“Everybody seems to be getting healthy,” said Mark Murphy, the executive chef at Ditch Plains, a surfer-inspired restaurant in the West Village. Or at least healthier. Mr. Murphy recently created a line of cocktails mixing vodka with low-calorie, sugar- and aspartame-free airforce Nutrisoda-brand sodas — each containing a day’s dose of vitamins C, E, B6, and B12 — as a more health-conscious variation on the Red Bull and vodka.

The idea that even alcohol could be more beneficent represents a collision of broader trends, said Frank Coleman, a spokesman for the Distilled Spirits Council. As people have become more health literate and corn-syrup-phobic, labels like “green” and organic have become faddish, and the culinary shift toward farm-fresh, locally grown ingredients has crossed over from kitchen to bar. “All of these epicurean issues are coming together in a martini glass, as it were,” Mr. Coleman said.

The healthful-cocktail concept received an imprint of credibility in April, when researchers at the United States Department of Agriculture, in conjunction with Thai colleagues, reported that adding alcohol to strawberries and blackberries increased their antioxidant capacity (although alcohol still causes some cell damage, some scientists cautioned). While skeptics could validly point out that trying to mix a Theragran’s worth of vitamins into a tumbler of 80 proof makes no more sense than ordering a Diet Coke with a supersize burger and fries, nutritionists do not necessarily scoff at the idea. Wahida Karmally, the director of nutrition at the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research at the Columbia University Medical Center, said that the sugar in a traditional margarita, loaded with syrupy triple sec, “is just empty calories.”

“If people are trying to make a syrupy drink,” she said, “they might want to purée kiwi fruit, which will give you the syrupy flavor, but also give you nutrients as well as fiber. Kiwi is packed with vitamin C.”

The waiters at Sushi Samba, a singles-friendly restaurant and lounge with locations in New York, Miami, Chicago and Tel Aviv, have recently been hawking the health properties of a drink called the Samba Juice, made with the açaí berry — a sort of super-grape harvested from the Brazilian rainforest that has more antioxidants than blueberries or cranberries, said Paul Tanguay, the beverage director. “People think it is guilt-free,” Mr. Tanguey said. “But it still contains alcohol.”

Image VITAMIN A Vitamin Dj has juice from carrots, Granny Smith apples, ginger and limes as well as elderflower liqueur and vodka. Credit... Lars Klove for The New York Times

The chain sells up to 50 of the $11 drink per location each night — about a quarter the number of caipirinhas, but the number is steadily growing, he said.