Healthy Lemonade Recipe – No Sugar, 3 Ingredients

This refreshing healthy lemonade recipe is a perfect year round, nourishing beverage. Sweetened with honey and flavored with real lemons (or lemon juice), this high mineral, liver supporting lemonade is a great add to the weekly menu. It comes together quickly, and we often have a gallon in the refrigerator and also often turn it into popsicles.

Nutrient Dense & High in Minerals

Our family began to transition to an ancestral diet that was more nutrient dense about 10 years ago. We looked for opportunities to make healthier ingredient substitutions in common recipes. Substituting honey as a sweetener for drinks, popsicles, and baked goods was easier than I thought! Now we enjoy many tasty recipes and have extra minerals, vitamins, and other health benefits after making this transition. We also save money by making our drinks at home. To read about our story with healing food allergies with a gut healing protocol, check out this post.

Health Benefits of Honey

While sugar depletes our bodies of essential minerals, such as magnesium, honey contains minerals and vitamins that give our bodies a boost. We are very intentional about eating high mineral foods. This healthy lemonade recipe, and other nutrient dense drinks like this healthy herbal tea are easy and enjoyable to consume regularly, especially for children.

Effect of Honey on Cholesterol, Blood Sugar, Respiration, & Digestion

According to a publication by PubMed:

Honey is a nutritious, healthy, and natural food, to which antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and antimicrobial properties have been attributed, mainly due to its content of phenolic compounds. 

Effect on cholesterol: A supplementation with 70 g/day of honey for 6 weeks significantly improved the lipid profile of young men (18–30 years) compared to subjects supplemented with sucrose [12]. Specifically, triglycerides (TG), total cholesterol (TC), and low-density lipoproteins (LDL) levels decreased, and high-density lipoprotein (HDL) levels increased.

In diabetics: Significantly lower increases in blood glucose levels have been observed in subjects with type II diabetes after ingestion of natural honey [21] and clover honey [21,24] compared to the other sugar solutions. A study carried out with healthy and type I diabetic subjects also showed a significantly lower increase in blood glucose levels following Egyptian clover honey consumption, and a significantly higher increase in C-peptide levels [25].

Cough and gastroenteritis in infants: Consumption of honey resulted in significant reductions in frequency [42,43,44,45,46], bothersome [44,45,46], and severity [43,44,45] of nocturnal cough, as well as in the combined symptom score of URTIs [42,44,45,46]. Significant improvements in sleep quality have also been observed in children and parents (source).

Health Benefits of Lemon

Lemon detoxes the liver, stimulates digestion, and offers a slew of health benefits. This healthy lemonade recipe is the easiest way for our whole family to consume fresh lemon juice.

According to a research publication by PubMed:

C. limon (lemon juice) is associated with its anti-oxidative, antiulcer, antihelmintic, insecticidal, anticancer, cytotoxic, and estrogenic activities. In addition, C. limon extracts possess hepatoprotective, anti-hyperglycemic, and antimicrobial properties. The traditional and ethno-medicinal literature revealed that C. limon is very effective in different pathologies. Most of these compounds possessing antioxidant properties would be implicated in offering health benefits by acting as potential nutraceuticals to humans with special reference to disease management of health and disease (source).

Why You Will Love This Nourishing Lemonade

1. Taste. This sweet and refreshing popsicles remind me of childhood summers.
2. Quick & easy to prepare. You can make this recipe in just a few minutes with only 3 ingredients.
3. Healing diet friendly. This lemonade is packed with minerals, sugar-free, and liver supporting. Whether you are eating GAPS, Paleo, whole food, or just becoming more ingredient aware, this recipe is compatible with many healing diets.
4. Naturally sweetened. Use any fresh juice or honey for sweetener; no need for refined and processed sugar.
5. Customizable. You can add any frozen or fresh fruit for a variation. Any berries are a favorite with our kids; simply add a bit of fruit puree.

Honey Sweetened Lemonade Popsicle Recipe

We love this lemonade recipe made into popsicles as well! We use these convenient silicone molds to turn just about all our drinks and smoothies into popsicles.

3 Ingredient Healthy Lemonade

This healthy lemonade recipe has only 3 ingredients- water, honey, and lemon juice. If you can used fresh squeezed lemon and raw honey, these are ideal. You can also use plain lemon juice from a bottle. Check ingredients to make sure it is just lemon juice (no citric acid) or other ingredients. This is a good brand in a glass bottle (no leaching from acidic lemons in plastic).

How to Make Honey Sweetened Lemonade

Ingredients

• 5 cups water
• 1 cup lemon juice
• 1/2 cup raw honey

Instructions

• In a large jar, bowl, or pot, mix together all ingredients until the honey and lemon juice are dissolved
• Pour into jars with lids and store in the fridge for up to 1 week or freeze into popsicles.

We hope your family enjoys this lemonade recipe as much as our does! Please let us know your feedback in the comments.