I am in college so i’m damn cheap. Instead of spending 60 cents on a 2 liter of generic soda i think i will start buying those $0.10 generic kool aid packets and putting another ten cents worth of sugar substitutes & real sugar in it.
I also have a high activity level so i end up drinking about 96oz of diet soda a day (and another 32 oz of milk). Because i drink so much soda i want it to be diet because 96oz of sugary soda is about 1400 calories of pure sugar. When i drink 96oz a day of sugared soda i start to sweat and feel run down, i guess a pound of liquid sugar a day is not good for me.
So i want my kool aid to be diet, or at the very least lite. I tried making it with nothing but sweet & low but it sucked (i only tried 100% sweet & low with one flavor though). So i decided to try 75% sweet and low and 25% regular sugar. That was a little better and edible but not great. Does anyone have any ratios of real sugar/sugar substitutes they use to make kool aid taste respectable.
Also, are there any flavors that are better as a diet version? I intend to go though 2 liters each of the 15+ flavors over the next week or so, but i want to hear if anyone who makes these with sugar substitutes find that a particular flavor is better than another. Like with diet soda diet orange and code red diet mt dew are alot better tasting than diet cola or diet root beer. I assume there are a handful of diet kool aids that taste better than the others and want to know if anyone knows of them.
I am diabetic and find that its cheaper to buy regular koolaid and sweet with equal that I buy in the 500 count boxes form Costco. It take about 24 packs of equal to sweet 2 litters of kool-aid.
Sweet and Low is saccharin while Equal is aspertain and I preffer the taste of E equal (Splenda is even better tasting but I can’t find it as cheaply).
I always make mine with sweet & low - i.e., saccharin - because I almost prefer it to sugar. Go figure. I’d go with the poster above and definitely recommend Splenda. It tastes great, though it’s less sweet than pure unit volume than saccharin and is more expensive.
The best flavor for artificially sweetened kool-aid is orange, hands down. That stuff tastes great over sweetened or under sweetened.
Oh, one more thing I learned: mixing artificial sweeteners has a synergistic effect. Mixing a bit of saccharin and a bit of Splenda might give you something that’s even better than the sum of its parts.
HAHA. of the 25 flavors the first i tried was strawberry with 100% sweet & low. not good. right now im on the 2 liter of cherry which is 25/75, and its not bad. I think i’ll try apple next.
Yeah splenda is out of my price range, its about $4.89 for 100 packets and generic sweet & low is $1 for 100 packets. Saccarine tablets are even cheaper than the sweet & low. Does anyone make store brand splenda?
You can get bulk bags of Splenda at about 10 bucks for the equivalent of 5 pounds of sugar (at my local store). Still pricey, but cheaper than the packets.
AFAIK there are 5 main artificial sugar alternatives, well really 4 and one natural one:
Nutrasweet (Equal)
Asufifiside K (sugar twin?)
Saccarine
Splenda
Stevia (Natural)
I have used a combo of white NOW (brand) stevia and equal to make a good coolaid, along w/ splenda/stevia mix. The bottle of Now Stevia lasts forever and you almost measure the powder out by the grain and was under $10, but needs a little 'kicker of some other sweetner to get the taste right.
It is a good thing you are noticing your soft drink intake can be bad for you. it is a habit that one should never get into and it quite the comfort food item because it is so affordable and a quick, easy fix for the taste buds. Not to forget the caffeinated buzz that everyone ( including you crazy college kids) need.
Sugar Free Kool Aid is now available at a variety of MegaStores.
For a 4 pack of envelopes it is $2.50 at Walmart, but you get 8 quarts out of each envelope. They are sweetened with aspertame. Only 5 calories, zero carbs, zero protein, zero sodium & fat.
It is availabe, AFAIK, in Cherry and Tropical punch. The great tastes and staining capacity of our yute. It is a bit pricey, but it beats trying to figure out the right amount of fake sugar to add.
Tang has recently come out with Sugar Free packets as well. The cost was about the same, or possibly cheaper, can’t remember. I wish they came out with the No Sugar added Tang for a low cost alternative.
I was very excited to find both of these recently at the store. I have no life
Have you tried Iced Tea. A box of generic tea bags and fake sugar is pretty darn cheap, moreso if you find them at the dollar store. ( I recently scored Nestea Sweetened Ice Tea Concentrate at a local dollar store. Same stuff that is at the Mega Store, but for a buck. Can’t beat that. (20 carbs, 90 calories)
A good thing to remember is that mixing artificial sweeteners makes them taste sweeter. I typically use aspartame + a shot of liquid stevia or saccarine to taste. My mom mixes table sugar and aspartame. You don’t have to use as much.
And I always make by the gallon - 1 flavor + 1 lemonade. I like lemon flavor and it tends to be cheaper. My favorite is grape + lemonade.
thanks. i’ve only tried about 5 so far but ‘lemon ice’ is the best. I have tried strawberry, cherry, orange, apple and lemon ice. 18 flavors to go, oh joy.
On another note does anyone notice an aftertaste from splenda? i find that a 1:2 ratio of spenda/sweet & low is a good combo. a 2 liter requires 8 splenda packets and 16 sweet & low packets, so that is affordable. BUt i get a weird aftertaste from splenda.
Does anyone else find Splenda not as sweet as Equal? My husband and I switched to Splenda, and we have to use more packets to make it as sweet as we would like, even though equal and Splenda packets are both supposed to be equivalent to 2 tsp of sugar.
As to the OP, I always found the various lemon flavors to taste best with artificial sweetener (lemonade, strawberry lemonade, rasperry lemonade, etc.)
Splenda-sweetened sweet tea is my beverage of choice. Bring a pot of water with four bags of Food Lion store-brand tea to a boil, let it cool partway, pour it into a half-gallon pitcher, add about a cup of Splenda (from the bulk bags, not the packets), stir, then fill the pitcher up with cold water and refrigerate.
I just noticed equal and sweet n low combined tastes pretty good, much better than sweet n low alone (graci DeVena for the suggestion of mixing sweeteners). And it doesn’t have the weird aftertaste of splenda. This is my new combo, a 50/50 equal and sweet n low mixture.