24 mocktails to change your life

Just in time for Dry January.

This citrus thyme mocktail has a secret ingredient…

I started making functional mocktails a few years ago, when I grew frustrated with the mocktail options both on the internet and also, frankly, out in bars. Most of them lacked nuance, depth, and complexity—they were, in essence, juices in nicer glasses. Which is fine, if that’s what you’re looking for, but I was not.

A huge part of my intentional drinking ethos—and my wellness perspective in general—is that these choices should be making my life better, not worse. And yes, I was experiencing a lot of the benefits of drinking less, including having more energy, better relationships, and less wasted days in my life. But was it too much to ask for my drinks to hit like a cocktail too?

I started obsessively researching what notes and textures made cocktails so satisfying. I reached out to mixologists at high-end cocktail bars; I dove into books about the art of both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks (yes, this is how I live life; it’s mostly fun but sometimes exhausting)

I love a honey salt rim.

.Along the way I learned a few secrets:

• Alcohol offers a complexity that I’ve found is best mimicked by either tea or coffee (decaf is fine), or something with a bit of funk, like vinegar or kombucha. One of these elements is key for making drinks that don’t taste like juice.

• Alcohol also gives body, especially with cocktails served up. This can be mimicked by shaking a mocktail with aquafaba, aka the juice from a can of chickpeas (yes, really), collagen, or by emulsifying the liquid with a small amount of olive oil.

• Herbs and spices are a wonderful way to add interest.

And then I was like—wait, a lot of these ingredients actually add benefits to a mocktail. Coffee and tea, for instance, are some of the richest sources of chlorogenic acid on the planet, a compound that cancer researcher and Harvard doctor Dr. William Li famously cited on The Liz Moody Podcast as one of his favorites for fighting cancer, Alzheimer’s, and more. Herbs and spices are polyphenol power houses.

So, functional mocktails were born.

You know I had to make a functional espresso martini.

Now, as a little bonus for paid subscribers, I’ve made an ebook with 24 of my best functional mocktail recipes. You can purchase it on my site for $15 if you’d like, but if you sign up for the paid tier of The Takeaway, you’ll get it as a little token of my gratitude completely free, available to download right now. And you’ll still get all of the other benefits of being a paid subscriber of The Takeaway: can’t miss content like meal plans (we actually have a one-week science-backed meal plan dropping on Wednesday), interviews with world class experts, downloadable guides and more, delivered straight to your inbox twice a week.

PS: want more resources for drinking less?

Here’s a podcast where I share my entire story, including what finally inspired me to cut alcohol mostly out of my life, what I order at bars and restaurants, how I deal with peer pressure, and more. Listen on Apple or Spotify.

Want to know about the health impacts of alcohol? Here's a series I did with top doctors about how it impacts your gut health and cancer risk, and how it impacts your brain and hormones.

Download the ebook, 24 Mocktails To Change Your Life, now 👇👇👇