Free Slurpee At 7-Eleven: Actually Not That Unhealthy, Just Innutritious

It is the 7-Eleven day celebration, and the Slurpee's are coming on fast and heavy. Today Slurpee drinks are free, and you're going to want to bury your face into a cup at your local 7-Eleven as soon as possible, most likely. Unless you don't want to grab your brains and squeeze in utter agony because of the ever-present threat of brain freeze, or the various artificial ingredients which we'll be going over presently. Let's take a look!

The ingredients of this year's free Slurpee are very similar to what they were last year. You can also attain a Coca-Cola Slurpee, Pina Colada, or Blue Raspberry, which each have slightly different nutritional facts, but largely the same ingredients.

2019 Free Slurpee Contents:

• Flavor: Fanta Wild Cherry

• Amount total: 12 fl oz (one serving)

• Amount of Calories: 100

• Carbohydrates: 26g (6% of your recommended daily intake)

• Sugars: 26g

• Sodium: 10mg

• Vitamins: 0

• Iron: 0

• Calcium: 0

• Dietary Fiber: 0

• Caffeine: 0 (so what's the point, right?)

2019 Free Slurpee Ingredients:

• High Fructose Corn Syrup: AKA Glucose-Fructose*

• Citric Acid: Acidic compound found naturally in citric fruits

• Quillaia Extract: From the Quillaja saponaria, the soap bark tree, this extract helps soft drinks to foam

• Sodium Benzoate: A food and flavor preservative

• Yucca Extract: From the Mojave yucca plant, this extract is used for foaming and flavoring

• Red 40: AKA Allura Red AC

• Water: Good ol' dihydrogen monoxide. Harmful if you drink too much, death possible if you drown!

*HFCS was a neat invention, but it's probably not going to go down in history as humankind's greatest contribution toward the furthering of the species.

If you did not already see the movie "The Informant!", is extracted from corn starch to be used as a sweetener instead of natural sugars, due largely to its ability to be cheaper and easier to be created and processed into foods. Corn syrup is generally 76% carbohydrates, 24% water, with no fat, no protein, and no essential nutrients in significant amounts. So you eat it, it sits there in your body for a little bit, then (if you exercise) you get rid of it again. It doesn't do much good for anyone.

So the Slurpee is full of mostly nothing, but a significant amount of sugar. One 12oz Slurpee is 26g, which is about the amount you'll get in two Pop-Tarts. One cup, 12oz of Slurpee, is approximately 6.5 teaspoons of sugar.

The good news there is that a 12oz of Fanta Wild Cherry Slurpee has significantly less sugar in it than your average can of Coca-Cola (375ml serving), which has 40 grams of sugar. Gatorade has 36 grams of sugar (in a 600ml serving), and a standard tall can of Monster Energy Drink contains 54 grams of sugar. Slurpee may not contain much nutrition, but it's not actually super terrible when it comes to sugar.

UPDATE: The Coca-Cola Classic Slurpee is pretty similar to the others, save its 16g fewer Carbohydrates, one extra gram of sugar, 27mg more Phosphorus, and 23mg of Caffeine. Same thing, right?

If you STILL want to get that free Slurpee from your local 7/11, by all means, this is America, be my guest. If you want to Ron Swanson yourself into a delicious container of corn syrup with Wild Cherry flavoring inside, today is indeed the day to do it. Select 7-Eleven stores are giving away neon mind-melting slurp-friendly drinks from 11AM until 7PM across the country.