Diet - 615 Reviews

Zero calories. No sugar. All-natural soda. All of these statements are true about Zevia sodas. In my opinion Zevia is the in process of single-handedly overthrowing the world of diet soda. They were the first company I knew of to use stevia as a sweetener. If this were a movie there would be a pivotal scene where the ambassador of Zevia would give a speech to the towns people to get them riled up. Of course he would be on a horse. He would tell the people that they have been fooled for all these years. Diet soda does not need to taste like butt, artificial butt at that. It can taste decent, and it can do so naturally. At the end of the speech everyone would cheer and then they would run into an epic battle where they would slaughter the armies of aspartame sucralose. When the smoke clears and the battle is finally over Zevia would be crowned king of the realm of diet soda.

In all seriousness this is one of the best diet sodas I've ever had. I have diabetic friends who swear by it, and I should have not taken so long to try it. It doesn't taste 100% like a "regular" soda, but it has the least diet taste of any that I've ever tried. I could go for a little stronger grapefruit flavor, but it's okay where it is now. Even though I haven't had it in over 15 years something about this instantly made me think of Faygo Frosh. I couldn't remember the name of it I just remembered it as the white Faygo that was always at my grandparent's house. It's apparently still in production. I had no idea.

I've said it before, and I will continue to say it: I have yet to try a flavor of Vitamin Water that I don't like. I'm not saying that every flavor is amazing. I am just in the group of people that thinks they have yet to make a bad flavor. I continue to try all the new flavors and continue to be amazing by the consistency of how good they are.

As most people know, each flavor of Vitamin Water has a fun little blurb of text to help them stand out among all the other flavored waters. Since the name of this drink is "Glow", the blurb is all about how a supermarket is also a great place to meet people to date. It even goes on to say that if someone sees this bottle in your basket things will go good for you. I'm used to companies covertly (or in this case not so subtly) push their products onto the masses, but it always makes me uneasy. I highly doubt someone will be more attracted to someone if they had a bottle of vitamin water in their shopping cart.

I had never heard of a guanabana so I had to look it up. It grows on trees native to Mexico, Venezuela, Central America, the Caribbean and northern South America, Colombia and Brazil. Its flavor has been described as a combination of strawberry and pineapple with sour citrus flavor notes contrasting with an underlying creamy flavor reminiscent of coconut or banana.

I would love to try this fruit on it's own, but it is mixed with strawberry in this drink. It kind of tastes like a strawberry dipped in whipped cream, but not as heavy. It's actually really good, and I normally don't like strawberry flavored drinks. It has a very slight stevia aftertaste, but most people might not be able to tell that.

I had very little interest in this beverage when I first picked it up, but since I had never seen it before I felt an obligation to this website. It has zero sugar; only five calories and the light color did not make it look very flavorful. None of that is very enticing to me.

The saving grace/overall coolness of this drink is the fact that there is a compartment of vitamins hidden in the cap. When you're ready to drink it you twist the red part of the lip and they drop into the drink. I've never come across a drink like that before, and it's pretty rad. The reason for it is that vitamins deteriorate and lose their potency in water. This way you get the most bang for your buck if you will.

This flavor really tasted like Flintstones Chewable Vitamins. Do they still make those? If not they should. They are tasty and made me want to take vitamins as a kid. Barney was always the best one. Do kids even know who the Flintstones are? Would Fred selling cigarettes even work nowadays? Who would be peddling those wares these days?

The use of stevia was a wise choice. It keeps the diet flavor to a minimum, and actually makes the drink enjoyable.

This drink has "dollar store" written all over it. It's no surprise that this isn't that good. It has a sharp blue raspberry taste to it. But then a familiar aftertaste kicks in: energy drink battery acid. This is weird because it's not an energy drink. If this is marketed to kids (which I'm assuming it is), this is not a drink kids would enjoy.

We were going to give this a 1 bottle rating, but the drawing of a raccoon on a skateboard was too awesome to give it such a low rating.

When I saw this in the cooler at New Seasons, I thought it was a gift from the soda gods. Two of my favorite sodas, root beer and ginger beer, combined!? But then I realized that it was a diet soda sweetened with stevia. My excitement died down, but I still had to try it. This might be a once in a lifetime opportunity.

It's a lot smoother that I was expecting. It's also very carbonated which surprised me. The root beer taste hits first, and it's a very light root beer. The ginger comes shortly after and sadly wasn't that intense. I was hoping this was going to be sweet with root beer, but with a spicy ginger aftertaste. Sadly this was not the case. As far as diet sodas go, this isn't that bad. I just wish the ginger taste was stronger and the root beer didn't taste watered down.

What's worse than a gross energy drink? A gross diet energy drink. Going into this I knew this wasn't going to be good. The initial taste isn't bad. It has a generic orange soda mixed with red bull taste. But as soon as it goes down, the usual battery acid energy drink feeling kicks in, which is intensified by the Splenda in the drink that make it "low-carb". Yuck.

Also, did you notice the warning at the bottom? "Caution: May Suppress Appetite". This is kinda messed up. I highly doubt people are worrying about having their appetite suppressed. This is obviously a clever way to market this to people trying to lose weight without putting the dreaded word "diet" on the can.

Mangosteen may not be my favorite fruit ever, but it still has a little something going for it. I blame the name. Even though I know it has absolutely nothing to do with mangoes my brain always expects a little bit of their flavor to creep in. Of course it never does.

This is more of a tropical fruit punch than it is mangosteen. It does have mangosteen juice in it, but it doesn't show up on the ingredients list until after apple, orange, pineapple and passionfruit. All of those flavors blend together into one solid flavor.

Had this been made with cane sugar I imagine I would be in love with it. Hansen's decided to give the world a nice natural lo-cal treat so they used rebiana as a sweetener. As I've stated many time I'm not a huge fan of diet drinks, but as far as they go anything sweetened with the stevia plant is far superior to any artificial lo-cal sweeteners. You can still tell it's diet by the taste, but it's not enough to turn you off from the flavor of the fruit juice held within.

There is a lot riding on this review. Up until now, Virgil's has a nearly perfect record (with the exception of a 4 bottle review for their black cherry cream soda.) Virgil's has stepped into dangerous territory: diet soda. For the most part, diet soda and us do not usually go well together (except for a couple exceptions like the Thomas Kemper Diet Cola). I was really scared to buy this because I didn't want my opinion of Virgil's being one of the best soda companies to be tainted. But in the name of Thirsty Dudes everywhere, I have to.

Unlike most diet soda's that are usually sweetened with sucralose or aspartame, this is sweetened with stevia. I was hoping this would make it more tolerable. Sadly, it did not. I was really hoping the delicious and complex flavors of Virgil's root beer would overcome the gross chemical taste, but it failed to do so. The classic Virgil's taste is there for the first second of the sip, but then is washed away with a wave of dish soap water. Literally, if someone else had opened this bottle for me, I would be suspecting them of putting dish soap in it. It's pretty vile.

I'm sorry to have to give you a bad review Virgil's, but this is not good at all. I picked up a couple of the other "zero" flavors and I'm not that excited to try them anymore. Please stick to making your amazing non-diet sodas.

Wooooo.....mistakes. Look. I am not responsible for myself. Here's the new deal. No, not Teddy Roosevelt's "New Deal", but my house's new deal. Monday and Tuesday I stay home and watch Max, my little dude. I have this thing where I work too hard and don't make time to eat. I did eat a yogurt at about 11 but that's it. Now it's 3:30 and my stomach is aching for nutrition, but who cares because Max is sleeping and I can finally lay down some code. So I'm working hard, got thirsty about a half hour ago and decided, yeah, Celsius.

I weigh 150 pounds. I don't eat terribly well, but I don't eat a lot so it all balances out. Celsius would aid me in losing more weight, even though all I'm doing is running Max up and down the stairs only to find out that he was going to wait until I have his diaper off to pee. Jerk. That tiny jerk. So I drink it and it's something. It's diet-y, and even though there is some element of a fruit flavor, there is this diet, burning undertone, and it kicks in fast. You see, they replaced the calories with caffeine is bugging me out, much like John Leguizamo in "House of Buggin'". My hands are shaking and my torso feel hot, like it is summertime and I'm wearing a vest like a stupid idiot.

All that being said, I guess it's doing what it's supposed to. I'm not working out, per-se, but I am typing a mile a minute and I've been doing stairs like it was that strange time in your high school gym class and you did step aerobics like a bunch of girls. Yeah, I said it. Girls do step aerobics. Men know that they have stairs at home that women, ironically, hate going up and down.

Every day when I go to work I have to walk past a coffee shop. I do not like coffee, but I do enjoy the smell. It's not one of those "Oh, it brings back so many memories." things, it just smells good to me. I don't want to turn into one of those kids that are way too young to be hooked on the stuff, though. I despise people who say "Oh, I need my coffee," or "I had like 6 cups of coffee today," or the classic "Don't get me wrong, it's not like I haven't had coffee in years and am, for some reason, holding a grudge. I try a sip here and there and it just never gets me.

Here's where I feel I can blend in with society. This Bai stuff has been nothing but incredible. The fruit of the coffee bean can be used to add antioxidants to juice, tons of them according to a (probably biased) scale on the side of the bottle. This dragonfruit flavor is no exception. The Stevia does a good job of not masking the flavor and the flavor itself is a nice, fruity flavor.

I don't see myself drinking coffee in the near or far future, but I do see myself drinking Bai for many years to come. Does that mean that I am going to go into coffee shops with a couple bottles of it, pull out my laptop and work for 8 hours while people are standing next to me awaiting seats in the worst laid out establishment ever? Absolutely not! You can have your seat, addicts.

As far as I'm concerned as of today winter is finally over in Buffalo. It was 50 degrees and sunny. Not a cloud in the sky. To celebrate I went on my first decent bike ride of the year. I was planning on just doing a little ride, but every time I reached a destination I decided to keep going. By the time I had listened to Bowie's Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane was coming to an end 14 miles had passed and I was at my front door. From here on out I will solely use David Bowie albums to measure distance. It's the new science. Can you feel it on the horizon?

Before I left on this little adventure I decided it was as good a time as any to try out a Celsius drink aka "Your ultimate fitness partner." It's a mostly natural drink that promises to burn calories, reduce body fat, build lean muscle and give you lasting energy. By the end of my ride I was toned and semi-ripped like Michelangelo's sculpture of David. I'm talking like busting out of my shirt muscular. I'm a scientist, so I cannot tell a lie. That's part of the scientific oath right? I know I had you all convinced that I now look like Mr. Universe era Arnold Schwarzenegger, but truth be told I still look like a semi-dumpy 30 year old from Buffalo. I did have a decent amount of energy on the ride, and I feel way better than I expected to after not really riding in the past 5-6 months (yes our stupid winter can really last that long). So the drink has that going for it.

As for the flavor of it, when I took my first sip I was shocked at how good of a ginger ale taste it had. Within half a second I changed my mind as the diet hell of sucralose set in. Bear in mind that I have no tongue for diet drinks. I know there is a whole world of people out there that don't mind them. If you are one of those people and you're trying to lose weight, or put on some muscle, give this a chance. I think you will be pleasantly pleased with this ginger ale.

Ladies and gentlemen I'd like to be the first to thank you for coming to this ceremony and for purchasing this bottle of Under Way. It brings joy to my heart that all of you purchased this beverage in order to help out with breast cancer awareness. As you know breast cancer is a horrible thing, but by purchasing this drink you are.....wait....what? Under Way has nothing to do with awareness? Why on Earth did they use that pink color for the bottle then? Don't they know that that specific pink is reserved for breast cancer and penicillin? Did they want people to think of antibiotics when they drink this? Oh.....it's a Canadian company. I guess that makes sense.

Even though it's packaging is completely misleading in my world, the drink itself is fairly decent. The diet taste is only slight. The acai and pomegranate flavors overpower it nicely. I don't know how a Canadian drink made it's way down to a U.S. discount store, but it did, and I drank it, and I enjoyed it.

This can came courtesy of my friend Bree from Pittsburgh. On a mission to find weird drinks for me, she came across this at a dollar store. While I love the name of the drink and the art (who doesn't love otters who can play hockey?), most dollar store drinks are that cheap for a reason.

I was surprised that I actually enjoyed it. It's a sparkling juice marketed to kids, and not as sweet as i expected it to be. It's a decent orange taste, with a bitter (almost energy drink like) aftertaste. While it's good for a dollar store drink, it's not something I'd regularly buy.

Hansen's, you know what you are doing when it comes to sodas. I don't care what Derek thinks. Mike and I love you for your fizzy greatness. Your canned smoothies left a lot to be desired. In fact I think your pineapple coconut one was the first drink we ever gave a "one-bottle" review to. I know we use the phrase "barf sauce" a decent amount on here, but that smoothie literally tasted like vomit. So you are up for pop, down for soda.

Here we venture forth into your third line of drinks, juice. This here is the tiebreaker and as it turns out, you come out on the winning team. This is some pretty great juice. It's good on it's own, but the fact that it's a diet juice puts it over the top. Rebiana is a great lo-cal sweetener that doesn't have a very strong diet taste. It tastes like pomegranate and blackberry, just the way it should. I wish it was more than 35% fruit juice, but as I said for a diet beverage, this has a lot going for it.

One Christmas, my Mom bought me a case of Kool-Aid. I'm talking recently, like within the last 3 years recently. It had grape, cherry, and fruit punch. They're all great. Who didn't drink it growing up? It's a staple as a kid. Like those Hug barrels that are now like drinking poison. Honestly, if you still drink those, you might have the worst taste in drinks of all time. If someone is having a get together and you drink one for classic times, awesome. Way to have a good time. If you fetch them out and drink one on a Tuesday night because you've had a long day and you don't have kids, you're a dork and need to seriously treat yourself to something better.

I don't know why my Mom got me this stuff. It's in a cabinet at work. There were like 40 powder packets in there and it's taking me an awful long time to finish it. I don't drink one every day and since I've been doing Thirsty Dudes, I haven't had the time. I think it's ever since my mom found this dude called Anthony who sells old dry goods at a fraction of the price. My mom found this dude in some parking lot by my grandma's house and swears by him. I think between April and August, she only buys things like cereal, fruit snacks, granola bars, and all those types of things from him. "Oh, I got it from Anthony!" she exclaims more times than you can imagine. Dude's cheap and she's a lunch lady. It makes perfect sense to me.

So this drink doesn't give me a lot of pomegranate, but it does give me a nice, under-flavored grape Kool-Aid flavor and that I can get behind. I don't need the sugar. Sure, it makes the real thing taste like magic as it makes its way down your gullet, but I'm smart enough to know that drinking Kool-Aid can easily be supplemented with something else. This is a good "something else."

Up until recently I had no idea that there was a world of protein based fitness drinks out there. You would think I would be aware of such a thing being a professional drinkologist and all, yet it eluded me.

XAPP says to drink this beverage to "Refresh, Refuel, Repair and Recover." Basically the ingredients will do wonders for helping you with muscle growth for working out. You know it's something that Arnold would have drunk all the time before he became a governor, and even before he was an actor. Man, after a brief Wiki check I found out that was back in 1967. He is way older than I ever thought. Regardless, I can see him as a teenager at the gym talking to a higher power, "XAPP, I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad. Why we fought, or why we died. All that matters is that two stood against many. That's what's important! Valor pleases you, XAPP... so grant me one request. Grant me PROTEIN! And if you do not listen, then to HELL with you!" It may have been 50 years later, but the gods listened.

This is a carbonated light fruit punch that is sweetened with sucralose. It tastes like a better version of diet energy drinks. I had expected it to be grainy and thicker being a protein drink, but I was happy to find out I was wrong.

Coffee as a fruit? The first thing I (unfortunately) thought of was that monkey poop coffee. Oh, you've never heard of it? Some monkey somewhere eats coffee fruit, poops out the coffee beans, and people go crazy-go-nuts over it. It's the world's most expensive coffee. It comes from a monkey's butt and people clamor over it. Gross. I don't like coffee, or things that come out of butts, but this, luckily for me, is neither. It's pretty fantastic. It's got a sweet Stevia taste, but it really allows the clementine flavor to shine through. It's very fruity and very inviting. It's got a great smell and I could easily drink a straight 40 of this stuff. It goes down really smooth and 16.9 ounces is only 10 calories. This is downright healthy for you and is actually 100% of your daily vitamin C intake.

I hate oranges, but love orange juice. I know it's stupid, but there is just so much work and I've got better things to do than peel an orange all friggin' day.

Ugh. Every time I take a sip it's like punishment. Not that "I know it's good for me so I'll do it" type of punishment. Not that "Oh this mouthwash burns, but I know it's killing germs and preventing me from getting gingivitis" type punishment. It's the "Who crushed all these Sweet Tarts and put them in this already disgusting juice?" type punishment. That's what it tastes like. 15 thousand Sweet Tarts, powderized and thrown into juice. It's supposed to detoxify, but I'd much rather just eat a bunch of celery, or maybe just perform an enema. Seriously, I can't imagine drinking this entire thing.

Here's the sweet thing about this review. Sure, it's gold already, but here's where I step up my own game. Who doesn't love math? This drink was $2.50. It's on the high side, but I figured, how can you mess this up? It's juice. So $2.50. On the label, it states that in order to achieve your intended weight loss goal of upwards of an estimated 15 pounds, you have to drink four drinks per day. Now we're up to $10 per day. Oh honey, don't let it stop there. You are supposed to drink 4 per day for a week. That's seven days. Bringing our grand total up to $70. $70 in juice.

I didn't need to detoxify. What do I have to clean out? Tacos? Please, leave them in there. I love them. Your drink on the other hand...

Today I spent the day in the studio recording with my band. It was awesome and we had a lot of fun. An added bonus was that we were locked away and we missed the complete annoyance of the St Patrick's Day parade on the streets below. We wrapped up a little while ago and I was walking to my car when I noticed some drunken jerk had completely trashed the side of my car (there was a video camera in the parking lot and the driving was definitely a drunk parade goer). So here I sit, hating drunken idiots even more, waiting for the cops. What better way to pass this time then with a drink review?

Bai is turning out to be a pretty incredible company. They use the fruit of the coffee plant in their drinks for its antioxidant properties. You may expect that to be gross, but it doesn't taste like brewed coffee. It actually tastes like a really fruity tea. This one specifically tastes like tea with butt-loads of fresh peach juice added to it. It's good enough that it's helping me calm down. It is also so good that I didn't even realize that this was the diet version until I was halfway done. Yep, sweetened with erythritol and I didn't even realize. That gives it two thumbs up from me.

Smells diet, doesn't taste diet. Is that a clear winner? We're going to have to go over to our line judge to determine. John?

Well Mack, can I call you Mack? Anyway, it's a difficult decision to make when it comes to diet drinks. On one hand you've got the taste and on the other you've got the smell.

Mack, that's very true and also very obvious. I hope we don't pay you by the word because everything you said was quite stupid.

Thanks, John.

You're welcome, Mack. So honestly, what did you think of the drink?

Well, John, this tasted just fine. One squirt per eight ounces of water and I was on my way. It definitely would make me drink more water. It's gulp-able. It's got a real high gulp-ability factor.

Gulp-ability...is that a technical term, Mack?

Why yes John, it is. You can drink and know you're not drinking a tea, but you're drinking more than water. It's good and I think that people are really going to gravitate towards this. Dieters or not, this product doesn't scare people away.

You really redeemed yourself with that one, Mack. Thanks for coming down.

Thank you, John.