added sugar intake
Published clinical research examining collagen peptide supplementation for skin, joints, and connective tissue
This page provides general information about common beverage ingredients. It isn't medical or nutritional advice, and it isn't intended to diagnose, prevent, or treat any medical condition. Individual needs vary based on diet, activity, health status, medication, and other factors. If you're pregnant, managing a health condition, taking medication, or considering high-dose supplementation, speak with a physician or a registered dietitian.
