Diet - 615 Reviews

Thank you for coming to the 3 o'clock show of The Great Blastino! I hope you all enjoyed the past 20 minutes of magic and illusions. We have time for one final trick, The Miraculous VBlast! In this trick I will turn an ordinary bottle of water in a vitamin packed treat with a light purple hue.

For this trick I will need a volunteer from the audience. Yes you, you will do nicely. Will you please come up here and inspect this bottle. Feel free to taste it. Can you confirm that this bottle is full of nothing but ordinary water? Yes? Good. Now let me return the cap, say the magic words, BolognaOnPastrami! Now you will notice that the fluid in the bottle has changed in color. Please take another sip and tell us how it now tastes. Ahh yes, you say it has a nice light grape candy flavor, but in a diety sort of way. You would be correct. You will also be happy to know that you just received a mouthful of crucial vitamins in a fun and interesting way.

Now folks magicians aren't supposed to reveal their secrets, but truth be told I actually am an employee of the VBlast Corporation and this entire performance was put together as a marketing technique to introduce you to our newest vitamin drink. You see it truly was just a bottle of spring water; the vitamins are all stored in the cap, which once you twist it causes the contents to drop into the water. All you need to do then is shake it up and enjoy. Bottles are available for sale in the lobby. I will also be out shortly to sign autographs.

Hell hath no fury like my scorn for gross energy drinks. If this were someone's first energy drink, I wouldn't blame them for never wanting to try another one again. This is hard to stomach. I don't know if it's the un-original "energy drink" taste that is as bland/gross as the packaging of this can, or the sucralose that is burning an ulcer into my stomach. I have a deadline on Monday and am trying to get ahead so I don't have much to do this weekend. Despite my stomach telling me to stop, I keep drinking this. And you know what? It's not getting any better.

I just took another sip; yup it's still nearly undrinkable.

First things first; I believe the label for this packaging was misprinted. You see I have this and a bottle of the mango pear sitting in front of me, and the ingredients lists are the same. Sure they could just use different quantities, but I don't taste pear in this at all, and I had the “non-diet” version of this a while back and that had mango and pineapple in it, and this tastes the same as I remember that. Just a heads up Bai, you might want to look into that.

As I just mentioned two seconds ago I had the regular version of this, and I have to say this tastes eerily close to it, even though erythritol was swapped out for the cane juice, the flavor stays fairly consistent. It still has a great mango flavor with some pineapple mixed in. I'm going to feel like a real idiot if there is not any pineapple in the 5 calorie version, but I can taste it, but it could be totally psychosomatic. It also has a nice white tea base that is hard to miss. There is only the faintest erythritol coolness to this. So little that if I didn't know it was in there, I might not notice. Bai did a great job masking the flavor, while still keeping it low in calories. Good job folks.

Honey is a wonderful thing. Think of all those millions of bees out there working their little stingers off for their queen and as a result leaving this sweet delicious waste behind. That's right, honey is essentially bee poop, and we all love it.

Ginseng on it's own is rather gross. Have you ever had one of those Asian energy drinks that are basically ginseng root floating in water? They taste like the water that is strained through a potted plant, or so I would assume. Ginseng mixed into other drinks can be pretty alright though.

The thing is when honey and ginseng are mixed together; all I can think of are cough drops. No one wants to be reminded of the things they need to ingest when they are ill. It just causes waves of gross feeling to wash all over you.

As a result of all I have written above, I fully expected this to taste like a cough drop bathed in a sea of chemical energy drink grossness with a hint of diet poison. I am very grateful that the Xyientists would never let that come to pass. They busted out their Erlenmeyer flasks and their Bunsen burners and burned the midnight oil (whilst listening to “Diesel and Dust”) to create a downright tasty drink that they themselves could have utilized on that late night.

This is firstly a green tea. It has a bit of a honey edge to it, but you can't really taste the “dirt” ginseng flavor. It comes nowhere near cough drop flavor, which is a huge plus. The flavor of the sucralose blends in well with the energy drink flavor, and it ends up not tasting too much like either. It's also non-carbonated, which is a nice direction for energy drinks to move in. These new lines of tea and lemonade Xyience beverages that come out have all put a nice twist on a beverage style that is becoming increasingly stale and boring.

Quote direct from the can: "Ultra Blue is a little less sweet and lighter tasting with zero calories..."

They had me at less sweet. I love Monster energy drinks, but some are ridiculously sugary to the point that I feel like I'm developing a new cavity with every sip. Every word in their quote rings true. Well I can't scientifically prove that there are no calories in this, it tastes like a non-gross diet drink. My guess is due to them using erythritol to sweeten it. Not only does it taste good for a zero calorie sweetener, it's actually good for your teeth!

"Erythritol has been certified as tooth-friendly. The sugar alcohol cannot be metabolized by oral bacteria, so does not contribute to tooth decay. Interestingly, erythritol exhibits some, but not all, of xylitol's tendency to "starve" harmful bacteria."

So next time your mom or dad tells you energy drinks are rotting your teeth, as long as it's sweetened with erythritol you have a great argument.

Overall this is a great energy drink, it is delicious and light and the perfect amount of sweetness. The flavor is hard to pin point, it has a grapefruit taste to it but also has that classic "Monster" taste to it as well. The can is textured like they have been doing with their recent releases and I like it.

post script: Due to the name of this drink, "Ultra Blue", I thought it was beer at first and got really confused when it was next to the other Monster drinks.

The coffee machine at your office has been on the fritz all week, which means that you have had to bring your own caffeinated beverage into work. The thing is that today your alarm didn't go off for some reason. Luckily your internal clock woke you up, but with only 20 minutes to get to the office. So it was get up, brush your teeth, drag a comb through your hair, put on a suit and you're out the door. You didn't even have time to stop at a gas station for the sludge that they deem fit to call coffee. As a result of all of this you have been a wreck all day. You're sluggish and you can't concentrate because you haven't eaten since you grabbed Taco Bell on the way home from work the day before. You're a mess.

You know it's not something that any human should do, but you still go into the break room and look for some food to steal out of the communal fridge. Sure, it's not the most moral thing to do, but the GM is coming in shortly and if she sees you like this, it probably wouldn't bode well for your career. The fridge is full of Tupperware containers full of moldy leftovers. Doesn't anyone ever clean this thing out? Things are looking grim. You're about to give up when you move a container of soup that is dated seven months ago and behind it is this bottle of Havana diet vanilla cappuccino. You find yourself thinking that you should probably rethink your stance on the existence of god as you look around and grab the bottle. You scurry away to your cubicle and crack the seal. After a gulp you think that it isn't half bad. Sure the milk to coffee ratio seems about even, which is more than you usually like, but it has a nice vanilla flavor to it, so you feel a little fancy. After that each sip gets harder and harder to get down. The taste of the Splenda is getting stronger by the second. Diet coffee; is there anything worse for someone who normally drinks it black? By the time you finished the bottle you're feeling more normal. You're stomach has a little something in it, and you've got a little caffeine buzz going on. The only downfall is you can taste the Splenda seeping out of your gums, and that is something you never want to experience again. What do you expect from a drink that was abandoned at least seven months ago?

Glaceau, home of Vitamin Water and Smart Water, has decided to try its hand at sparkling beverages. When the dealer passed out the cards things we're looking good for them, but their hand just wasn't strong enough to make something spectacular. On first sip I thought this had the potential to be something like a Clearly Canadian, but then the sucralose kicked in and everything went downhill. Does anyone on this planet actually think that sucralose is acceptable? I mean I know people deal with it, but with stevia hitting the market, why would a company that uses real sugar in one of its other product lines use such a low level zero calorie sweetener? Next thing I know they'll be using aspartame. Ick.

Okay, so the base of this tastes like a nice light, non-syrupy raspberry soda (if such a thing exists). It's quite pleasant until the sweetener kicks in. With a different sweetener this could have been all the rage in my world. As it stands I didn't' finish the bottle.

If you are one of those imaginary people that actually like sucralose, I highly suggest you check this out. If not, stay away.

There are times when we here at Thirsty Dudes get a lot of different flavors of the same product. At first we get really excited, and have fun with the reviews. Obviously we drink the flavors we are the most excited about early on, which leaves us with the flavors we couldn't care less about, or those that we actually fear drinking. These tend to be our shorter reviews that are straight forward and boring to write and to read.

This is the last bottle of Spartos that I have left. I'm not sure if the other guys have any other flavors to review, but this depletes my stock. I was not looking forward to this at all. While I like natural coconut water, when the flavor is mixed into other drinks it usually spells bad news for me. Add to that some zero calorie sweetener and whey protein and to me, that is a disaster waiting to happen.

It's nice to be wrong sometimes. This ended up being my favorite of the Spartos line. The strawberry and the whey protein mixed together nicely like a fancy dessert. Well, it's not as sweet as all that, but the stevia does do a nice job without tasting too off. You can tell it's there, but it's not running the show. That's all strawberries and cream. If I didn't know it was in here, I would never even think there was coconut in here, but as a child I learned that knowing is half the bottle, and I can taste it a bit. Luckily it's like a nice faint coconut water, and not some toasted garbage.

With this I bid you adieu Spartos. Maybe I'll see you again someday if you expand your line. I wish you the best, as you've made a handful of protein drinks that are interesting, and not chalky as all hell.

I love coffee, there's no hiding it. I don't know why it's taken me this long to have a drink made from the fruit of a coffee bean. Verdict? I love it! This lemonade is really delicious, especially for a diet lemonade. I opted to drink this instead of coffee this morning after only a couple hours of sleep and it definitely did the trick. Granted it doesn't have as much caffeine as a cup of coffee, but it has enough to wake me up this morning so I didn't pass out on the bus to work.

Zero calories, zero sugar and very little diet flavor. How do they do it? Science, that's how. Or should I say Xyience? Non-carbonated energy drinks always throw me for a loop, but this one really works. It tastes like light lemonade, with just a touch of raspberry in it. If this were served to me on a hot summer day from a pitcher into a glass full of ice, I might think there was something a little weird about it, but I would never expect it to be an energy drink, and that is something that companies strive for, but rarely achieve. Leave it Xyience to come through.

Oh and by the way, it's April in Buffalo and I already have my second sunburn of the year. There is going to be an epic battle this summer.

Now that I have finally had my ingredients-in-cap virginity taken, I am really enjoying these drinks. I think I just enjoy interacting with a drink and watching it change colors. I guess that's the inner child in me who just likes to watching things magically change before my eyes. If I could rate the drink on how much fun I had in those couple seconds, I would give it a 5.

Unfortunately, the taste is the majority of this arbitrary review system that we made up. Mentally I feel great drinking this due to the obscene amount of vitamins, minerals, and electrolytes. As far as the taste goes, it's just "okay". It's not mine blowing, but it's not horrible. This is a classic middle of the road vitamin water. I will echo Jason's suggestion that selling the caps of these to put in your own water bottle would be a great idea.

What we have here is a bottle of water, reverse osmosis water. On top of that bottle site a little cap full of secrets, or are they mysteries? No, I'm fairly certain they are secrets that it will whisper in your ear if you ask in the right way. By the right way I mean if you look at their website, or just take the time to read the label. The secret is that within the cap is syrup that contains 9 vitamins, 84 ionic mineral, 5 electrolytes and some naturally zero calorie sweetened fruit punch flavoring. You add that all up, with some strange math, and that gives you 989. I'd like to say I'm sorry to the folks at the company that I told your secret to the entirety of the internet, but if they are smart enough to read this, then I think they could have read the label.

All you do is twist the cap one-way, and the syrup drops into the water. You just shake it up, twist the cap the other way and you have a nice little beverage to get you through your day. I will say that it is strange having a zero calorie fruit punch. All of my life I've thought of that type of beverage as a sweet syrupy hell that is produced solely for children. 989 challenge that mindset with their use of stevia. It's fruit punch for adults, and I'm okay with that. It's light with a classic fruit punch flavor. Most of this turn cap vitamin drinks have a base that tastes like Flintstone chewable vitamins. The stevia in this counteracts that flavor, and you get a natural diet fruit punch drink that you don't have to feel terrible about drinking.

One suggestion to the company, have you ever considered selling just the caps for people to put on any old bottle of water? Think about the money you would save on shipping, not to mention everything else. Let's face it; water is water, no matter how you talk it up. It's the cap contents that really matter. That is all.

I have a confession to make: this is the first "ingredients in the cap" drink I have had. I know this isn't a big deal to most people, but I feel ashamed admitting this as a 'Thirsty Dude'. It's almost the equivalent of me saying I never had an aloe drink before. Actually, if that was the case Mike and Jay would probably suspend me from the website. Give me a week off to think about what I did, like I was a delinquent kid who stole his parents golf clubs.

The liquid comes out brown when you unscrew the cap, which was kind of unsettling at first. I'll be honest it looked like diarrhea. Sorry to get that image in your head. Once it mixes with the water, it looks just like peach tea so that initial thought gets flushed away. The peach flavor is quite strong and luckily the sucralose doesn't obscure the taste too much. In fact, for a sugar free drink this is quite sweet. If I had to guess I would have thought it was sweetened with sugar.

The only thing that's disappointing is the lack of much of a tea flavor. There is "tea essence" in this, which sounds like someone sprinkled some tea flakes on top. It tastes closer to vitamin water than peach tea. Since there are lots of vitamins in this, and the base is spring water, this isn't that far fetched.

I'll tell you what I don't like and then I'll tell you what I like. I like that I was scared to try this because it said "diet" and diet is synonymous with sucralose, aspartame, or some other borderline poisonous chemical. Anything to shed those extra inches, right? We're talking about things I like though, right? That's right. I'm still there. This isn't sweetened with those demons but it's sweetened with teeth's friend, Xylitol and the ever increasingly popular Stevia. As far as a lemon tea, it's pretty good. Speaking of "good," that's about it for the good.

The bad is that I was excited to taste a woody, bitter, adult yerba mate tea but the tag team of Xylitol and Stevia sweeten it up too much and erase whatever bitterness might have been there. I still don't hate those two but they are becoming a crutch that people don't know how to properly harness. Not everyone needs to have a super sweet tea. Some of us enjoy a weaker, lightly sweetened tea. Apparently Herbal Mist doesn't agree.

If I had to sum it up, which is what you want because of your non-professionally diagnosed ADD, this is a lemon tea sweetened with Stevia.

Step 1: Take a grapefruit and cut it in half.

Step 2: Take a 9 volt battery and shove it into the grapefruit.

Step 3: Juice the grapefruit into a tall glass. Add ice to taste.

Step 4: Drink your homemade Diet Squirt.

Total disclaimer is that I did not want to drink this. I have been scared away from energy drinks because the last few I've drunk have made me real weird: just general nausea and spinning and stuff. I don't know what's up with me. Perhaps I'm dying from all the stuff I've been drinking since I've been doing this site. I also have no interest in extreme fighting. I don't have anything against it, let it be known, but it's not a selling point for me. Just something to keep in mind while I write and you read this review.

This drink is non-carbonated. I appreciate it because most energy drinks are carbonated and this is different. Likewise, this doesn't taste like concentrated candy like most energy drinks do. This basically just tastes like a diet raspberry juice and tea. If you didn't know better, that is what you would think this is. It has sucralose in it, which keeps it not awful for you, but it does translate during the aftertaste and should be mentioned. The flavor isn't that bad. It's fruity and the acai doesn't have that awful taste that I normally get where it's a little bitter, almost like a blackcurrant.

If you're short on energy and have some sort of cage match coming up, I actually recommend this. If you have an elbow that is just itching to go into some dude's back but just don't have the "get up and go" to bring yourself to do it, this is good for you. If you hate Red Bull and want a boost, to a lesser extent, this is for you.

The beverage world is clamoring trying to make a healthier soda for the consumers who think that they are too good for diet drinks, who are sexist and think that diet drinks are only for girls, and more than likely those who just think diet drinks taste gross. I myself fall in the last category. I just can't get down with normal zero calorie sweeteners. Sometime I find a stevia sweetened drink refreshing, but even that gets old fast. Dr Pepper Snapple has found a middle ground. They use three sweeteners: aspartame, acesulfame potassium, and high fructose corn syrup that result in a drink with only 10 calories and only 2g of sugar that doesn't have a very strong diet taste to it. I don't understand how they worked it out that HFCS is the second ingredient and kept the sugar amount so low. I can only assume that there are especially low amounts of the other ingredients as well, but it still has a strong flavor. It doesn't just taste like soda water.

This tastes surprising like the real deal Canada Dry. It's by no means a top of the line ginger ale, but it still somewhat tastes like real ginger, which they brag about on the label. You could hold this in your mouth all day long and it wouldn't taste diet one bit. The thing is that once you swallow, you get a bit of the diet in the aftertaste as you take a breath. It's a huge step up from normal diet drinks, but the world has a long way to go before they develop a diet soda that I would drink on the regular.

I have had these drinks where you turn the cap one way and magic comes out and then you turn it the other way and the cap comes off. I like them. They are fun. Until now the color of the dust that comes out is the color that you would expect. Strawberry drink? Red or pink dust. Lemon lime drink? Green dust. I turned this expecting a dust and was given a dark brown liquid. I'm not saying it was gross but it was unexpected. You know when you're at home and sometimes you turn on the water and the water is a little yellow and you have to let it run for a bit to clear itself out? It's like that except this won't poison you like old pipes might. The nice thing about the liquid is that you barely have to shake it. I know there are a couple Elaine Benes' out there that hate shaking things so I feel the need to point it out. Give it one quick jiggle and you're done for the rest of your life. The taste is a little different than I expected, though. If you sold this to me as an apple juice, I might say, this is a pretty fruity apple juice. It's the same color as apple juice and tastes a bit like apple juice. The more you drink it the more convinced you are that it is kiwi strawberry. It's hard to say if this tastes like "real" kiwis and strawberries or if it's something with the aftertaste of the Stevia leaving it with a bitterness that I actually like. This drink is a regular enigma. I like it. Keep it up, 989.


EDIT:
We got this note from the company, so that explains the color:
"I just want to explain the reasoning behind the coloring on Kiwi Strawberry. Out of all of our flavor, Kiwi Strawberry color changes the fastest. All of our coloring are ALL NATURAL and hence they do tend to change colors after some time. If you try any of the other flavor, you will see that their colors are much more vibrant."

You know what I like? Diet energy drinks that don't taste gross. See, we here at Thirsty Dudes consume a lot of empty calories everyday. Because of this, I have come to enjoy diet drinks because it means I don't consume more calories. The problem with this of course is the majority of diet drinks taste like someone mixed dirt and battery acid and made stew out of it. This is especially true for a lot of diet energy drinks.

I have been really tired this week, due to lack of sleep. It's starting to (finally) warm up here in Buffalo so drinking hot coffee in the morning isn't something I like to do. Because of this, I have been drinking more energy drinks than I'd like to. They do the job, but I'm trying to drink as little of them as possible.

All that being said, this drink is delicious! The lemonade is sweet and slightly tart, and the pineapple taste compliments it very well. It makes sense that UFC made this its official energy drink because it's a touchdown. Wait, UFC isn't football? Oh, fighting, hmmmm... It's a punch to the mouth? That doesn't sound too positive.

It took a lot of ground up baby lion cubs to make this drink. They should have waited for them to mature a little bit because this is one wildly strong drink. The thing about matured lions is that they kind of calm down and make better drinks. This is super tart. Super tart. Super tart. It sat on the back of my tongue for an uncomfortable amount of time. It's an energy drink. It's rough because it's so strong. Strong little cubs.