Diet - 615 Reviews

I think if Thirsty Dudes could have one sponsor it would be Big Lots. I believe that I speak for both Jay and myself when I say that for drinks, it's a great place. They never have the same thing and you could go once a month and find new stuff. It's not the best stuff, sure. It's not the most high end stuff, sure. Sometimes you find a lot of the same stuff but anything that's there a lot is truly and undeniably garbage at best. Recently they've been getting some nicer stuff though like Bruce Cost, Illy and Belvoir. Maybe they know we're going there.

This last time I went with my brother who has never "Thirsty Dude'd" with me and he just watched as I nonchalantly knocked drink after drink into my handcart. This being one of them and I'm glad I did because it's pretty darn good. Somehow the lime does cut through and ruin everything. The watermelon flavor was light and first followed by the lime. They're also doing a good job at taming their array of sweeteners because it no longer tastes like Stevia threw up in your mouth. It's also in a nice, small can so you don't get overwhelmed by the flavor. It's sweet. Not too sweet but I think anything larger than this there would be remainders.

Big Lots, if you're listening, we're accepting offers.

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away..and by that I mean a few months ago in Delaware this beverage was “bottled.” Star Wars has always been known for its merchandising, but this one seems a bit ridiculous. Space Punch? Are they serious? This seems like it should be some sort of knock off product, you know like something that would be featured on a Star Wars version of bootlegbart.com. The slit on Kylo Ren's mask would go vertically and his light sabre would be bright green or something like that. We live in a strange world though in which Disney owns Star Wars and has licensed it out for this product.

At first I thought the price point on this was a bit high for a kid's drink. Then I noticed that the vitamin content of this was mostly B vitamins and Niacin aka vitamins used in energy drinks. It was then that it hit me that when I was a kid everything Star Wars related was directed towards children, but nowadays a bunch of it must be marketed towards adults because those kids that were fanatics about it in the 80's are now all grown up. If this were made for kids it would taste like Flintstone's chewable vitamins dissolved into fruit punch. Instead it tastes like Centrum multivitamins were ground up and put in the juice. It has a very non-candy like vitamin taste to it. At least the fruit punch aspect of it tastes great.it is composed of grapefruit, pear, orange, blueberry, blackberry and raspberry juice mixed together. If you took out the vitamins and most definitely left out the completely unnecessary erythritol this would be a punch that would truly be out of this world. Instead it just tastes a bit earthy and a bit diet. The force was not with A Drink Department One when they dreamt this up.

We live in a golden age for diabetics. Seriously if I had “Sugar,” as my grandmother called it, I wouldn't want to live in any other era of beverages. The recent fitness boom has overflowed the market with brand after brand of beverages that use zero calorie sweeteners. I would be walking down the street, kicking my heels at all of the stevia laden drinks out there just waiting for me to pour them down my throat. Being as I do not have that particular affliction and I watch my weight in other ways, I find myself mostly avoiding those same drinks, and wishing a lot of them either were made with real sugar, or with no sweetener at all. I am not a petty man though and I am happy for my fellow humans who are in a better place because of it.

For too long the choices of the “diet drinkers” have been so limited, so I was glad to see that Coke had released a line of unusually flavored diet colas. Mike had tried the blood orange version and her thought it was fairly horrible. When you're not acclimated to diet sweeteners they can be pretty potent and take over the flavor. We try to look past that in our reviews and try to think how people who drink this stuff all the time would view it, but sometimes that can be hard, especially when the soda is sweetened with aspartame, I mean who uses that anymore? I kind of thought it had really been completely phased out for sucralose and stevia. When I first opened this I thought it smelled vaguely like some sort of cleaner, but the taste was actually pretty pleasant. The mango is strong and it hides the diet flavor pretty well. It also masks the cola flavor, which is unfortunate. I would have wanted mostly cola with a hint of mango, but I was delivered the reverse. About halfway through the can something happened and the aspartame really started to seep through. I don't know if it was because it had warmed up a bit, or if it had just settled to the bottom half of the can, but it got pretty bad and I didn't finish it all. That first half was decent though, even for someone who doesn't enjoy diet sodas. I hope for the sake of a good portion of the population that this sticks around because it's something different for them to enjoy.

Sometimes you want a nice, dark cola. Most times, if I want cola, it's that. I used to drink diet cola. I think it was when my mom would only order us diet. You know, the 90's, when it was alright for kids to eat and drink anything at any time with no worries about disease or whatever. We played outside in the dirt where we belonged. Dirty dirt kids.

This is a nice alternative to those of you, like my manager(?) and mother-in-law who pretty exclusively drink diet Coke and might like a nice change but keep that same toxic diet flavor. This isn't terrible, alright. It's not. It's still most certainly diet. Unavoidably diet. The blood orange flavor is not super strong and certainly not strong enough to overcome that of the aspartame. It's more of like a "citrus diet Coke" than an explicit or definite flavor. I, for one, would not get it again but then again I am not the target demographic.

I bought another flavor of these that I am not not looking forward to drinking. Does that sell it at all? I regretfully drank this while regretfully doing my taxes. What a night. My mid-30's are garbage.

Are you ready to get PUMPED?!?!?!!? You know, jacked, swole, juicing your pecs? Yeah, me either. I go get exercise, and go to the gym a few times a week, but I'm not looking to get super muscular like a body builder. I just want to be healthy (physically and mentally) and feel good about myself. Being as I feel a bit worn down, due to staying up late watching bad horror sequels, and that I've spent all morning/afternoon painting my basement because I am an idiot that gets ideas in his head and needs to see them through. Seeing as today is a gym day for me it seemed like a good time to drink this little one down. It contains caffeine to give your work out a boost. I'm sure today it will bring me back up to a normal state. This beverage also contains Arginine to aid with circulation as well as glycerin to hydrate you. There is also Citrulline Malate in here, but it doesn't say what it's for. The assumption is something work out related, but perhaps it's for mind control or to track your internet searches. Who knows?

Now that I know, or assume to know, what this is doing to my body I can concentrate on the taste, which is that of a melted Freez-E-Pop, that hasa slightly diet flavoring to it. I have to be honest , although that isn't the greatest flavor, it's exactly what I was hoping it would taste like. I wanted that nostalgia and fake grape taste. Welp, I got it and I'm ready to run 20 miles, or two. More likely two. Possibly three. I'm really bad at running.

Mark, I was happy to come over and help you tear our your kitchen. I mean it's always great to help out a pal in order to save them some money. The thing is, this is day three of what was supposed to be a couple hour job. As I said, I'm happy to help out a friend, but I'm calling into work for this and old man Jenkins is getting pretty pissed, not to mention my paycheck is going to be light this week. I feel the need to mention that one jar of salsa and a bag of tortilla chips, does not really count as a meal, especially since you are a known salsa addict and eat 80% of it. The one thing I will say is that these energy drinks you picked up are pretty nice. Sure, you forgot to take the tag off of one of them and I see you picked them up at Big Lots for $.80 each, but I'm not one to care about cost, as long as the flavor is there. There is some taste here too. I'd say this is 20% kiwi melon, 70% apple, 5% sucralose, and 5% other. For something that is supposed to be carbonated kiwi melon green tea, it really tastes strongly of carbonated apple juice. That's not a complaint, more of an observation, so you can put down that pry bar. If you drink it while it's cold that artificial sweetener doesn't come through much, but the warmer it gets the more obvious it becomes. Overall it's pretty tasty and it's probably the thing I would complain about this situation the least. I'm hungry, jacked up on caffeine, and my body feels like it's breaking down. Why are there six different layers of flooring on top of the subfloor? Whoever owned this house before you was a real turd, you know that? By the way how much are you saving by us doing this work? $300?!?!?! Are you serious Mark? You know what? Screw you and screw your house and while you're at it screw your pittance of salsa. I'm taking the rest of this V8 I'm leaving. Yes, you will see me at Margret's on Saturday for Louie's birthday and yes I will have gotten over this by then, but as of now. You my friend are the turd.

How does one kill off the diet taste of stevia? The answer is apparently to bombard it with ginger. This is a joint effort from Bruce Cost and Brooklyn Organics to create a sugar free spicy ginger beer. Guess what? They did it and it's pretty darn delicious. As far as I can tell the base of this soda is the plain Bruce cost ginger beer, except it is sweetened with stevia (the Brooklyn Organics way) and the amount of ginger in greatly increased. The result is a soda that only vaguely tastes like stevia with a fairly hefty burn to it. It doesn't quite hit Goya level of painful, but it's on its way. It is definitely at a level that makes this beverage a slow sipper. This isn't a soda you are going to slurp down in a matter of minutes. This is something you'll nurse over a decent amount of time, enjoying it with every sip.

As with most beverages that solely use zero calorie sweeteners, I would prefer it had real sugar in it, but I understand their reasons for not doing so. This may be the best sugar free soda I have ever tasted. It most definitely is the best diet ginger beer I've ever had (which has not been many). Sometimes you need to make tradeoffs in your life and I'm very happy this is out there as an option.

Somewhere out there, someone's dreams have come true. The stage is set like this; there is a human out there who is a total soda fiend. I'm talking like Mike's mother in law who keeps a glass of diet Pepsi next to her bed at night (is that a real thing, or did my mind make it up?), except there is no diet in this addicts world. We are talking full sugar. For most of their life it was high fructose corn syrup this, and high fructose corn syrup that. Then cane sugar came back into vogue and their palate evolved into appreciating fancy sodas. There were no more two-liters in our subjects life it was all craft six (four)packs. Over time they realized that they didn't feel quite right, something was obviously up with their health so they saw a health professional and were diagnosed with diabetes. The doctor informed them that their soda days were over unless they wanted to drink sucralose or aspartame (neither of which were recommended). Years went by and the Days of Soda seem like a mere fever dream. Then stevia came into fashion and there were sodas that were available that still tasted diet, but not like chemical death. The thing is that there was nothing on the market that matched our characters beloved ginger ale. Then Brooklyn Organics came about and suddenly they could have that classic ginger taste that they missed so dearly. Sure, it tasted heavily of stevia, but it was way better than what was on the market. It was a soda that tasted like real ginger, but with only the faintest hint of a burn. A true ginger ale.

Now, since I can enjoy beverages sweetened with sugar, this is clearly not for me. I know it's healthier than regular soda, but I don't drink them very often these days, so I'll take the extra calories for a better flavor. To me this would be fantastic if it had real sugar. The ginger taste that fights its way through the stevia is wonderful. Unfortunately that stevia taste is really strong, and it's simply not for me. This is for those out there who need to rely on zero-calorie sweeteners due to health, or those who for some reason can see past their flavor. If you fall into one of those categories get out there and buy this immediately. You won't be sorry.

I was really excited about this. Guava flavored ginger ale sounds like a dream come true. I also knew going into it that it was sweetened with stevia, but I was hoping/expecting the guava to overpower it. My hoping was in vain.

For a split second, when it first hits your tongue this is absolutely incredible. It's everything that I wanted it to be unfortunately that only lasts a fraction of a moment before the stevia hits you. At that point it tastes like neither guava nor ginger. It just becomes a diet fruity flavor.

It's obvious that a lot of care goes into making this, and I understand the health conscious aspect of the zero calorie sweetener, but as soon as that stevia hits me it could be bottom of the barrel soda and I wouldn't be able to tell the difference. If I were someone who couldn't drink real sugar and had to rely on zero calorie alternatives, I'm sure this would be absolutely wonderful. As a consumer of actual sugar it doesn't do anything for me. If only a sugared version of this existed I would be in heaven.

I know it is summer, but this recent heat humidity combo has been too much. Maybe I'm just getting old, or perhaps it's because I spend my time standing next to a 1,000 degree dryer printing shirts all day. I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's the latter. I feel like I'm sweating out more than I can imbibe. All of the water in the world's oceans doesn't feel like it would make a difference. You know if it were desalinated. I'm drinking gallons upon gallons of water every day and it's not enough. Then I drank this bottle of Alpha Wolf and for a brief moment I felt a difference. I felt the will to live return to me. I no longer wanted to lay down on that conveyor belt into the dryer and let the heat finally take me. This is certainly not a cure all. Nor is it some magic potion. It is simply formulated to give you temporary relief when you feel beaten down and dehydrated. In reality the effects didn't last all that long, but for a half hour or so I did feel revitalized as the bottle boasts. Can I really ask for more?

As it turns out, I can in fact ask for more. This could have tasted like old hose water and if it had these results I would have been happy with it, but as it turns out it is quite delicious. It's no secret that most fruit flavored drinks taste little to nothing like the produce they are impersonating. This tastes very much like passion fruit, with a little bit of pineapple thrown in for good measure. Unfortunately erythritol and stevia are in the mix as well. That is fine for some and a complete deal breaker for others. It's very specific taste that shows itself more as the drink warms up. Ice cold it is hardly noticeable. When paired with the passion fruit it didn't bother me nearly as much as it has in other beverages. I guess it's all a part of keep calories low and not poisoning yourself in the process.

Man, I had no idea that when combined the letter V and the number 8 could be such a turn off to people. I was given a six pack of these little guys and being the generous person I am I offered to share them with the people I was hanging out with and every single one, minus the person who gifted them to me, said “Ewwww. No Thanks!” I know that tomato juice is a horrible thing, but that doesn't mean that every product that V8 puts out is going to taste like that.

I tend to enjoy their Fusion line. It's a combination of fruit and vegetable juices. In this case it is peach, mango, apple, sweet potato, tomato, and carrot. Don't worry though it tastes more like a fruit juice than a cold, sweet soup. Now that would be horrible. There are hints of vegetable flavoring around the edges, but this is almost all fruit flavored.
The energy aspect of this juice comes in the form of added green tea and B vitamins. It doesn't really effect the taste, and I haven't really felt any boost in energy, but I am completely exhausted so that may have overpowered things. I don't think it's meant to be a full on energy drink though, just a little nudge.
Oh yeah, there is also the garbage sweetener sucralose in here, but I luckily couldn't taste it at all. Let those fruits do their job.

One of the simple pleasures in life is when you come home and there is a package waiting for you that you were not expecting. There is the rush of excitement when walk up to the package wondering what it could possibly contain. It's even nicer when you look at the return label and discover that it is not junk, but something you could truly enjoy. I came home to this, opened the box and then less than 15 minutes later I got an email from Alpha Wolf telling me that they forgot to give me a heads up that a package was coming. I appreciate their oversite because it perked up my day a bit.

I wish it wasn't my job to pay close attention to beverages. I put these in the fridge to get cold, and when I finally cracked one open it was wonderful. It tasted fruity and real. There were some other flavors in there as well, but it was all pleasant and it seemed to all make sense. I have never had mango mixed with an antioxidant rich fruit before and now I don't know how no one ever paired them up before. They complement each other perfectly. After a few wonderful sips in when the troubles began. I looked at the ingredients list. Right there in the #2 position was erythritol. Up until that point I had no inkling at all that any zero calorie sweeteners were being used in here at all. After reading that I took another sip and it was painfully obvious. I'm taking full blame on this one. It's not on Alpha Wolf. If they can make a product that uses erythritol and stevia and not have me notice it instantly they have created something great. I'm chalking it up to my brain searching out the flavor once I knew it was in there. This is a wonderfully fruity beverage that will do it's best to help you achieve some clarity in this horrible world in which we live.

Hydrive has updated their formulas as well as their look and both are for the better. The bottles now look less street corner bodega and more co-op market. I'm not talking trash on the bodegas of the world. I spend way too much time in them and love them. Their coolers just always look like a hodgepodge mess of bottles who themselves have a hodgepodge mess of design work. The new Hydrive designs are very clean looking and I find them more visually appealing. A twelve year old may not.

As for the new reformulation of the flavor it no longer tastes like melted down sugar free candy. In fact, even though it is sweetened with sucralose it doesn't taste overly diet at all. Like the new design work the new taste is also very crisp and clean. It kind of just tastes like flavored water with a hint of sweetness. Well that might be an exaggeration, but you get the idea. It doesn't taste like a diet mess. It's not something I would normally drink, but I enjoyed it enough for what it is; a non-carbonated energy drink that doesn't taste like chemicals, or like an energy drink at all.

What are we celebrating? Did someone get a raise? Did someone get fired? Was it Carol? I never liked her anyhow. Oh, she's still here? Oh, she actually got a raise? Oh, she's standing right behind me? Does she look mad? She does? Oh. Well. I guess I'll have to face this like a man. Hello, Carol. It's so nice to see you. Lovely day outside, isn't it? Did you get your hair done? You didn't? You actually have baby puke in your hair? I thought someone was eating cottage cheese. Congratulations on your raise. You are a hard worker and it's good to see all your hard work didn't go unnoticed, which is more than I can say for myself.

I've brought these celebratory drinks. They taste like a mimosa made with orange juice and non-alcoholic champagne sweetened with Erytritol, you know, to keep it diet. It tastes fine but that artificial sweetener is really prominent as if to scream to the world and make it as apparent as possible that you're on a diet. No, I didn't say it looked like you had to go on a diet. No I didn't say that I didn't like you. I said...I said I didn't like "shoes." I didn't like your shoes. I don't like your shoes, Carol. They're just too cool. "Too Cool Carol" is what I'm going to call you. You're making the rest of us look bad, Carol. Everyone hates you because you're too cool. Look out everyone, "Too Cool Carol" is coming through with her baby puke shirt and cool shoes and a raise. Look out! Everyone get out of the way.

A large part of me wants to dedicate my life to science in order to create/discover a zero calorie sweetener that has no real taste, other than that of real sugar. I completely applaud people for watching their calories and realizing that there is far too much sugar in most mass marketed consumables. On the whole we are not a healthy country and I appreciate when companies and consumers step up to try to do something about it. The problem is that the healthier sweeteners that sugar and corn syrup are swapped out for have specific tastes of their own, which just also happen to be very strong. I will happily admit that erythritol and stevia are preferable to other garbage zero calorie sweeteners out there, but they are still overpowering. If they were not included in this beverage it would taste wonderfully like raspberries. You can tell that this is a beverage that would actually taste like raspberries and not some generic fake berry flavor. Unfortunately it is buried under the flavor of the sweeteners.

This could have been incredible tasting, and still healthy if only another sweetener option existed. I'm going to don my lab coat, get out some beakers and get to work. I will not rest until I have an answer that will let this beverage be what it so desperately wants to, and deserves to be! Either that or until it's lunchtime. I'm actually kind of hungry not. I'm going to make a PB sandwich.

I don't know if I will ever get used to non-carbonated energy drinks. Yes, I know the original energy drinks (coffee and tea) were not carbonated and served this world for hundreds of years without people complaining that they needed more. Times have changed though and when I see the word energy listed on a beverage the taste of chemical bubblegum-y citrus flashes across my senses. The thing is that it's not that great of a flavor, we've just become acclimated to it. It's a nice change of pace to have a product that will give you a rush of caffeine and vitamins to help get you through the day that is out of the norm.

This tastes like a plant was bottling some diet black cherry soda, but the line to carbonate it was out of order and also about 1/3 more water got into it than should have. I understand those sound like negative things, but this is better than any black cherry soda I've ever tasted. It also tastes way less diet than I had anticipated since it is sweetened with sucralose. I expected that horrible fake sweetness to punch me right in my uvula, but it turns out it's fairly mild. To such an extent that I believe it could be passed off as “energy flavor.”

Black cherry may not be my flavor of choice, but I have no real complaints about this. It gave me the little boost I needed to get me through my work day and it did it while maintaining a decent taste. What more can you ask for in these times?

Just like that we have come to the last submission of the 2017 Shake it Off Challenge. So far the contestants have been decently chocolatey and mostly enjoyable. For this final installment we will visit the shake whose packaging looks the most medicinal. With a name like Medifast and the Caduceus logo how can one not think of a doctor's office while drinking this? I understand that they are trying to show how healthy this beverage is and show that it is recommended by physicians, but the symbolism has me expecting this to taste like garbage medicine. Sometimes you hate when your expectations are met. This is clearly my least favorite of the three shakes we reviewed for the challenge. The chocolate tastes fake and chalky (yes I shook it up for as long as recommended). While the other shakes let you feel like you're cheating and drinking some sort of desert, this never lets you forget that it has a function and that is to help you lose weight, which will not be enjoyable. With 14g of protein and 100 calories, it's pretty close to the others in that regard. Unfortunately the taste does not match up.

Round two of the 2017 Shake It Off Challenge has begun, and I have to say I think we have a contender on our hands. Nutrisystem is a long running company and they have had that time to perfect the “diet' shake powder. This is downright delicious. This is the kind of thing that would make dieting easy. I'm not even on a diet and I want to drink these all of the time because it tastes great and there is no guilt in consuming it. What other chocolate beverage can say that?

It is ridiculously creamy and it tastes like decent chocolate, not like garbage chocolate that you would swear is actually more plastic than food. There is some stevia and monk fruit extract in here as well as fructose to sweeten it, but none of them interfere with the chocolate taste. That is a feat onto itself. The numbers for this are less than the Wonderslim. It has 13g of sugar with 150 calories, but with this you will recognize the names of more of the ingredients, and you can't argue with that flavor. I personally feel much better drinking this than the competitor.

We have one more contestant in this game. Will Nutrisystem remain on top, or will they be ousted? Only time will tell.

We were contacted to participate in the 2017 “Shake it Off” challenge, where the company sent us three different shake mix products and we are to write about them and compare them. While they are a couple years too late for the name of the challenge to be timely, I'm always up for a challenge, especially when chocolate is involved. Do you think Taylor Swift's legal team is going to get involved? They are quite litigious, right? Did I make that up?

For my first tasting I'm going with the WonderSlim Chocolate Cream. This is a meal replacement powder that can be made into a shake, or pudding. The outcome just depends on how much water you add to the powder. Whichever way you choose to consume this it has 15g of protein, 24 vitamins and minerals and comes in at only 100 calories. There are A LOT of ingredients in here. Most of which I have never heard of before. I'm sure they all serve some sort of dietary purpose, but I still get wary when there are so many hard to pronounce things in my food.

Flavorwise this has a nice chocolate taste to it, but unfortunately there is an undertone of diet-ness due to the sucralose used as one of the sweeteners. While you're drinking it, you don't really notice it too much, but a little while after you swallow that unmistakable flavor starts taking over your mouth. If the sucralose were not present this would be downright delicious. It is slightly chalky, but nothing too terrible and it's easy to look past that.

Overall this is better than I would have expected from a company named WonderSlim.

Do you ever find yourself wondering why cleaners always seem to be lemon scented? Do you find yourself wishing that you lived in a world where you could clean your counters, floors and woodwork with something that smelled like blueberries? Does your mind then drift and you find yourself contemplating what that delicious smelling cleaning product would taste like? Well lucky for you Amp has the answer for you and it's fairly gross.

First off, blueberries are great. Who hasn't sat down and accidently ate an entire basket in one sitting? Secondly, I also love grapes, especially white grapes. When they are nice and plump at a perfectly ripe phase they are fantastic. This beverage somehow messed up mixing two wonderful tastes together and I blame the sweetener. This doesn't have the typical sucralose flavor to it, but it does something to the other flavors that just ruins them. It starts off with a decent blueberry taste but then it turn to the white grape. The two don't mingle. They simply do no mix together. The thing is at the exact moment of the switch the sucralose does something and it tastes like a cleaner and everything is ruined. This is so close to being good. It makes the jump from roof top to roof top, but just misses and plummets to its death.