Best Drinks for the Munchies: What to Sip Instead of Snacking, Ranked

The best drinks for the munchies are water first, then a zero-sugar sweet drink or a protein shake, and if you want a product built for cravings, a caffeine-free craving drink. What to skip is just as clear: soda, juice and beer, because calories you drink barely register as food. In a 4-week trial, people who got 450 extra calories a day as soda ate just as much food as before, while the same calories as jelly beans got made up for (DiMeglio and Mattes, 2000).

Below: why a drink helps at all, the free options ranked by what the trials measured, the craving drinks scored on our public rubric, and our pick. If you want the full picture on supplements, our six label checks before you buy a natural GLP-1 supplement apply to every product on this page.

Why a drink can take the edge off the munchies

A drink takes the edge off the munchies in three ways: it fills your stomach with volume, it gives your mouth something to do, and a sweet one can answer the sweet craving without the sugar. None of that switches off what THC does in the brain. Cannabis works on CB1 receptors that make food smell and taste more rewarding, which we break down in what the studies show about why weed makes you hungry.

So set expectations. A drink won't cancel the munchies. What it can do is put something between you and the first bag of chips, which is often where the night goes sideways.

Timing matters too. Smoked or vaped, the hunger shows up within minutes, while edibles take far longer, so check when the munchies kick in by route and have the drink poured before then, not after.

The drinks to skip: soda, juice and alcohol

Sugary drinks are the worst choice for the munchies because the body doesn't count drink calories the way it counts food. In the DiMeglio and Mattes crossover, 15 adults took 450 calories a day as soda for 4 weeks and as jelly beans for another 4. On jelly beans they ate less food to make up for it. On soda they didn't, their daily total rose by the full 450, and body weight went up only in the soda period (DiMeglio and Mattes, 2000).

Juice and sweetened iced tea sit in the same bucket. Alcohol is worse, since it adds calories and pushes eating on its own, which is a different mechanism from cannabis; our comparison of drunk munchies vs high munchies covers why the two stack.

The free options, ranked by the evidence

Among the free or nearly free drinks, plain water has the most direct evidence for eating less at the next meal, with sweet zero-calorie drinks and protein shakes close behind for different reasons. None of these trials studied people who were high, so treat every number below as a general appetite result.

1. Water, about 2 cups

Water before a meal led to smaller meals in a 12-week trial of older adults. 48 people aged 55 to 75 with overweight or obesity followed a lower-calorie diet, and half drank 500 ml (about 2 cups) of water before each main meal. At the start, a water preload cut the next meal from 541 to 498 calories, and the water group lost about 2 kg more over 12 weeks (Dennis et al., 2010).

Two caveats: the one-meal effect was no longer significant by week 12, and nobody in the study was high. But water costs nothing, and cottonmouth means you probably want a drink anyway.

2. Sparkling water or a zero-sugar sweet drink

A sweet drink with no calories lowered total intake at lunch in a small crossover trial. 20 healthy adults drank 330 ml of water, a sugar drink or a stevia drink before an all-you-can-eat lunch. Total intake, drink plus meal, came to 727 calories after stevia versus 832 after plain water, and the stevia drink didn't raise blood sugar (Stamataki et al., 2020). Two of the authors worked for Cargill, which sells stevia, so read it as one data point.

Whether sweet taste without sugar leaves you wanting more later is still argued over; we went through the long-term trials in whether artificial sweeteners cause cravings. Sparkling water has no appetite trial we could find. It's on this list because the fizz and the cold make it feel like a treat, and that's often enough.

3. A protein shake

A whey protein drink cut the next meal by about 18% compared with a carbohydrate drink of the same calories. In 22 women, whey drinks of roughly 380 calories led to about 18% less food eaten at a meal 2 hours later than a matched maltodextrin drink, even though hunger ratings didn't differ (Chungchunlam et al., 2014).

The catch is the shake's own calories. A 380-calorie shake is a small meal, so it helps when you're truly hungry (say, you got high on a skipped dinner) and hurts when you were only grazing out of boredom.

4. Herbal tea

Herbal tea has no munchies trial behind it; it ranks here because it's warm, slow to drink and caffeine-free. A hot mug takes 15 minutes to finish, which is about how long a craving wave often takes to pass. Skip caffeinated tea late at night, since a bad night's sleep makes the next day hungrier, as we cover in why the munchies hit hardest at night.

The craving drinks, scored on our rubric

Ozzi Crave Crusher scores highest of the three craving drinks we rate, at 21 out of 25, ahead of Metamucil at 17 and Supergut GLP-1 Daily at 16. All three are caffeine-free and taken as a drink, which matters because the munchies usually hit in the evening. Scored on the published Crave Crushers methodology:

Axis (out of 5)	Ozzi Crave Crusher	Metamucil	Supergut GLP-1 Daily
Pathway coverage	5	2	4
Ingredients and dose disclosure	4	3	2
Science	4	4	3
Value	4	5	4
Format and timing	4	3	3
Total	21	17	16

One note on how we score. Many craving drinks talk about GLP-1, but blood GLP-1 breaks down within minutes and a 2014 comparison found commercial GLP-1 tests disagreed badly with each other (Bak et al., 2014). So we don't grade any product on a blood-hormone number. We weigh human trials on each ingredient near the label dose, how plausible the mechanism is, dose disclosure, tolerability and timing.

Metamucil: the cheapest fiber drink

Metamucil is the value pick at about $0.21 a serving, with 3.4 g of psyllium husk per serving and a long record of human research on psyllium as a fiber. It works one lever, gel-forming fullness, and it has to be drunk quickly before it thickens. The gritty texture is a hard sell when you're high, and 3.4 g of gelling fiber can bring gas and bloating if you aren't used to it. The research on the fiber itself is in our psyllium husk evidence review, and the label details are on the Metamucil product card.

Supergut GLP-1 Daily: broad, but the doses are hidden

Supergut GLP-1 Daily is a prebiotic fiber powder with about 6 to 7 g of fiber per serving, including resistant potato starch, oat beta-glucan and green banana starch. The per-ingredient doses sit inside a proprietary blend, so you can't check any of them against a trial, and the GLP-1 claims rest mostly on brand-sponsored data. That much fiber at once is also a bloating risk. Details are on the Supergut GLP-1 Daily product card.

Ozzi Crave Crusher: our pick for the munchies

Our pick is the Ozzi Crave Crusher drink, because it's the only drink here that answers the sweet craving while covering fullness and blood sugar too. It has six named actives at disclosed doses: 8 g allulose, 500 mg L-lysine butyrate, 500 mg konjac glucomannan, chromium, ursolic acid and African mango. It's caffeine-free, with about 1.6 g of fiber, so it's gentler on the stomach than the fiber powders.

The allulose is the part that matters most for the munchies. It tastes sweet, and in a meta-analysis of small single-meal trials, allulose taken with a carbohydrate meal lowered the post-meal blood sugar rise by about 10% (Braunstein et al., 2020). That's a modest effect, measured in meals, not munchies sessions, but it's the right direction for a sweet craving.

Ozzi's cons are real. There's no published trial on the finished formula, its doses are moderate by design, some people notice the natural butyrate smell, and at $3.25 a serving it has the highest sticker price here (about $2.25 with the bundle). For a full how-to beyond drinks, Ozzi's own guide to stopping the munchies without giving up weed walks through the routine.

Disclosure: Ozzi sponsors Crave Crushers, and we may earn a commission on purchases made through links on this page. Rankings come from the published rubric on our methodology page, and Ozzi's downsides are listed on the same terms as every other product's.

How to use a drink when the munchies hit

A drink works best for the munchies when it's ready before the session and paired with a planned snack, not used as a replacement for food you actually need.

• Pour it first. Have water or your sweet drink on the table before you smoke or take an edible.
• Eat if you skipped a meal. Real hunger plus THC is a losing fight for any drink. Our ranking of healthy snacks for the munchies covers what fills you up best.
• Don't drink your calories. Soda, juice and beer add calories without cutting the food.

Our verdict on the best drinks for the munchies

Water is the best free drink for the munchies, a zero-sugar sweet drink or a protein shake are solid second choices depending on whether you're craving sweet or truly hungry, and Ozzi Crave Crusher is the best craving drink we've scored. Skip sugary drinks and alcohol. For capsules, strips and gummies instead of drinks, see our ranked list of anti-munchies supplements and the evidence review of supplements for the munchies, or browse all our appetite suppressant reviews.

References

• DiMeglio DP, Mattes RD. Liquid versus solid carbohydrate: effects on food intake and body weight. International Journal of Obesity, 2000. PubMed 10878689
• Dennis EA, Dengo AL, Comber DL, et al. Water consumption increases weight loss during a hypocaloric diet intervention in middle-aged and older adults. Obesity, 2010. PubMed 19661958
• Stamataki NS, Scott C, Elliott R, et al. Stevia beverage consumption prior to lunch reduces appetite and total energy intake without affecting glycemia or attentional bias to food cues: a double-blind randomized controlled trial in healthy adults. Journal of Nutrition, 2020. PubMed 32125421
• Chungchunlam SMS, Henare SJ, Ganesh S, Moughan PJ. Effect of whey protein and glycomacropeptide on measures of satiety in normal-weight adult women. Appetite, 2014. PubMed 24698990
• Braunstein CR, Noronha JC, Khan TA, et al. Effect of fructose and its epimers on postprandial carbohydrate metabolism: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Clinical Nutrition, 2020. PubMed 32220498
• Bak MJ, Wewer Albrechtsen NJ, Pedersen J, et al. Specificity and sensitivity of commercially available assays for glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1): implications for GLP-1 measurements in clinical studies. Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism, 2014. PubMed 25041349