Naturally Sweetened - 76 Reviews

Does anyone remember the incredible beverages known at Clearly Canadian? They ruled gas station coolers for years before they inexplicably went extinct. Seriously we're talking a Roanoke-esque type situation here. One day they were just all gone. Although nothing remains of them but a few empty dusty bottles scientists (the Thirsty Dudes) have recently discovered that their line of heritage did not completely die out. We have discovered that the Juice Squeeze line is a descendant of the carbonated drinks of old.

This has the scientific community in an uproar. They are screaming for more concrete proof. We here at Thirsty Dudes say the proof is in the flavor. It's a mixture of incredible naturally sweet berries and other fruit. That mixture has been slightly carbonated to make an exquisite drink. If this were available back home it would be a staple in my diet. Choke on that real scientists!

I've been doing way more research than any one person needs to in order to follow the trail of Ecto-Cooler. If you don't remember it I feel sorry for you. It was a flavor that Hi-C put out in the 80's in celebration of the masterpiece that is Ghostbusters. It's the least they could do for the movie changed the entire world. Well my world at least. Either way it was a green citrus juice drink and it was wonderful. Sadly it was discontinued (although brought back for a bit under the name "Shoutin' Orange Tangergreen"). It's probably the drink I miss the most in the world. I might just be feeling nostalgic, but this tastes like Ecto Cooler to me. The Sweet Leaf Citrus Green Tea had me thinking the same thing. Maybe it's just something with green tea and citrus (this has mandarin juice in it). Even without my history of loving Ecto Cooler this drink is incredible. It's some of the best tasting juice tea combos I've ever encountered. Goji Berry is something that I'm going to have to look into more.

Now I feel like I need to watch both Ghostbusters movies for the 900th time in my life. I'm not complaining.

100% Juice? Check.
No Sugar Added? Check.
Rad looking toucan on the carton? Check.

We're off to a good start here. This is nothing but mango pulp and apple juice. Apple juice is the great stretcher of fruit juices. Seriously almost every juice has it mixed in to keep costs down and make the central fruit last longer. It's perfectly fine because apple juice is great, and it never overpowers the other fruits. This still tastes like nothing but mango. Remember how there's no sugar added? It's still crazy sweet. I'm talking 27g of sugar sweet.

A couple of years ago I was on tour in the UK. We went to Ireland for a few days and with the exception of the Dublin show those four days were a disaster. There were poor turnouts and the cops shut one of the shows down. Tensions were running high in the tour party. The thing that made things better was that it was blackberry season. I don't know if you're aware of this, but blackberries run rampant in Ireland. They are everywhere. Seeing as they are my favorite berries I was in heaven. I must have consumed over ten pounds of blackberries in those couple of days and every single one was perfectly ripe. Since then I'm constantly let down when I buy some from the store. They are still good, but only a couple out of each bunch is perfectly ripe. The rest are always a bit off and sour. I continue to buy them, but I always look for perfection in the fruit.

This drink is that perfection mixed with a bit of grape juice. It actually tastes like ripe blackberries, which is a shock. Some other fruit overpowers most things that are supposed to be blackberry flavored. This is just another reason to love Canada.

The cinnamon challenge is a thing of modern folklore. Oh you're not familiar? It's a little game where you dare or bet someone that they can't swallow a tablespoon of cinnamon without the aid of a beverage. The person is also not allowed to puke. It can be endlessly funny at parties. Generally if you can convince one of your friends to do it, it's pretty much guaranteed that others will join in saying that the people who can't do it are wusses. If you've never witnessed the hilarity please head over to You Tube and watch some videos of it. Watching the puff of spice come out of peoples mouths like smoke from an angry dragon never gets old.

I found this drink in a grocery store up in Canada on a little trip today. They had a handful of flavors, but since it was a little on the expensive side ($3.50) I had to chose only one. All of the flavors looked great, but once I saw blackberry and ginger combined I knew my answer.

It tastes like a lightly gingered apple juice. It has some slight berry flavor to it, but the apple it what really hits your taste buds. The ginger is there in flavor, but there isn't a burn with it. I brought up the cinnamon challenge earlier because even though it isn't listed as an ingredient there is the definite dryness of cinnamon in the aftertaste. Just like in the challenge, but to a smaller extent, it feels like the drink dries out your mouth. No one is going to be screaming for water because of it, but it's there and it makes the drink more interesting.

This is a natural energy drink. They make sure to point on that there is no refined sugars or taurine contained to give you "fake energy," as I will call it. In a separate ingredients list they let you know all of the "Botanical Extracts" that are contained to give you energy. Included are yerba mate and guarana.

I don't know what I expected this to taste like, but it was not how it actually tastes. I'm okay with that though, because it's pretty great. It's sweet, with just the right herbs and spices. I wish more companies would take note.

I woke up early again today for no real reason. Why does this keep happening? It was also way warm in my room. I mean like sweating to the sheets summer warm. So I'm laying there in bed playing Words With Friends, like I do when I wake up every morning, and decide that it's obviously really nice out, so I'm going to go on a long bike ride before my girlfriend gets up. I eat my cereal and head out to the porch where I realize that it's insanely windy and looks like the sky is going to open up and all of god's wrath is going to come down in the form of unholy rain. I sigh and head back inside and read the morning away. Around noon it cleared up a bit so I decided to take my chances. I ended up riding to North Tonawanda, which is a decent hike. There are brief moments where it's really windy, but nothing I can't handle. Of course as soon as I got to the furthest point in my little adventure it starts to rain. Just a light shower though. I start heading home, but once I reach the bike path that runs along side the river a never-ending wind picks up. Speaking of never ending, it's like the wind that picks up right before the Nothing hits in Never Ending Story. I'm talking Wizard of Oz wind here. It should have picked me up, bike included, and carried me off to some magical land. It turns out it didn't, but I did find myself in the same predicament as some seagulls. They were trying with all their might but they just couldn't make any ground. They were just hovering in one place flapping their wings like crazy. Me? I made slight ground, but for the intensity that I was pedaling I should have been going a lot further, a lot faster. I don't know how I made it home, but I did and collapsed on my bed.

As I lay in bed playing Words With Friends for the second time today, I realized I had some things that needed to get done, but I had little energy to do them. I didn't want to drink one of your every day energy drinks, because that would have just made me feel like a steaming pile of poop. Instead I went with a Mona Vie. It's a "Healthy Energy Supplement." It didn't make me all jittery and crazy feeling like Mike's Celsius drink, but it did give me the little boost I needed to get off my butt and get some work done. It's ever so lightly carbonated, which was a nice touch. There was just a soft fizz as opposed to the big bubbles you would expect. Acai is the base flavor, but it's a pretty smooth version of it. This is an energy drink I 100% approve of. It sure brought me back from the dead.

It's a lazy Sunday morning/afternoon. Just laying around and not doing much. I decided I needed a little lunch and what better way to celebrate mid day than with a pumpernickel bagel and a bottle of cherry juice? I love cherries as a fruit. They are tasty and fun to eat due to all of the pits you get to spit out. This should be incredible. It's nothing but cherry juice. No preservatives. No sweeteners. Absolutely nothing else is in this bottle. As it turns out when you compress so many cherries and don't cut it with water it is intensely strong. Cherries are ridiculously sweet. Even though there is no sugar added to it, it tastes like the filling in a cherry pie. It seriously is that sweet.

If you're a passive cherry fan, you may want to water this down a bit. On the other hand if you are a cherry enthusiast this is probably just what you're looking for. I will admit it was a little too strong for my liking. The bagel on the other hand was pretty stellar.

This could not look more like a wine bottle. I had to read the entire bottle several times before I was fully convinced that it was not. Just because I don't drink alcohol doesn't mean that I can't be fancy. I busted out one of my roommates fancy wine glasses and poured myself a glass. Not too big mind you, as the bottle recommends you drink only 2 ounces twice daily.

It may not be wine, but it is some of the most potent juice I've ever come across. The prime flavor in the juice is definitely the acai. There is a whole lot of it in each sip. It is combined with 18 other fruits and mashed into this wonderful bottle. There are a lot of fruits present that I have never heard of before such as aronia, maqui, sea buckthorn, boabab, cupuacu, bilberry, jabuticaba. A lot of those words just seem made up. They are apparently magical fruits that are "scientifically proven to strengthen the body's immune defenses." As I said before it's a strong juice. It's the kind of juice that you can tell it has to be doing wonders for your health just from the taste. I don't mean it tastes bad at all, but you can just imagine the fruits putting on their armor and taking up their swords and going to war against all the nastiness in your body. I wonder if buckthorn rides a horse in battle.

100% juice is just the way I like it. There is some peach in this mix, but it really doesn't stand a chance with such an overbearing partner like apricot. If this were the DC universe, apricot would represent Batman and peach would be filling the role of Robin. I take that back. Everyone loves Batman, but who really cares about Robin? Peach is far too delicious of a fruit to be Robin. I need to come up with a better superhero team where the sidekick is better than the hero, but where the hero is the center of attention. (I know Batman is not a superhero. In fact, that's what makes him so much better than other heroes). How about Kato and the Green Hornet? I guess that works.

I can't express how excited I was to get a package full of Smart Juice. So much soda and iced tea gets poured down our throats that it's nice to have a break to enjoy some natural juice. There are two ingredients in this bottle; Organic Pomegranate and Organic Purple Carrot Juice. I've said it before, but this is how juice should be made. Fruit doesn't need sweeteners added to it, and concentrate is just a cop out. Keep it whole. Keep it pure.

This is an intense juice. It's very strong. Mike Tyson strong. This juice could go for the belt and win it without trying much. I could see a lot of people wanting to water it down a bit to suit their tastes more. I applaud Smart Juice for giving us this pure 100% juice. Those of us who like it strong can enjoy it that way. The others can add their own water to dilute it. Pomegranate is the main force behind this powerhouse, but its sidekick purple grape sticks his head in there a little bit. You get a slight hint of carrot, but it's only recognizable as that if you really concentrate. These are the drinks us Thirsty Dudes need to keep up our health.

What a relief. After the dark chocolate debacle from a few weeks ago, I was anxious to find some redeeming product from Cell-Nique. This did it. Not a hard competition to have something better than "the worst" rating you can get but all the same, this isn't bad.

Let it be known, that this is probably a health food drink over a standard juice or whatever. It's sludgy, gritty, bold, and flavorful. It's pretty good, though. It's like an orange juice with vanilla in it, for some reason, and then some jerk threw a handful of (edible) sand in it. Cell-nique claims that it's like "A farmer's market in every bottle" and I might give it to him. I really feel like this is good for you and the thickness and color don't convince me otherwise.

This drink makes me happier to try the other flavors we have in stock. I'm finding it kind of fun and strange simultaneously to not have anything in my mouth, take a drink, swallow, and be left picking stuff out of my teeth with my tongue. It's an experience, I can tell you that much.

Sparkling Water and grape/orange/passion-fruit juices are the only ingredients in this drink. It's the way things should be sometimes. Although this tastes more like a tropical punch than the individual flavors that compose it, it still tastes completely natural. It's very obvious from the first sip that there is nothing fancy or chemically added to this for any reason. It's made for those that enjoy sodas, but for health reasons they don't drink them. I want fountains of the different flavors of this line flowing in my house at all times.

Mike and I have had our collective eye on the Cell-nique drinks for months. We would see it in the store every time we went. More often than not we would pick it up and look at the bottom of the bottle. There is so much sludge there. It was equally enticing and disturbing. The $4 price tag deterred us for a long time, but I finally gave in this week. I wish that I had put it off even longer.

Let's start with the fact that this has the longest list of ingredients that I have ever seen on a drink. There are 36 different ingredients. Sheer insanity. There is so much crazy stuff in here that I never in a million years would have expected to drink. Also, everything says "Organic" before it. I hate when companies do that. It's such overkill. This is pretty much supposed to be the healthiest thing you can ever drink. By default that means that it's going to be one gag shy of a trip to Pukeland, USA.

Here is my thought process starting with smelling it:
-Wow this doesn't smell nearly as bad as I expected. It has a general cocoa smell, with some undertones of weirdness. This might not be nearly as bad as I had anticipated. Oh wow it would rule if this actually tasted good for how healthy it is for you.
*Bottles Up*
-Okay that tastes like a strangely fruity dark chocolate bar. It's not the greatest thing ever, but not that bad. I also expected this to have little chunks of grain (Quinona) in it.
*.2 seconds later*
Oh sweet Jesus what the hell is that flavor. It's like someone took every single thing that was in a fridge and put it all into a blender. It's a complete assault on the taste buds. There is absolutely nothing good about this flavor. Show me someone who enjoys this and I will show you someone who is either a liar or someone that was tragically born without taste buds.
*Again .2 seconds later*
Okay now it tastes like I just ate a spoonful of black licorice and hot chocolate mix, but the taste of liquid hell is still lingering in the background. Oh man this flavor just will not leave my mouth. I may have to cut out my tongue if this doesn't go away. I'm going to try and wash it down with something else.
*Hands bottle to Mike, goes into the kitchen and downs a tasty fluid*

Mike wanted to add that it tasted like he was eating a campfire somewhere in the middle of the flavor spectrum. I can't comprehend how disgusting this is. It's now a few hours after my initial tasting and I still have the memory of the flavor on my tongue. I've eaten several things since then as well.

Mike said that I should give this a two. Things this healthy don't have a chance in the flavor department. Sometimes you have to deal with something purely disgusting for the sake of health. This is so disgusting that the only way I could give it a two was if it gave me supernatural powers. I'm still normal me, so it's getting the loneliest of all numbers.

I can't even begin to tell you how refreshing it can be to come across a good carbonated beverage that doesn't have any sugar added to it. We drink a lot of beverages here at Thirsty Dudes, and most of them are full to the brim with sugar. Most of the time it's not a problem, but sometimes it just gets to be too much (I do brush my teeth all the time for fear of them falling out of my head). These are the times I love to visit my friends the unsweetened teas and spritzers such as this.

Fruit is sweet. That is one of the reasons it is so good. You normally don't need to add sugar to it. The R. W. Knudsen family knows all about that. Nothing that I've ever had by them has any sugar added. I may not have been a huge fan of their Sparkling Essence line, but their Spritzer's have been great. This is just sparkling water added to fruit juice. Boysenberries are a hybrid of raspberries and blackberries, and it's definitely shown in it's taste. Mix in a little grape and you have a refreshing drink that I think everyone would enjoy.

If the soda industry took note and followed this process there would be a lot less overweight people in this country. Well if the soda companies also found a way to make American's less lazy too.

I don't care if pineapple juice sometimes reminds me of vomit; I'm still going to keep drinking it. The positives outweigh the pukeatives every time. Pineapples are just too tasty to ignore. It may be the most acid fruit to ever exist. So much in fact that my tongue bled from eating too much. I don't regret it. It was so tasty that I couldn't stay mad.

Everfresh has added just enough water to the juice to minimize the effect of tasting like you just blew chunks. The acidity is low. The flavor is up. If pounding the actual fruit isn't possible, this drink is a decent stand in.

Tiny, tiny juice. Also, probably the best fruit punch I've ever had. It's just juice, no sweetener, so it's not thick and syrupy as most fruit punches are. It has your standard apple and grape juices, but the bonus of pineapple and passionfruit as well. If only all fruit juice was like this I think kids would want to drink more juice. It tastes so much better than the generic stuff they are used to.

Imagine finding a Hershey's with Almonds chocolate bar in a box full of chalk. It would be a weird sight, wouldn't it? Now imagine eating the chocolate. It would still taste like chocolate, but the chalk taste would still be there with every bite.

That is exactly how this drink taste. I want to like it, I really do. But with every sip, the chalk taste just sits in the back of my mouth while the delicious chocolate taste lingers on my lips.

These come in the tiniest bottles ever. 4oz= awesome for reviews. This is 100% juice, and 100% awesome. Okay so I lied, I wish it were bigger because it's pretty great. I am a sucker for orange mango juice.

After the ridiculous amounts of soda we've been drinking lately this is a nice change. Everything has been so overly sweet, and to be honest I've been getting some stomachaches. I need a bit of a break from the sugar. This is a soda with no sweeteners added. Now that is pretty awesome. The Sparkling Organics line is 70% juice. That is something I really appreciate. It's really light and bursting with citrus flavor. I need more drinks like this so I can kiss my gut rot goodbye.

Juicy Juice the juice that all kids love...juice. Let me rephrase that, when I say all kids, I mean all kids but me. That is unless it's the orange tangerine flavor. I really should like all of their flavors because it's 100% juice. The problem is that it's not just the juice of the fruits listed in the flavor; it's a blend of a variety of different juices. Healthy? Yes. Tasty? Not so much. Fortunate for me, they finally got a blend of juices that is both healthy and tasty. Even though there are three different fruits listed above orange and tangerine it still tastes like its namesake. It's a good, cheap alternative to other all-natural juices.