Kroger Black Cherry: King of Seltzer Waters

Cafe Society
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Disclaimer: I don’t work for Kroger, or in the water/beverage business.

A few years ago I started buying LaCroix carbonated water to replace sugary sodas and maybe beers. LaCroix is great- they add a little flavor, it feels like a fizzy drink going down, and you’re drinking water with 0 added sugar, fat, sodium, you name it. There is, I suppose, one drop, or one half-drop, of natural flavor in each can of naked carbonated water. It is a rather harmless beverage, one to choose if I am to drink beverages on a regular basis, which, being composed mostly of water, I intend to do.

All right, but LaCroix isn’t the only game in town. For literally half the cost you can buy store-brand seltzer water. Still zero calories, no caffeine or sugar or alcohol, but the Kroger brand will add 15mg sodium. It still shows up as 0% Daily Recommended Value of sodium, I suppose that is how they justify it.

So. I’ve been buying the store-brand seltzer waters anymore just to save money. The flavor is pretty much the same. That is, until I discovered Kroger Black Cherry Sparkling Water Beverage.

I took one sip and I thought, “Whoops! Looks like I made a mistake and grabbed a store-brand sugary soda! Tasty though!” I was wrong. I checked the label, and it was seltzer water, 15mg sodium, nothing else. I was astounded. How did they do it? This seltzer water tastes just like a sticky, sugary black cherry soda!

I defy you all to produce an example of a seltzer water than more perfectly imitates a sugary soda than Kroger Black Cherry Sparkling Water Beverage (it IS artificially flavored if you want to make that point). Don’t bring LaCroix’s NiCola to the table though. While it is passable as a seltzer water cola substitute, it really doesn’t taste like a genuine sugary cola. Try again, LaCroix.

And try again, 'dope! Give me a better example! I’d love to find a seltzer water that is even closer to a sugary soda than Kroger Black Cherry Sparkling Water Beverage!

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Wal-mart’s “Great Value” brand has a cranberry sparkling soda that is sugar free, caffeine free and has about the same sodium as the Kroger. Only problem: it’s seasonal and I don’t think it’s available again until after Labor Day. It’s crantastic. I’ll race ya.

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I will look for it. Yer on!

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There’s no Kroger here. The biggest seltzer brand is Polar, who has all sorts of imaginative seasonal flavors – blueberry lemonade, strawberry watermelon, mai tai. Their regular seltzer is pretty good (my favorite is grapefruit), but Poland Spring has joined in and their stuff has a more intense fruit flavor.

BTW, you can thank me for the seltzer boom: I report my shopping to Neilsen and I’m sure they noticed that I buy a lot of it. :wink:

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Have you tried the LaCroix Cherry-lime water? I love it! It’s more expensive but it comes in fancier cans so you can feel all hipster and shit!

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I forgot to mention (because it was late when I posted) that the same brand is also available in “Half & Half Lemonade & Peach Iced Tea.” The one difference: it has (trace) caffeine because there’s tea in it, so Midnight Potty Runs are unavoidable.

Heck, what’s wrong with me? The same brand has a HUGE bunch of different flavors: Lemon-lime, Coconut, Apple cider, Vanilla, many more. A caveat–being W-mart, they order grosses of pallets of the stuff at the start of a season, an independent bottler makes/ships, and they don’t do it again until the start of the next season (not necessarily Fall, Winter, etc.), so when it’s gone, it’s gone (for now). Good luck. Get shopping.

ETA: And it’s relatively inexpensive–84 cents/two liter. Last summer, the local store was trying to unload end-of-season Iced Tea before exp date, I got 75 botts for a quarter apiece.

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It doesn’t use one of those sugar substitutes like Stevia or aspartame, does it? Walgreens doesn’t sell any sort of sparkling water in most locations—except this evil-tasting stuff with artificial sweetener.

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Thank you for your service.

Yes, and I don’t like the can either. I don’t have one of those, “does this can make my butt look fat?” syndromes. But yah, that one has some zip, it is probably my favorite LaCroix flavor. But, because of the can, I only drink it when I can get it for free at work. And Kroger Black Cherry is in a whole nother category.

Forget it, I don’t like midnight potty runs. I am willing to try the other flavors though, next time I am near the Wal-Mart.

Well, it contains Malic acid. Sucralose. Acesulfame Potassium. Neotane. Will those disrupt the balance of the well tempered clavier that is my body?

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Huh. That ingredients list is something I’d expect from a diet soda, not a sparkling water. I didn’t even realize they add sugar subs to sparkling water these days, as I tend to just buy it plain.

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Ah, I just saw my wife had a liter bottle of what they call “sparkling water beverage,” so I tasted it. Yeah, I guess those are sweet. Those are more what I could compare to with drinks like Clearly Canadian. I don’t expect seltzer to be sweet.

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Aha! So I’ve unwittingly switched to a whole 'nother category of product.

I’m not really on a diet, I just want to eat less crap. Do I need to be concerned about diet-soda chemicals?

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Just to keep it interesting, here’s the ingredients list from the Sparkling Cranberry I mentioned earlier:

Carbonated Water
Citric Acid
Potassium Citrate
Malic Acid
Natural Flavor
Aspartame
Caramel Color
Potassium Benzoate
Sodium Benzoate and Potassium Sorbate (Preservatives)
Gum Acacia
Acesulfame Potassium
Red 40
Cranberry Juice Concentrate [No f-in way]
Ester Gum [She was a fun date]
Tartaric Acid

Most of this sounds “fairly” standard. For soda pop.

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Meanwhile, LaCroix is just sparkling water and natural flavors (which is what I expect flavored seltzer/sparkling water to be). So that explains all that.

It also looks like the Kroger stuff is labeled as sparkling water beverage, just like the Target product I mentioned above, so I guess “sprakling water beverage” is the term for these (usually artificially?) sweetened, clear, fruit-flavored beverages. Or basically what we’d normally just call diet soda.

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The sweetener is exactly why I don’t like the Kroger “sparkling water beverages”. I do like their new cranberry lime seltzer in cans (Usually on sale for $2.50 a 12-pack).

I’ll try the LaCroix! I’m always wary of the sweetener surprises so don’t tend to try many new brands.