Sparkling Soda - 4 Reviews

I understand the allure of lower sugar content and saving calories. After decades of ingesting pretty much anything, Americans are finally becoming more health conscious. We're sick of the garbage we eat and drink contributing to our eventual demise. The only problem is that I have yet to come across a low calorie sweetener that hasn't affected the flavor of the beverage it is used in in a negative way. There is a reason people love sugary drinks. They are delicious. Sugar is basically a drug and we all like to get our fix. Drinks made with sucralose, aspartame, and stevia are like giving a junkie a beer when their body just needs a dose of heroin. It just doesn't give you what you want. I admit that the use of monk fruit in here is closer to the end goal, but it's still not there.

I am an all or nothing type of person. I would rather have completely unsweetened seltzer water if cane sugar isn't available. Actually I would prefer that seltzer over even the cane sugar a lot of the time these days. I understand that not everyone is like me, and that others need some sort of “sweetness” even if it isn't the real stuff. While I would never go out of my way to drink this, I would certainly choose a can of 2B Lemon Lime Fizz over a can of Diet 7 Up any day. It may have an aftertaste, but it doesn't taste chemical or unnatural. I'd have to say that the flavor here is probably 50% lemon, 10% lime and 40% monk fruit. If you're okay with those percentages, give it a go.

I'm deep in the forest. The forest is actually a swamp. The swamp is actually made up of soda. I want to enjoy this experience and get lost in it all, but there is a problem. The problem is monk fruit. I don't know how it actually grows, but for the sake of this review it is covering the surface of the swamp a la cranberries. This is causing a problem because for the life of me I can't get past the monk fruit to figure out if this is a cherry cola, or just a plain ole' cherry soda. I'm pretty sure it's cherry cola, but nothing on the cane denotes that. I'm not sure if it's the taste of the monk fruit that is giving it a quasi-taste of cola, or if that flavor is distracting from the pure cola taste. This soda is floating in some weird dream state limbo where it doesn't know what it wants to be. I can't say that I really enjoyed it, but at the same time I also did not dislike it. It is low in sugar, thus low in calories, which more likely than not is going to put it at some sort of disadvantage taste wise. I really just want to know what the flavor is supposed to be. I feel like that would make it easier to form a more solid opinion.

Here is a brief story of me buying a handful of 2B flavors. I was somewhere in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the Midwest. I was as central as one can be. We had a ridiculously long drive to get to a show and we stopped in a town to eat, which to the best of my searching had nothing quick that was suitable for vegetarians except for French fries, onion rings and ice cream. I'm no fool and knew that on such an empty stomach that anything deep fried would destroy my stomach, so I of course got ice cream like a champ. In said horrible town we stopped to get gas as well and I found these cans in the cooler. I grabbed this vanilla one, and let the others be. Then as I approached the counter as say a mixed case of them for 50 cents each. In the cooler they were listed as $1.89 or something like that, so I grabbed the other flavors, because a deal is a deal and I have a duty to report to you, our readers. When the woman rung me out the vanilla rang up as full price. When I questioned her, so said only the room temperature ones were on sale. Does that make sense to anyone? They are the same product. They obviously paid the same amount for them. Also, the cooler is running the same amount whether they are in it or not, so it's not costing them any more money. I swapped my cold one out for a counter one, paid the woman and off we went. There's no real point to that other than me pointing out that if you're not in a bigger city the Midwest is a weird place.

Now, on to the soda; the entire shtick of this company is that they use monk fruit in combination with cane sugar to lower the sugar content by 80%. I've had too many diet drinks lately and have been putting this off because of it. I have to admit it's not bad. It has a little strange aftertaste from the monk fruit, but the “diet” flavor is not there. This is one of the strongest vanilla beverages I have ever come across. I'm venturing a guess that a good portion of the population has snuck a taste out of a bottle of extract of vanilla at some point in their childhood, with horrible results. It just smells so good, but it should never be tasted in that form. This tastes like a healthy dose of that was put into a generic soda water. It's kind of strange because overall it's a fairly light beverage, but the vanilla is so strong that you expect it to be creamy. It's a light, diet cream soda that doesn't' taste overly diet. It wouldn't be a go-to for me, but it falls under the category of I would happily drink it if it were served to me.

I like eating fresh lychee fruit. Sure it might have a consistency that I can only liken to an eyeball, but it tastes pretty awesome. Something horrible happens when that fruit is transformed into drink form. It somehow starts to taste the was I can only assume an old lady would. Like a perfume from the 1940s. That would be the opposite of awesome.

I've had this sitting around for probably six months. Because the can was white I thought it was diet (all diet pops from my youth were in white cans). That and my fear of lychee drinks put it on the back burner. Tonight I decided to suck it up and for my bravery I was rewarded. President's Choice did something right with this drink. They have kept the flavor of the fruit intact without bringing out the perfumey aspect of it. It's a very light beverage that I would be happy to drink again. Thanks Canada.