Soft drinks contribute to diabetes -- what is an alternative?

In a follow-up to this post from a few days ago, I was thinking about possible alternatives to regular soft drinks since there is so much refined sugar in those beverages and new research shows that they are also now linked to diabetes. This came as little surprise, since huge intakes of refined sugar is almost always correlated with the incidence of diabetes in many cases I have read.

But what is an alternative? It's hard to think of diet soft drinks as alternatives once you've researched what aspartame, NutraSweet, saccharin and other fake sweeteners can really do. that pretty much knocks out all diet soft drinks for me as well. Search Google or another search engine and read up on these sweeteners from trusted sources (note: you're in for a shock).

Flavored teas and healthy fruit drinks are my solution (although non that contain the cheap high-fructose corn syrup), so what is your non-soft drink method of beverage drinking?