Glaceau Vitamin Water Energy Strawberry Lime

We all knew this was coming, right? I mean it seems like an obvious move for the biggest name in vitamin supplement beverages to release a line of energy drinks, which are more than likely the fastest growing market in the beverage world. They could have gone the easy way out and just dumped a bunch of taurine and other garbage in there to give people the little rush that they so desperately crave, but Glaceau is a company with some sort of standards and convictions. They were one of the first companies to move away from the trend of sweetening with High Fructose Corn Syrup, and they have at least put forth minimum effort to make their beverages slightly healthier than their competition. I'm not saying these beverages are the healthiest things in the world, but they are better than a lot of the garbage that stocks the shelves these days. As a result of all of this for their Energy line, Glaceau added green coffee bean extract (for caffeine) and B vitamins. You might not get the same dizzying highs as you would from all the Red Bull imitators out there, but you also will not experience those terrible crashes.

If you are familiar with Vitamin Water, and I assume you are if you are taking the time to read this dumb website, you can certainly imagine what the base of this drink tastes like. Envision a strawberry lime Vitamin Water. Now add in some green coffee bean extract, and you will have yourself a nice little beverage. It has a slightly different taste due to the green coffee, but trust me when I say it is nothing like what you think coffee tastes like. The extract is nothing like brewed coffee, it's slightly bitter, like green tea, except you know…€¦totally different. It's its own flavor.

Glaceau decided to take this wonderful drink a bit further and added two more things. One of them made the beverage more enjoyable, and the other took it down a peg or two. The beneficial addition was carbonation. I love bubbly drinks, so it was a definite plus for me. Unfortunately they also put in some stevia. It doesn't ruin the drink, or make it taste overly diet, but it's there a bit. It's a new trend for companies to use both cane sugar and a zero calorie sweetener to lower the sugar content, and it's a compromise I can handle. You lose a little bit of flavor, but you also won't become an obese mess that needs someone to flip them every so often so they don't get bed sores. Ugh.