Jason Draper - 2709 Reviews

Ed Begley Jr's sense of self-satisfaction is a wonderful thing. He uses it to power his go-cart in order to not hurt Mother Earth. He also uses it to sweeten his sugar free sodas. He's a modest man though, so he told them to put on the label that it's actually sweetened with a blend of erythritol, stevia and natural flavors, but we know the truth here at Thirsty Dudes. I mean, we are professionals and I think we would be able to taste those sweeteners, but their flavor is missing from this drink, so it simply must be self-satisfaction that is sweetening this soda. There is a taste there, but it's something I'm unfamiliar with (apparently I've never experienced self-satisfaction) and it tastes much better than the sodas contemporaries.

You know what, this man deserves these special powers. Forget about all of the work he has done on behalf of the environment, just look at his acting work. He is a man who has made me laugh way more than most, with not nearly as much recognition as chumps who go for cheap jokes and become mega stars.

Now on top of making us laugh and trying to save the planet for people who are too stupid to care about it, he and his partner Bill have created a line of sugar free sodas that are only 8 calories and don't taste anything like diet trash. I'm pretty sure you could pass this cream soda off as a normal pop and 99.9% of the people who drank it would have no idea that it was diet. That, my friends, is true magic in the beverage world. It's nice and smooth, like a cream soda should be. The flavor isn't striving for anything new and crazy. It simply wants to be a normal cream soda that is healthier for you than the junk most people throw into their food holes daily. Begley, Bill, you have succeeded. This is wonderful, and I think if it got into the hands of more people we would have an epidemic. Then again people have crazy loyalty to their soda of choice for some dumb reason, even when much better products are available to them.

This is it. I have reached the end of my three-day juice cleanse. Well I guess not really the end, as I won't be eating again until the morning, but I've made it to my final bottle of juice. In the past three days I have consumed 18 bottles of juice. Some were incredible, others I had to choke down for the nutrients. I always wondered how I would fare in a post apocalyptic world, as I can be a picky eater, but I was able to drink every last drop of this cleanse, so I now have more faith in my ability to survive.

This here is the juice that I ended every day of the cleanse with. It is a liquid version of carrot, beet, celery, cucumber, parsley, spinach, lemon and orange. Some of those ingredients sound great, and some of them are a little ehh. Have I mentioned that through out the past three days my taste buds have turned against me? Juices that I had no problem with, and thoroughly enjoyed at the beginning of this run, are just gross to me now. My body doesn't want to deal with them anymore. Most of that are the greens that they are rebelling against.

The first night I had this I didn't think it was bad at all. The second night I wasn't so sure. Tonight I think I'm back on board. Each sip is a bit different. When the orange, beet and carrot flavors run this drink it's great. It has a bit of that dirty, earthy taste that I like in juices. It also has a ice citrus sweetness to it. If it was always like that I would love this undyingly. Unfortunately in other sip the celery and parsley a major players and it's those sips I could do without. After this cleanse it's going to be a long time before I have celery again. It was in a decent amount of these juices and it just stands out so much to me.

So I've lasted the full three days on this cleanse. There were moments where I definitely thought I was going to give in and eat something, but I held strong. I had on and off again headaches from the first night on, but I shockingly never felt weak. I really expected to spend most of this time in bed or on the couch watching movies and not wanting to experience any other part of life, but I stayed fairly active and went on with my normal life as if nothing was wrong. I did have some nights of sleep that were far from stellar, and a constant nagging in my stomach, but I made it through with much less damage than expected. I don't feel any major difference in my heath, but I do feel a bit lighter and I can tell that I have lost some weight. I'm going to estimate 4-5 pounds, but I won't know until the morning. I just feel leaner, but I guess self-starvation will do that to a person. It's been an interesting ride, and if you have interest in it, I say take it for a spin and see what it's all about. I doubt I'll do it again, but I did clean some garbage out of my body with relatively minimal discomfort. That certainly counts for something.

Thanks to Love Grace for supplying us with the juice for this cleanse. I am poor and cheap and never would have spring for it myself, but it was something I'm glad I was able to experience, and I hope my ranting encourages others to give their cleanse a try.

The morning after update:
After my final weigh in this morning I have officially lost 6 pounds on the Love Grace juice cleanse. I know that weight loss isn't the main reason to do a cleanse, and I know I'll gain most of it back, but that's a lot of weight to lose in three days. After eating a bowl of cereal this morning I also feel great. Without the nagging hunger and headaches, I can see that the cleanse did actually do something and I feel way better than I did when I started this three days ago.

Dear Love Grace,
I am sorry, but this is completely vile. It's not just my hunger or my hatred of bananas either. I actually don't even think this tastes much like banana. I made my girlfriend try it as well, as she loves fancy juices and bananas. She said it was one of the worst things she's ever tasted and it reminded her of vomit.

One might think that a mixture of banana, goji berry, cacao, maca, vanilla bean, dates, coconut oil, flax seed and Himalayan sea salt might be tasty. One would most definitely be wrong. Cacao in its pure form and fruit is always a bad idea. The bitter and the sweet just never mix right. I've had goji berries and dark chocolate together before and I thought that was gross with 70% chocolate. This is nearly unbearable.

It's also so damn thick that it wouldn't pour out of the bottle. I had to shake it into my mouth. Once I made room in the bottle I added a bit of water to thin it out so I could chug it. I needed that flavor in my mouth for a short of time as possible, while still getting the nourishment. I instantly drank a glass of water to wash it all away. Unfortunately for the next 15 minutes I kept burping it back up. Ugh. This was enough to make me never want to do a cleanse that involved it again.

Halfway through the last day of my juice cleanse, this is exactly what I needed. It's a nice simple drink, well sort of. This is lemon, shilajit, cayenne, agave and Himalayan sea salt. Basically this is an ever so slightly salty, spicy lemonade. This is a better version of the lemon detox drink (lemon juice, maple syrup and cayenne pepper), with shilajit (a concentrated tar form a plant) replacing the maple syrup. My roommate did that detox once years ago and I don't think its benefits outweighed how bad he felt/looked. Being one drink out of 18 though, it's nice. The cayenne gives it a nice burn, similar to the ginger in the other drinks, without being too overpowering.

It's probably the sweetest of all the juices I've had so far, and that's a nice change of pace. I never thought I'd get sick of juice, but I'm just about there. Well, if it was 100% fruit juice I'd probably jump all over it.

There is a lot of green going on in a juice cleanse. From the money you pay for it to all the veggies you drink. I thought I was okay with that. From time to time drinking a juice with things such as chard, kale, spinach, celery, cucumber, apple and lemon in them (like this juice) isn't bad at all. You drinking something healthy and you tend to feel good about it, that is when you have a belly full of other food, or know that you will be eating in the near future. I've had juices similar to this a handful of times in my life and I don't remember ever wishing I were eating a “real” meal instead. You know what I would happily be eating a salad composed of everything in this bottle over drinking it, because it tastes exactly like I'm drinking a salad, whose only dressing is a little sprits of lemon. It is a very accurate juice. I can make out each and every one of the ingredients in the flavor. It's just not something that I want to drink when I haven't eaten in two days. I wonder if some added ginger would fix this right up. Ginger is healthy, it's in the other juices, and I love it. The burn would help this salad go down all the easier.

Seriously, I can't even walk by the kitchen without my stomach rumbling. I only have one day left, but it's going to be a long day. All for health, right?

Edit:
I added some ground up ginger root to this, and it did what I expected. I am enjoying this much more.

I'm now a day and a half into this juice cleanse and I shockingly feel fine energy-wise. By this point I really expected to just be curled up on the couch, miserable and not wanting to do anything. Instead I went for a couple hour walk to enjoy the brief stint of nice weather we're having. I have been experiencing some on and off again headaches, but apparently that is normal. It is getting to the time of day when I eat dinner, and I can feel that in my stomach. Luckily it's time for my protein smoothie of the day. Unlucky for me that smoothie contains banana, flax seed, kale, dates, spirulina, hempseed, chia seed, coconut oil, lemon, Himalayan sea salt and wheatgrass powder.

Now I eat a lot of kale in my day-to-day life and I love wheatgrass, but everything else in here are ingredients that I don't really have a taste for. I expected this to be all banana, but it's pretty bland and the majority of the flavor seems to come from the various seeds involved and the lemon. The banana is there more in scent than taste. It's also super, super thick, almost to the level that I feel like I should eat it with a spoon. It's thicker than applesauce, which I tend to drink for the record.

I got no pleasure from the taste of this smoothie, but I finished the whole bottle for the sake of my health and this cleanse. I would never in a million years drink this outside of a cleanse, but it's not really something that you would come across in day-to-day life. Besides that healthy doesn't always means it tastes good and sometimes you just have to bite the bullet. Also note that our rating on Thirsty Dudes is based on flavor and not functionality. It's gets two for flavor, but it would get a five for health.

To this drinks benefit it definitely curbed my hunger a bit and for that I am grateful.

We've entered day two of my juice cleanse via Love Grace. I was doing great all day yesterday until about 10PM when I got a decent sized headache, and I started to feel pretty weak. I assume it's due to toxins working out of my body, and you know hunger. I woke up this morning and felt a lot better. I'm hungry but it's manageable.

I started off my morning with a bottle of Purify, and now it's time for my second juice of the day: Ginger Bomb. This is just great. It's orange, ginger, lemon, oregano extract and Himalayan sea salt, which when mixed together make for an intense little juice. It's a citrus-ginger explosion in your mouth, which then continues to erupt down your throat and into your stomach. It's pretty strong lemon-wise and the orange makes it a little less intense, but it's still pretty sour and slightly salty. The ginger is there more as a burn than as a flavor. I wish the taste was more prevalent, but the burn is so great that I can't really complain.

It seems like this is the most functional juice of the entire cleanse. It's anti-inflammatory, helps with digestive health, it's anti-bacterial, anti-viral, it improves circulation, supports metabolism, boosts the immune system, is adaptogenic and balancing. On top of all that I think it tastes great. It has made me feel more normal than any of the other juices I've had so far. 4oz of magical explosions.

Bananas very well may be the bane of my existence. I don't understand how anyone gets even a smidge of enjoyment out of them. The flavor is gross, and the texture might be worse. When I opened my box of juices and saw this I knew I was in for an unpleasant experience. With banana, flaxseed, almond, lemon, dates, vegan probiotic, Himalayan sea salt and coconut oil all mixed up there was zero chance that I was going to enjoy this. As a result I decided I should get it out of the way on the first day, so that when I've reached my full “hangry” potential, at least the drink that is helping to fill me up won't be disgusting to me.

Was it gross? You betcha. I thought bananas were gross on their own, but mixed with lemon it's even worse. That being said, my ladyfriend who is a fan of the yellow devil forced me to give her a sip and absolutely loved it. I will not hold my banana prejudice against this smoothie. I'm going to assume that most people would think this was probably the best out of the bunch, so keep that in mind and ignore my complaints because they are all founded in my hatred of a fruit that goes from green to yellow to brown to black.

Besides the banana and the lemon mixing weirdly, this is somewhat salty, which I find weird in a juice, but I think with the proper fruits I could really enjoy. The rest of the ingredients kind of mix together to try and balance out the banana flavor a bit.

This is indeed a smoothie as it is pretty thick, which was unfortunate because it made it hard to chug the bottle just to get it over with. One good thing I will say about this juice is that I was getting to a point where I was beginning to get annoyed due to hunger. You know when you're hanging out with friends and you're all starving, but you can't agree where to eat, so hours pass and you just want to punch them in their collective throats for being indecisive, but then realize that you're also being indecisive so you then want to punch yourself. I was getting to the beginning stages of that point, and this get me through it without snapping at anyone.

Continuing on in my juice cleanse I have come to the most initially appealing of the juices for my tastes. This Super Cider is simply apple, carrot, ginger and lemon. I'm a sucker for cider and ginger, so throw the two together and it's inevitably going to be a party in my mouth.

I did not expect the ginger to be so strong in this juice, and it was the best surprise I've gotten all day. I would say that this tastes more like ginger than anything else. It certainly has mainly an apple base, but it's the taste and burn of the ginger that make this drink so great. It has the kind of burn that you feel in your stomach. That's a good burn. The taste of the carrots is only apparent if you concentrate on finding it. The lemon just rounds things out. It's more visible in some sips than others, but it's never really at the forefront of the flavor. The ginger really doesn't quit with this. I could see it being a bit much for some people, but for those of us who love a little heat in our drinks this is just perfect.

Like all of the Love Grace juices this is raw, you know how juice should be. It's too bad that raw juice doesn't have a very long shelf life because it always taste so much better, and is better for you.

Juice cleanses are all the rage these days. I personally think that it's great. I am a lover of juice, and the fact that people are making an effort to be healthier is a move in the right direction. The fact that some companies are expanding their cleanses into other grocery stores besides Whole Foods so that it reaches a wider audience of “Everyday Joes” is an even better step. There are so many chemicals are garbage added to food these days that most people aren't even aware of that it's a good things to take some steps to cleanse your body of them from time to time. Juice cleanses are also used to gain mental clarity, improve overall well being, and the biggest allure for people is that it helps in losing weight. From an outsiders perspective it is a healthy way to starve yourself and get your body to work unnatural things out of your system.

I've wanted to do a cleanse myself for sometime, but the downfall of it is that there is a hefty price tag on this healthy live (Love Grace's is $168 for a three day run). Keep in mind you do get 18 bottles of juice for that price, and you have no need to purchase any other food in that time as well, so in the end it's not all that terribly expensive, but it does look like a large sum to drop at one time. Thanks to my involvement with Thirsty Dudes Love Grace sent us a three-day cleanse for review. I am starting it today, and I expect to be fully miserable for a while. I most definitely become easily annoyed when I am hungry, so I would probably steer clear of me until Thursday. No one likes to be “hangry.”

The first juice in the cleanse is this bottle of “Purify.” It is a collaboration of coconut water, celery, chard, spinach and cucumber. This is a first step in what is going to seem like a very long road. I am generally a bit weary about juices that have celery in them. On it's own it's a wonderful vegetable that I really enjoy. The problem is that when it is juiced and mixed with other juices it tends to take over the flavor of any drink. Love Grace worked out a nice solution to that problem; the use of coconut water. It dulls the flavor of the celery a nice amount. It's still very prevalent, but it's not a full on assault to your taste buds. When you hold this drink in your mouth it tastes just like coconut water with some greens juiced into it. It tastes mostly like spinach and cucumber, actually I couldn't taste the celery at all until I swallowed and then it's just in the aftertaste. There is a natural sweetness to this, so it doesn't taste like you're just drinking a salad. I mean you are, but it's no where near as gross as that sounds.

Well done, Love Grace. You've made the first step of this cleanse very enjoyable. It gives me hope that I'm not going to want to murder everyone around me before I reach completion. Sure I'll still be hungry, but at least I'll have some good flavors to help me along.

Energy drinks throw around terms like “Intense” and “Fierce” all the time. It's all about marketing and those are the kind of words that are going to catch people's eyes and make them think they will get the most bang for their buck, if you will. When you take a already potent energy drink and triple the active ingredients in a smaller can; you better believe them when they label it extreme.

I was not ready for this. It was 7PM, I had just eaten a large meal, and I knew I needed to be awake and alert until 4am or so. I know when I drink an energy drink on an empty stomach it gives me the jitters, but when I eat a meal I am normally fine. I didn't even drink this entire can (about ¾ of it) and within a half hour I was feeling a bit insane. I was a bit shaky and I could feel an energy in my entire body that needed to be put to use. Basically, I felt a more intense version of how I feel when I drink a normal energy drink on an empty stomach. It kept me going all night, and at 4am I was home and still pretty jacked up. I decided to drink a Marley Mellow Mood to be able to get some sleep, and let me tell you that was a terrible idea. Sure, my mind relaxed and I was able to sleep, but apparently my body just kept going. When I woke up the following day I felt like total garbage. It was as if I has not slept at all, and had been doing vigorous activity all night. So yeah, I don't advise mixing your downers with your uppers. I would make a terrible pill head.

As you can see the functionality of this drink worked wonderfully. Unfortunately that is not our main concern here at Thirsty Dudes. Flavor is first and foremost in our world, and that was lacking in this drink. It has a real bitterness to it, almost like vitamins were dissolved in a Red Bull, but they tried to mask it with a bit of fruity flavoring. It was kind of a chore to make it through as much of the can as I did. I guess you have to sacrifice flavor for this kind of functionality, which is a shame but at least it does what it's supposed to. I would definitely suggest this if you need to just power through your day with some help no matter the cost to your taste buds.

Is chai tea magic? I mean it doesn't involve eye of newt or toe of frog, but there is a very specific list of ingredients that when combined together make something truly wonderful. I get the feeling that if you mixed things up and added the wrong thing in comical movie way the results might not be as bad as the silver screen portrays it, but it could get gross, fast. You add cinnamon, cardamom, ginger root, black pepper, cloves and star anise to black tea and bam; you have a beverage that has been enjoyed by many forms of royalty throughout the centuries. I can only imagine that if those ingredients happened to be mixed up that some sort of beheading or torture would have resulted. I mean everyone was treated as savages back then, right?

I don't know at what point milk started being added to this spiced tea, but whoever came up with it deserves a tip of my nonexistent hat. While straight up chai tea is great, the addition of milk makes it so much smoother and more enjoyable to drink. Chill that and you've somehow made it even better.

Tea's Tea has smoothed out their chai tea to the max. This is ridiculously enjoyable as it has a spicy flavor that is not overpowering and at the same time it doesn't taste like milk with spices added to it. This is still primarily a tea, which is as things should be. The only thing I could think of that would improve this would be for it to be made with soy or almond milk instead of skim milk powder. That would be right in the pocket.

Now I just need someone to make me a chai green tea latte. I bet it would be amazing, but too bad it would probably also be considered black magic that would cause it's created to lose his/her head to a blade.

Motts, I have some questions for you. This product boasts that it has 40% less sugar than your average fruit juice, which I think is a good thing. Now, I'm assuming you didn't perform some sort of magic and remove the natural sugar from the apples and grapes that are the base of this drink. Maybe I'm wrong; maybe you have employed some sorcerers for your bottling plants. I'm going to guess that you just didn't add any HFCS or sugar to the juice. Instead you added stevia, which is healthier but still seems unnecessary. You did a good job with having this particular all natural zero calorie sweetener not taste overly diet in this juice, but you can still tell that it's there. My main question is this: why add any addition sweeteners at all? Why not just let the apples and grapes speak for themselves? Have we really come to a point in society where the natural sweetness of fruit is simply not enough? Do the majority of your customers really prefer that a perfectly sweet beverage be even sweeter? I just don't get it. You can taste the actual fruit behind the stevia, and I can tell you it's doing fine on it's own. Grape is running the game, but it invited apple along for the ride. I understand that grape juice in the raw if you will, can be a bit harsh for some people, but isn't it apple's job to keep it toned down?

In my opinion this would have been perfectly fine, if not better without the addition of a sweetener of any kind. I still enjoy it, but it leaves me wanting something more pure. If you are a person who likes their sweets sweeter, I suggest this. Why take on those extra calories when they are completely unnecessary?

It's harsh out there in this post apocalyptic world we live in. Ever since the beginning of the end us humans have had it rough. There are food shortages and finding clean water is proving to be harder and harder. The only electricity we have is through generators, and it's only matter of time before all the gas is gone and those prove to be pointless. We should have all listened to Ed Begley Jr and installed those solar panels. He's living like a king in his home watching old videos of Transylvania 6-5000, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, and A Mighty Wind.

As you all know the atmosphere has gone into the toilet and in order to even breath the air around us we need to up our immunity systems. Lucky for all of us that Neuro stepped up to the plate a created a once a day beverage that does just that. The beverage that is helping keep us all alive is packed with vitamin D, vitamin C, zinc amongst others to keep us healthy and alive.

Since we have to keep on our toes, due to the roving packs of mutants that threaten our very existence, the drink is sweetened with sucralose along with crystalline fructose. No one needs those extra pounds holding them back these days. Well actually, we won't have to worry about those extra pounds once the food shortage gets worse, which is inevitable.

As diet as this might be, it doesn't taste horrible. Tangerines were a wonderful fruit when they still existed. Neuro does a good job replicating their taste, and the citrus taste really cuts through the diet garbage. Is it an ideal flavor? No, but it's much better than it could be and sacrificing a little flavor is fine by me for the benefits it gives us, you know like staying alive.

It's a harsh world, indeed.

Let me be the first to congratulate kiwi for getting out of the abusive relationship that it was in with strawberry. For decades the only time you ever heard about this beautiful fruit was in relation to its counterpart. In those cases it always took a back seat to the red fruit. I know their relationship was forged because of their similar tiny black seeds, but it quickly went downhill. We've all heard what went on behind closed doors, but I'm not one to perpetuate the rumor mill. All I will say is that kiwi deserved better and I'm glad to see it stepping out on it's own into the spotlight.

Now after decades of living in the shadows, it was no surprise that kiwi wasn't going to come out of the gates and blow our minds. Sure, there are some issues with this beverage, but the important thing is that kiwi is trying and finally there is a beverage that is at least more accurately portraying it's natural flavor. Kiwi is not completely comfortable to come out all on it's own, so in here it is hiding behind sugar, and there's a whole lot of it. There is 69g of sugar in this 16.9oz can with a mixture of sugar, acesulfame K and aspartame. Sure, it tastes more like biting into a kiwi than any other drink I've ever had, but it tastes like you're biting into a canned kiwi that was in heavy syrup.

As a way of an apology for all the sugar kiwi actually put bits and chunks of itself into the drink as well. It gives it a nice texture that might be gross to some, but that someone like myself really enjoyed. Think of orange juice with a lot of pulp but switch the fruit and dump in way too much sugar. There you go.

While I'm 99.9% it's not sure I really wish this company was associated with Found Magazine. If you are not familiar they collect notes, drawings, list, etc that people randomly find and post them online/in their magazine. It's weird and sometimes boring, but often strangely interesting to catch a glimpse of someone's world.

In the ideal world in my head these sparkling waters were created from recipes that were found on a sidewalk somewhere. You know the owner was just walking along one day, stopped to tie his/her shoe and say a paper laying in the street. The penmanship was interesting looking so they picked it up and it was a handful of recipes for flavored sparkling water. After a quick stop at the market, the ingredients were combined to form wonderfully refreshing sparkling beverages that were so good that a new company was launched.

If that happened to me and these beverages were the result, I certainly would have started the company just so that I could get people to try how great they are. I'm always forcing people to try my drinks, and with something like this I would like to do it on a larger scale. Lucky for me the company already exists, so I can make people buy it, or I could if they were available around Buffalo.

While they call this a sparkling water, I would say that it is a fairly dry soda. As soon as you add sugar to something it ceases to be called water to me. There isn't much sugar in here though, so it is a tad dry, but it's the kind of soda that works better dry. It really tastes like you muddled some cucumber and mint and shoved it into your bottle of sparkling water (with a tad bit of sugar). I fully stand behind any beverage that actually tastes like the things it is named after. There are far too many companies out there that take liberties with flavors. I want what it says on the bottle, and that is exactly what happened here. My mouth couldn't be happier. It's so light and refreshing. It's also a sipping beverage, and not something you find yourself chugging. That is for the best of everyone. Found, never get lost again.

Guys/Girls, I have to admit that I am not a big rooibos tea drinker. In fact, I don't know if I've ever had a proper glass of it. I do know that when there is a selection of bottled teas it is one of the last I would choose. I have no good reason for this. I don't dislike the taste by any means; it's just kind of there. I guess I'm just a green tea lover at heart, and it will always be my first choice, especially if it is jasmine related.

Cheribundi has done a good job with a tea that I care very little about. They took the slightly nutty flavored tea and kept its integrity while adding their classic cherry juice to it. The result is like the mullet of beverages, cherry up front, rooibos in the back. You are instantly greeted by a nice, tart cherry flavor that fades into a tea flavor for the aftertaste. If this type of tea is your thing, then jump right on this train. If you're on the fence, maybe you just need to buy a day pass and ride the train for a little bit and see what you think about it. I think you'll come back to ride again.

Vemma has been slowly building it's empire based on a promise of a healthier energy drink that does more than just get you amped up, as well as giving those beverages flavors that are outside the norm in the world of taurine, B vitamins and a whole lot of sugar. Now I seem to have left my Bunsen burners and my Erlenmeyer flasks back at the office so I was unable to perform the proper scientific research to confirm their health claims (they do seem above water though). What I can do with confidence is confirm the taste of this beverage.

This is no Red Bull, Monster or Amped clone. The Verve! line tastes like to other energy drink that I have encountered. For this can of ParTEA let's start with the fact that it is uncarbonated. This is a good thing since the base of it is green tea and as much as companies work on it, I have yet to taste a carbonated tea that I have preferred over the still variety. They have added mangosteen and aloe to the tea, which give it a nice fruity flavor. Actually the fruity flavor overpowers the tea a bit more than I would prefer it to. By a bit I mean that the tea flavor is hardly there. Such is the sadness in this world. Vemma chose to sweeten the whole deal up with a bit of organic cane sugar as well as a heaping of xylitol, which is a little used zero calorie sweetener. The result is that you end up with a fruity drink with a slight diet flavor to it that has a minimal tea taste, without any trace of the “classic” energy drink flavor to be found.

Did I need to be wearing a lab coat and goggles to type that out to you? Of course not. Did I do it anyways? Of course I did, I'm a scientist!

After enjoying about half this can my ladyfriend came in the room and I handed it to her for a sip. She instantly asked if it was diet. I said yes, as I am not a known liar, but that it wasn't bad and overly diet. She took one sip and the look of utter revulsion crossed her face. I believe she then called it “diet death” and quickly handed it back to me.

My point here is that if you are not used to diet drinks you're not going to like this, or any zero calorie sweetened beverage. They are in an entire different universe from “normal” sodas. As much as I wish it wasn't true, it's a sad fact of life.

The opposite side of things is that once you become acclimated to these sweeteners, some of them (aka erythritol/stevia) aren't that bad. Sometimes for the sake of health you have to accept things that aren't initially attractive to your taste buds. For many people soda is a way of life, but those same people tend to end up overweight from consuming it far too much. This is a nice option for changing things. Yes, it does have a bit of a diet taste, but I assure you stevia is far better tasting then any of those other guys out there.

This is the most acceptable zero calorie orange soda I have ever tried. As a person who drinks far too many beverages you should probably take that as some sort of gospel.

In the world of apples there is a wide spectrum of tastes. There's your Fuji, the Gala, Golden Delicious not to mention Red Delicious, your Pink Lady, your Granny Smith and everything in between. Actually that's not a large array of flavors. It is kind of one central flavor with different degrees of tartness and sweetness.

There is one flavor that is missing from that whole wheelhouse though and that is the flavor of this soda. I get the general apple taste they are going for, but it's not much of an actual apple flavor. It's more the artificial flavor that we have been conditioned to associate with apple. Actually, the more I drink, the more I notice some semblance of a real apple flavor underneath the sugar and bubbles.

This isn't a bad soda by any means, but it's sweeter than anything I need to drink. It's much better than the apple-bubble gum flavor I was expecting due to the pinkness of the liquid. So, that's a plus for sure. Now I just want to tear into a nice Golden Delicious.