Diet - 615 Reviews

If you ask any of the three Thirsty Dudes, strawberries are awesome. If you inquire again with the same three dudes they will tell you that bananas are garbage. It's really weird the first time you approach them, no matter what you ask they reply about strawberries, the second about bananas. Someone could ask, “Do you know what time it is?” and they would be told, “Strawberries are awesome.” Science has finally broken their brains. So much in fact they have started writing in the third person.

This drink is supposed to taste like strawberry banana, but in reality tastes more like an apple drink with a bit of banana flavoring in it, and even less strawberry. I was able to drink more of it than any other banana-based drink I've ever tried, but it still wasn't great. It was also lightly carbonated, even though sparkling water is not listed in the ingredients or anywhere on the can. I found that odd.

In the end this was a bit better than I expected, but I still found it not very appealing. If it had a real banana flavor I would have given it higher marks for all you savages out there who like that garbage fruit, but as it stands I just can't do it.

I've been sitting on my computer for the past four hours working on a new project. Within that time I have listened to predominately electro-pop like Tesla Boy, Anoraak, Brookes Brothers, and Skinny Puppy "Remission," which could not be further from electro-pop. I'm in a fantastic mood and that's also considering I took ten minutes to walk down the street to see a car chase gone wrong with a criminal crashing into a tree and a cop car crashing into someone's front porch. I'm in the zone (chief) and I could stay up all night and get a good portion of this project done and over with if it wasn't for my better judgment and assumption/guarantee that my son will wake up between 7:30 and 8 in the morning and I will be drained all day.

As I'm working, I'm working on this iced tea. I was stoked to see this in the smaller bottles today instead of those gargantuan, thirty-plus ounce bottles. I had no choice but to fork over a buck and a half and get it. I took one sip and my glee promptly turned into disappointment. Why? Simple. Lipton forgot to add the watermelon. I was so excited to try a watermelon green tea but Lipton, in their haste, forgot to put the watermelon flavor in this. It's got a decent green tea taste and I commend that. It does taste a little diet, which is good considering this is a diet drink sweetened exclusively with sucralose and that stuff is grozz. I have eaten watermelon on numerous occasions and I've got to say that this drink is simply lacking that flavor.

I understand that the two is harsh, but it's partially a punishment for getting my hopes up with the promise of watermelon green tea and also the fact that all the flavors of this line of tea have been great. Bottom rung.

Since we intake so many calories from consuming drinks all the time, I have actually come to look forward to diet drinks. 80% of the time they taste horrible, but every once in a while you'll find one that surprises you. This is one of those instances. Usually diet iced tea is really gross and tastes like a barrel of chemicals. Somehow Snapple has managed to keep the toxic taste out of this half and half. I have a feeling the lemonade might have something to do with it, but I'm not complaining.

As a half and half, this is just "okay". It's not the worst, but it's far from the best. It's middle of the road. Medicore, so-so, or any other way you want to put it.

I'm a self-proclaimed outdoor kid. Hiking around the woods is one of my favorite things to do. With that being said, as I get older I find myself making it out into the great outdoors a lot less than I used to. This has left me feeling like a slob. I work then I hang out the house or go to band practice. As a result a few months ago I joined a gym. Well because of that and because the amount of sugar I intake is fairly astronomical due to this website. I'm shocked that I have actually kept going, and I find myself more or less enjoying it. I have a routine of when I go, and I stick to it. Even over the past week when it's been 95+ degrees and I sweat just sitting still.

Today was one of my gym days and I was already sweating like crazy as I climbed out of the basement furnace that is my screen printing shop. I dried off as much as I could and then headed to work out. I feel sorry for the other patrons of the gym. Sure I follow the rules and wipe off the machines when I'm done, I'm not a savage, but while I was on the treadmill sweat was literally pouring off of me. When I was done there was a physical pool of sweat on the floor beneath me. Embarrassed, I cleaned it up and then went to do some lifting. I try not to look at anyone else while I'm there, so I don't know if anyone was in the same boat as me, but I can only assume they were and I hope they paid me the same courtesy as I did them by ignoring my existence.

By the time I got back home I was completely drenched with sweat and dehydrated. I decided I should give this bottle of Cytomax recorvery drink a try. I figured there would never be a better time. It's a protein drink, so I expected it to be thick. It's also watermelon flavored so I expected it to be gross. What I didn't expect was for it to taste like it does, and that is like a generic Pixie Stix. To be more specific it tastes like someone took a watermelon Jolly Rancher and crushed it to powder. Then for every part powder they mixed in three parts Pixie Stix. Shockingly it's not disgusting, but it is insanely sweet, in the artificial sweetener kind of way.

I don't really know if it helped with recovery, but it did quench my thirst, and I strangely enjoyed it. So at least it's got that going for it.

Apparently Pepsi is using their 'Next' line to try out new flavors. First was the Cherry Vanilla that Mike reviewed last week. Now I've come across this 'Paradise Mango' flavor. This is definitely a first for me, as I've never seen mango in a cola before.

Upon opening the bottle, a waft of mouth-watering mango hit my nose. I'm not joking, my mouth literally started to water when I smelled it. I don't eat mango that often, but I love mango flavored drinks. As soon as I took my first sip, my skepticism went away. This is incredible! It's got that classic crisp Pepsi cola taste, with a wave of mango right after. I keep catching myself smelling the bottle before each sip because I don't know if I've had a drink that has smelled this good in a while.

I hope Pepsi decides to expand this flavor into its normal line. I would love to see what this tastes like without all the fake sugar in it.

NASA has been having some trouble with their astronauts being little piggies. No lie those space commanders have become real porkers. Long gone are the days of the fit and cut astronauts from our youth. Instead they look more like your unemployed uncle on a good day. NASA decided something needed to be done. Not only is it bad for PR, but also the extra weight causes issues with the flights. They decided to launch a two tiered attack. The first thing they did was to start serving healthy vegan food in their cafeterias and on the flights (that is seriously not a lie, I just read about it today). Secondly, they decided that all of the sugar that “Major Tom” was injesting via Tang wasn't helping at all. After half a century the relationship between the two companies was dissolved and our space scientists teamed up with Glaceau. Instead of the uber sugary Tang, astronauts now ingest a stevia sweetened alternative called Rise (get it, because they are rising to space). It really taste exactly like Tang with stevia instead of real sugar, but they do it well because they use less than 1% of the sweetener. It has a slight diet sting, but it's mostly orange, and you can't really ask for more than that. Now they just need to up the treadmill time. How are they supposed to find God (aka any array of Bowie characters) out there if they are too fat to get off the ground?

Well if Dr. Pepper can create Ten, Pepsi can create their own beverage for men. Just for men. It's not so directly pointed towards men, but women love "diet" and they have it in their minds that “diet” is their drink. Men don't "diet." They eat less pizza and have one scoop of ice cream instead of three. Men are sensitive individuals who won't admit they have a weight problem until they start breaking chairs left and right. As soon as it happens, they head to the store to find manly, low calorie drinks. Pepsi Next is that. It's for the workingman. It's hard to work in an office full of men who love things like burgers, steak, potatoes, and the like and not put on a couple pounds. It comes with the territory. If you can change one thing, like your pop intake, you're on to something.

This is my maiden voyage into the Pepsi Next line and I believe Derek described it as something like regular Pepsi mixed with Diet Pepsi and although I can't argue with that, I will say that this new flavor line is pretty good. This cherry vanilla is right where I want it to be. Strong cherry and even stronger vanilla flavor easily mask the corn syrup, aspartame, and sucralose; all of which are in this drink which combined with real sugar, make up the most comprehensive list of sweeteners in one drink I think I have ever seen. That combination of sweeteners leaves you with a sweet, but not too sweet, 100 calorie bottle of a pretty decent flavored cola. The warmer it gets, the more the other sweeteners come out, but the first half of this bottle right out of the cooler were pretty good. If this came in a responsible eight-ounce can or something of that nature, I would love it. That is a not-so-subtle hint, Pepsi. Not everyone needs twelve plus ounces to satisfy themselves.

There were two things that Mario loved in life. Those two things were chocolate and soda pop. What can you really expect from a six year old? Seriously though, Mario had terrible parents, or so his bedroom would have you believe. It was littered with empty pop cans and chocolate bar wrappers. They said it didn't matter because he ate it all of the time and he was still “skinny like a bean.” Mario's parents were idiots. A. All of that garbage would catch up to him weight-wise as he got older. B. I'm sure all of that sugar gave your poor child diabetes or some other disease.

One morning Mario woke up and found that there was not a drop of cola left in the house. On top of that he was out of chocolate bars. He felt like garbage. He now understood why his dad was so irritable on the mornings when he didn't have coffee. The boy was going through withdrawal. It was as he was writhing in pain on the kitchen floor that he came up with an idea. He took one of his mom's seltzer waters from the fridge and dumped a whole mess of cocoa powder into it. He grabbed a bunch of sugar packets and pours them into the mixture as well. It's unfortunate for Mario that he didn't realize that they weren't actual sugar, but his mom's “diet sugar” packets. Mario then took out an oversized spoon and mixed it until it was just a liquid with no powder on top.He took a whiff and it smelled like his mom's chocolate scented lotion. Pleased with himself he took a big gulp and immediately spit it all over the kitchen. His concoction was utterly disgusting. It tasted like a three day old, melted chocolate float that had aspartame in it for some reason. Even though the ice cream had melted, the carbonation remained. Ugh…€¦so gross. Being the scumbag child that he was Mario didn't even clean up his mess. He just took a five from his mom's purse and walked down to the corner store to get his provisions. That little bastard.

Up until this pop touched my taste buds I had completely forgotten that Faygo used to make a chocolate cream pie soda. I remember convincing my grandfather to buy me a bottle. I took one sip and thought it was completely revolting, and I felt bad for wasting it. I pretty much had the exact same reaction with this similar tasting pop, except this time I wasted my own money instead of someone else's.

Scared out of my mind. Fast Twitch? Really? That's not something I want. Ever. I don't want any speed of twitching. Really? That's what the round table discussion ended up with? I would have loved to hear the bad titles of this line of drinks. One other thing before it's time to travel over the bridge to Reviewtown is that the flavor of this drink is "purple" and not grape. Oh, it tastes like grape, but it's not titled grape. Does grape have a trademark on its name? If so, that's wack.

Bridge...

This tastes like grape and is not at all as absolutely revolting as I had anticipated. With a title like Fast Twitch and with promises of "explosive strength performance" I thought this was going to be wildly sweet and have that "Oh dude. There is protein in this and now has an undesirable viscosity and texture" thing that I don't like. Turns out it just tastes like a grape Fla-vor-ice. Sorry, purple Fla-vor-ice. Lawsuit avoided.

As if the 10 calories in Sugar Free Red Bull were too many, they recently came out with TOTAL ZERO. Imagine those words being emitted by an ominous voice and it makes the drink sound more intimidating. Sadly, it's not really that much different (taste wise) from Sugar Free Red Bull. I was hoping they were going to shake up the Red Bull recipe a little for this, but they stuck with what they know.

"I don't like this. Do you want it?" she says to me. I don't often get proposals like this but I will always jump at the chance to drink something someone else doesn't want as long as it makes a good review. Obviously I said yes and the effect of that was over half a dozen packets of cherry pomegranate diet drink mix in my hand and a happy co-worker that doesn't have to look at them ever again. Everyone wins.

I made myself a glass of this and here's how it goes. If you fast-forward to Fall where people make candy covered apples, take their excess candy coating and roll some cherries and pomegranate arils in it and munch away on that. After you're done eating those at-one-time-healthy-snacks-now-made-terribly-unhealthy-snacks, imagine how they would be liquefied and that's about the slot that this drink fills. It's candy sweet but you can still manage to taste the pomegranate and cherry. That surprises me after thinking now of how good candy covered pomegranate is. Candy covered cherries doesn't appeal to me for some reason. If you're covering arils in the same stuff you use to make candy covered apples, you will have more candy than fruit. I guess I didn't think the logistics and dynamics of the comparison before I mentioned it. Oh well. It still stands. Enjoy your diet, everyone. Now with candy!

Overnight flights are simultaneously the best and the worst. They are the bet because you can sleep through most of the flight and it seems to pass quickly, which is always appreciated. Even if I have an early morning flight I tend to stay up the whole night before, just so that I can sleep on the plane.

They are the worst because no matter how tired you are; you never get a consistent sleep. It's impossible to get “sleep comfortable” on a plane. There's no place to put your head and if you try to sleep in a full sitting position your head will inevitably fall forward like you were in some boring class in high school that just put you out. Case in point is my last day in Vegas and the flight home. I woke up at 7:30 am and went and ate far too much at breakfast. Then I walked around all day to wear myself out. There was a point where I just thought that if I just sat down anywhere I would pass out, but I stayed vertical and kept moving. Our plane left around midnight. I tried to stay awake until they approved use of portable electronic devices so that I would put on some sleepy music to drown out all the noise around me. I remember the plane starting to move on the runway, but I apparently couldn't keep my eyes open for another minute because I was out before the plane left the ground. You would think that a situation like that would be ideal, but as it turns out that sleep lasted me a whole twenty minutes of a five-hour flight. As to be expected, my head fell forward and I woke up, unable to fall back asleep. Luckily I had planned ahead and brought a Koma Unwind with me. I quickly downed the berry chemical flavored liquid, which I initially thought was horrible, but left a pleasant aftertaste. It's rare that these shots truly taste pleasant, so I'll take all of the niceness I can get out of them. After about 10 minutes of pondering the taste I was asleep again. I wasn't able to sleep through the flight, I woke up probably every 20 minutes or so, but the unwind shot helped me to fall back to sleep with relative ease. The moments that I was awake were extremely annoying, but I will take that collective 2 minutes over being conscious for a five-hour flight any day.

There are certainly apples in this can. No doubt about that. They at one time might have been great apples, too. The cream of the crop. Then science and nutrition and kids had to come into the equation and mess it all up like they always do. Have you ever had a pure apple juice that was too sweet? Nope. Mother Nature has bred apple juice to be just right all the time. Now you take a drink like this which is essentially apple juice with sugar in it, somehow manage to sell it as an energy drink when everyone knows that sugar is not really "energy" as it is a temporary shot in the arm, and market it as such. You can taste the green apples and you are excited. Then follows the first quasi-offensive, more bittering Stevia taste I've ever had and unnecessary carbonation. What was wrong with apple juice that you had to do this to it? Nestle, you should be ashamed of yourself. You ruined a good thing.

Baby girl you're getting married today and I have just the thing for you. Don't look at me like that! No, it's not an energy drink! It's a beauty elixir. It will make you glow girl! You know how they refer to people as blushing brides? Well in the olden days that would happen naturally, but with all of the artificial crap that is in food now a days your body needs a little help. That's where Hansen's comes in. They have come up with a formula with all of the vitamins and nutrients that a bride to be needs to give her the blush at the alter. On top of that they gave it a nice berry flavor. It's a mixture of blackberries, blueberries raspberries and strawberries. For a little extra something something they even added a little bit of cranberry in there. Unfortunately in order for the formula to work properly they did have to add a little sucralose to it, but it's so slight of an amount that you can't really tell that it's there at all. The acerola in there you can taste a bit and it gives it a weird twist. It's weird, but it's good.

Baby girl you are going to blush so hard at the alter after you drink this, your husband isn't going to know what to think. Seriously though, do you think anyone is really going to believe you just because you're wearing a white dress? Let's get real here.

So I'm in Vegas for my sister's wedding. We spent three flights that were all delayed and took way, way too long. We thought we had missed our last connecting flight, because the one before it was late landing. We had to book it through the airport and made it to the terminal just in time. Once we finally made it to Vegas it took forever to get off our flight. When we made it to the car rental they said they were out of the cars we wanted, so they upgraded us to a Mustang convertible. For most people that would be awesome, but we are driving 5 hours to the Grand Canyon, and there is very little room in the car. Annoyances abound.

Finally we made it to our hotel, and they told us the only nonsmoking room they have left is right over where the bands play. I said whatever I just needed sleep. We dragged our bags to the room to find out that not only did they forget to turn on the air conditioning, so the room was a million degrees, but the band they spoke of was actually a DJ party that goes on until 4am with constant terrible beats. It was so damn loud.

I was so unbelievably tired, but due to the heat and the noise, I just couldn't fall asleep. I will be eternally grateful that I had packed this sleep shot, and not drank it for the plane (and read comics instead). I downed it, and I don't remember much after that until I awoke at 9am to a freezing room. The air conditioning decided to work properly. That is what I talk about a functional product. It has a diet pineapple sports drink flavor to it. It doesn't taste like poison, so I was thankful for that. It was light, with a decent flavor and after downing a shot I was out. Thank you Dream Water.

ps. We switched rooms in the morning after someone else checked out. Things may turn out okay after all.

Italian Fest will be next week. I have a strange thing where I don't like to eat Italian food because I feel like I've never had Italian food that is any better than what I can make at home. I know that I have just irritated every Italian that is reading this as well as anyone who is reading this with an Italian lurking over their shoulder. Italian Fest is like St. Patrick's Day where everyone is Italian for the day. Well, everyone except Sicilians since there is some...thing...going on there.

To combat Italian Fest my own, stupid way, I decided to make some Italian food myself in the comfort of my own home. I boiled some boxed penne, and put some Goya chipotle marinade in some pre-made mushroom sauce and ate it and it was fantastic. I won. I beat Italian Fest. I decided to accompany my victory meal with a cold glass of MiO lemonade. I didn't know what to expect because my ideal lemonade has a pound of pulp in it. I know the container's restrictions so I wasn't surprised that there wasn't pulp in there. A couple squirts later, the water has turned into lemonade. This lemonade tasted like little kid's lemonade that was a bit watered down. That also means that you could make better MiO lemonade by not following directions and adding "too much" mix. It's got a bit of a diet taste, but it's a diet drink so who's surprised there? Not I. Not I.

Dear Italians. You're wonderful people but can keep your gross, cheese filled desserts.

Mallory, a dedicated woman, was determined to acquire mangos. She loved eating them and what made them better is that there was a large competition to acquire them, as there were limited quantities and a lot of demand.

One day, merchants infiltrated the town Mallory lived in and kidnapped her and made her work in their orange orchard. When working one day, she found a tree of blood oranges on the fringe of the orchard. She then got put in jail while trying to escape during one of her shifts. She wouldn't tell anyone where the blood orange tree was. When released, Mallory immediately ran back to the blood orange tree, harvested as many as she could and escaped to a nearby village where she wasn't in danger of being found.

Thirsty, Mallory juiced some of her precious blood oranges as well as her favorite fruit, mangos. She used a local Stevia plant to sweeten it, a trick she learned in prison. She took a giant sip of it and was ecstatic. She had escaped the kidnappers and made a delicious juice. It tasted like blood orange, followed by a little mango, and then closed out with the sweetness of the sweetener. She settled into the town as a juice maker really solidifying her brand with her initial drink.

She would never forget the terrors that she faced in her past but looks forward to a bright future of juicing.

Jay and I are like brothers. Here are some little known facts about us:

1. We moved in together on someone else's suggestion after about two days of really knowing each other.


2. We wrote a ton of songs about barbecues.


3. We lived together without having a single fight.


4. We've seen each other's girlfriend's naked. Not current ones, but one girlfriend back each.

That's a close list of stuff, right? What more do you need to know you are compatible? Nothing. Jay knows what I like and he saw this Made and knew that it was a drink for me.

The cranberry of this drink is the number one flavor. It's prevalent and very strong and bites you the whole way through this euphonious ride. The lemon comes and goes. It's there but it goes and you don't miss it. The green tea does the same, but the cranberry easily trumps the bitterness of it. There is an odd but very Made flavor and it might be the final ingredient, Sucralose. It's not a deal breaker, ladies. It's fine. If I saw this again, I would drink it. I would recommend it to a friend. That means a lot because I drink a lot.

Jay and I like Made. Jay and I like each other. Jay and I like cooking on a grill with friends. We're great to be around. Find us. We'll entertain you.

Women? I'm sorry. Not for me, but for what H10O thinks you deserve. The women's suffrage movement was apparently forgotten because you deserve better than this. All those signatures you got to earn the rights to vote are for naught. All of the time you spent hand-drawing signs in order to be able to not spend your days in the kitchen making pies and pot roast for your husband have been ignored. To H10O, you have been diluted to this, diet energy water drink that tastes like a tropical, diet mess.

Remember all those sucralose ridden drinks you've had in the past in hopes that you can have something flavorful and diet and flavorful at the same time but were delivered just a generic tropical diet drink. No actual noticeable fruits, just an amalgam of mixed-together flavors that were on the shelf labeled "topical." On the plus side, drinking this is advertised as good for you. It's good for your hair, skin, teeth, but isn't that what women's rights was all about? You, ladies, are more than just a pretty face. You're people. You're women. You're powerful authority figures that deserve equal treatment and equal pay. Nope. You are just girls that love things like Lip Smackers lip gloss, Teen Beat magazine, eye shadow, the color pink, Madonna, and hair spray. Enjoy your diet drinks, ladies. Drink this and you'll be sure to shed those pesky pounds and look great in that debutante dress.

Let me start off by saying that I don't like reviewing mix drinks. When we started doing this site, I wanted it to be for ready to drink beverages only. I don't like that there can be so many variables that can affect the taste of a mix drink. Mike started reviewing some, then we got sent a couple more, and here I am reviewing a drink mix. I know that just blew your collective minds.

I figured since this was just going into a specific sized bottle of water (160z) there really isn't much that could go wrong. Well there was my first problem. The Powercap didn't attach correctly to the top of my water bottle. It has one of those shorter caps that use less plastic, and it apparently didn't leave enough room for the cap to latch on. I held it in place, pushed the thumb dispenser and when I was certain all of the powder had made it into the bottle I replaced the Powercap with the original cap and shook it up. Problem = overcome.

I like the idea of these caps, because you can easily bring them everywhere without having to carry around bulky bottles. My problem with them is that they are generally all 0 calories so the sweeteners they use are of the diet variety. This cap used stevia, which is the least offensive 0 calorie sweetener in my eyes. That doesn't mean that I thoroughly enjoy the taste of it though. While the contents of the cap do give the drink a mild pomegranate/acai taste (more than I expected) the stevia aftertaste turns me off. It's pretty strong and it overpowers the actual flavor the drink it supposed to have. My ladyfriend thinks that it tastes like medicine, but if you're used to diet drinks, you probably wouldn't mind it at all.