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I Paid: $3.99 for four 8.4-ounce cans (prices may vary by region)
Society as a whole has gotten wise to the fact that when you drink Mountain Dew or its Coke product equivalent, you're pumping your body full of empty calories. And yet we still like the fizzy sweetness of soda. Enter the half-sodas or health sodas or whatever you'd like to call them. They provide much of soda's refreshment and pizazz, but with less sugar, more fruit juice, fewer to no preservatives, and little to no artificial colorings.
Ocean Spray has jumped aboard the trend-boat with its sparkling drinks, and it's done a beautiful job. The Sparkling Cranberry variety leads with the flavor of grape juice, but cranberry gives it a pleasingly tart backbone. The overall effect of this 90-calorie, 70-percent-juice product is crisp refreshment, minus added colors, flavors, or preservatives.
The vital stats for the Sparkling Pomegranate Blueberry are the same, although the flavor is a bit less sweet, with a crisp berry finish. In a nutshell: It's soda for grownups.
And while the calorie difference between Ocean Spray's sparkling juices and soda is modest (10.7 calories per ounce for Ocean Spray, 11.6 calories per ounce for Coca-Cola), the standard Ocean Spray can is considerably smaller (8.4 ounces for Ocean Spray versus 12 ounces for Coke), and the ingredients considerably more wholesome.
Is this the soda of the future? We can only hope so. It's the soda of my personal future, at any rate.
I tried these after reading this post. I'm pregnant and always on the lookout for beverages to sub for wine and soda. The flavor was nice, but it wasn't as bubbly as I had hoped; it was kind of like the can had been opened 1/2 hour earlier. Also, the drink contains caffeine, which I didn't expect and am not supposed to have too much of. I won't try these again.
Well, without getting too metaphysical, you can't really prove that somethiing *isn't* harmful, rather you simply fail to produce any measurable difference from the Null in excess of one Standard Deviation, (which changes from experiment to experiment.) Rather, one can simply assert the absence of said measured "harm."
thomas64, do you have concrete evidence that aspartame or any other ingredient in diet soda ISN'T harmful? Didn't think so.
What about Izzie soda's... they are fantastic!
Why don't the idiots make it in a 12oz. can like everyone else or are they just being silly or elitist?
@Azizeh
I've tried that too. But juice dilutes the fizz, so flavored syrup would be the way to go.
These are good, but I achieve the same results by adding 100% Cranberry (or Blueberry or Pomegranate juice) to seltzer/soda. Cheaper and I can customize it to my mood.
I do appreciate the convenience of the cans, though.
Aspartame is 200 times sweeter than sucrose, or the table sugar.. But it is safe at current levels of consumption as a non-nutritive sweetener.. Diet soda isn't so bad.. but it contains aspartame, a controversial ingredient not good for those who have PKA.. better drink this one thomas64..:)
@thomas64 and @nate650 - aspartame converts to formaldehyde in the body and over 92 side effects are associated with it aspartame, so yes in theory it's harmful (as is the phosphoric acid which leaches calcium from bone, and the sodium benzoate which combined with vitamin C added to pop, it creates the carcinogen benzene). In the amounts you're probably consuming diet pop (or any, for that...+READ
@thomas64 and @nate650 - aspartame converts to formaldehyde in the body and over 92 side effects are associated with it aspartame, so yes in theory it's harmful (as is the phosphoric acid which leaches calcium from bone, and the sodium benzoate which combined with vitamin C added to pop, it creates the carcinogen benzene). In the amounts you're probably consuming diet pop (or any, for that matter, which is hopefully a can or less a day) it would take about 100 years to build up like that. I've studied nutrition and have 2 diplomas (1 in allopathic, 1 in holistic) so I know what I'm talking about, but would never tell someone that it's bad or evil to have the occasional one! Here's info on the benzoate: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/caution-some-soft-drinks-may-seriously-harm-your-health-450593.html-COLLAPSE
Nate650, do you have concrete evidence that aspartame or any other ingredient in diet soda is harmful? Didn't think so.
I like these. I can usually get them on sale, for $2.49 for 4. They are not as inexpensive as soda, but I like the 'energy' version a lot.
thomas64, diet soda often contains preservatives as well as artificial sweeteners. One such sweetener, aspartame, arguably the most controversial in history, really should have never been approved by the FDA. It seems shortsighted to claim diet soda has nothing bad in it.
I'm sure this is a good product, but I can't get past the price - $4 for about 2 liters vs. $1.00 for 2 liters of diet soda. Yes, the fruit juice is a good thing, but diet soda has nothing bad in it, so I'll stick with diet soda.