My wife likes the Minute Maid Orange flavor. She’s tried a few different flavors and brands and doesn’t like most of them. Our local grocery gets in bunch of them, the popular brands and flavors run out quickly and they don’t get restocked.
Enhanced Water. Sounds like a Star Trek ep’s techno babble.
“Admiral, if we were to assume that the enhanced water was ours to do with as we please, we would be as guilty as those who caused [past tense!] their extinction.”
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I’ve only tried a couple, but they were terrible and very fake-tasting. Artificial sweeteners all taste horrible to me.
Adding flavour with no nutritional value sounds like something the expense account jet-set does.
Who has the expendable cash to waste on something like that?
No to mention that artificial sweeteners are directly linked to obesity, even if the mechanism isn’t 100% understood.
“Ugly bags of mostly enhanced water.”
I wish I could afford water enhancers. They sound great.
That’s like asking who has the expendable cash to waste on cigarettes. Well, OK, so far as I know water enhancers aren’t addictive. Who has the expendable cash to waste on napkins, that’s what your pants are for! Who has the expendable cash to waste on facial tissue, that’s what your sleeves are for! Who has the expendable cash to waste on toilet paper, that’s what your left hand is for!
Most of the enhancers, especially the dollar store/house brand/other discount varieties work out about $0.10-$0.20/serving, even less if you prefer them weak. As far as expense goes, they’re on the low end.
Personally, on philosophical grounds I prefer the ones honest enough to say they’re just flavoring rather than the ones claiming a dash of B vitamins or something makes them in a supplement or something healthy.
The prime utility is that they don’t taste like plain water. Since many people don’t care for the taste (or lack thereof) of plain water, or some locations have water that is potable but tastes bad/off/strange/weird/whatever, it provides a non-alcoholic (usually though not always) non-caffeinated non-caloric beverage. Certainly, there are worse things you could be drinking.
I would not say they’re a health food.
On the other hand, while looking for more information on them I did get very annoyed at the websites that were stating plain water was the ONLY acceptable beverage for humans to drink. How boring. And a bit extreme.
ETA: The main reason I’ve tried them recently was that two-week trip with a $40/day per diem for food, including beverages. I wound up trying a bunch of products my employer sells that ordinarily are not in the budget. I figure if I’m involved in selling them it might not be a bad thing if I could say I’ve actually tried them.
I like the concept however I have tooth decay I’m trying to stay on top of. I normally only drink diet root beer when I drink soda since the pH is close to 4.5, and when I measured the pH of one of the water additives it was around 3, about where coke and Pepsi are. So I quit using it.
The Hawaiian Punch flavors were the best.
Mmmmmmm, Brilliant Blue FCF 1. drools
I love the box of Wylers or Hawaiian Punch I can pick up at the dollar store.
Pretty much anyone who doesn’t keep their worldly possessions in a grocery cart or a bindle?
Hobo-phobe! :mad:
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Vitamin C is L-ascorbic acid which is different from citric acid
As for water enhancers - I’ve never tried one so can’t give an opinion. I can see the utility. Maybe for wilderness camping - if you boiled/filtered the water it still might not taste the best). Most are probably better than pop/soda. (Sometimes plain water is fine, sometimes I crave flavor)
Brian
Yes, I’m zombie-ing my own thread.
**I’m trying to drink more fluids this summer **(no longer having a spouse to remind me to drink more - I just don’t get thirsty the way I should, I have to consciously remember to drink fluids)
On the upside - I have filtered water at home and when I first get up and just before I go to bed I drink some out of a bottle I keep in the fridge. Also, at work this summer they’ve been supply those of us stationed in the front of the store with plain water to drink, so I’ve been downing a pint during work in addition to the pint of (home brewed) tea I have at “lunch” (mid-shift meal, which for me is usually more around dinner time).
The goal here for me is to drink more fluids. I don’t mind water, but I find that I drink more if I put some flavored stuff into the mix as well. But I don’t want to add excessive calories. I mean, one of the reasons I home brew my own tea is because when I sweeten it to my taste it’s only about 30 calories a pint (two teaspoons sugar) as opposed to the 120-170 (or more!) you get with commercial teas. I don’t really care about various “enhancements” like vitamins and such because I get those from my diet. I don’t buy the hype about “organic” this that and the other (as mentioned earlier in this thread)
So… typical day is 3-4 cups of home brewed tea, probably the same in water if I’m being really good, and a bottle of flavored stuff (two if it’s really super hot). I’m also upping my fruit eating, with emphasis on things like melons when it’s hot for more fluids. I’m not looking for zero calories (although that’s nice) but trying to avoid lots and lots of calories while finding something that tastes good.
Downside: I’m allergic to oranges, orange juice, and their close cousins which does put a lot of stuff off limits. So flavoring with “real, natural orange!!!” is a no-no for me. No problem with other citrus, though.
Anyhow, here’s what I’ve tried so far, I’m interested in suggestions, thoughts, etc. I find I like berry flavored stuff, and pomegranate.
I’ve tried something called “vitamin water” which is pretty decent and I go for the “zero” versions with no calories.
I’ve tried “Sparking ICE” which is also pretty good, although I’m not really that fond of the fizzy in fizzy stuff
I’ve tried something called “Hint”, some flavors of which I like and some I find really awful. So why not just buy the ones I like? Because around here I can only find it in mixed-crates of 12. If I could buy it singly it would be a good one. Especially since the bottle is plain enough that work will let me keep one at my station (they don’t like colored drinks or bottles that aren’t mostly clear plastic) when it’s not hot enough to get an automatic supply.
I’ve only tried the MiO brand, but my favorites are the Berry/Cherry/Pomegranate types. The one with Orange and Vanilla is also incredibly tasty.
Those of us in Crook, er, Cook County IL have just been slapped with a one-cent-per-ounce tax on sweetened beverages, which makes soda and the like much more expensive. Since the MiO containers are less than two ounces yet give you dozens of drinks, they just took a huge uptick in desirability round these parts.
I’m getting very good results from watermelon. I put the pulp through a conical sieve and freeze the juice in several plastic containers, each of which gives me three big glasses of juice that I drink ice cold over the course of the day (add mint leaves for extra “ahhhhh”).
About plain water and drinking more liquids, it helps to drink two big glasses of water as soon as you get up, whether you feel thirsty or not.
Half a lime squeezed into a tall glass of ice and carbonated water from my SodaStream. Refreshing and healthy. Organic black cherry juice is just as good.
I’m slurping one down right now.
Yeah, sorry about that Cook County thing, guys.
My store is just over the border in Indiana and we can NOT keep up with demand. Corporate first didn’t understand that, despite being in a different state we WERE going to be affected by the Cook County tax, then they only let us triple our usual beverage order. We could NOT keep up. The first week we were selling out of most beverages by 4 pm in the afternoon.
I think we’re making 4-5 times the beverage orders we were making to the warehouse the month prior to the Tax of Doom and we’ve also gotten authorization to hire more staff. I guess Corporate finally got a clue.
And we still ran out of several types of soda today. But not until 7 pm or thereabouts.
I think Tony Prekwinkle is screwing over her county, but it sure is helping the bottom line where I work.
Was thinking about this - do you use the juice full strength, or do you dilute it? Watermelon has long been one of my favorites.
I’ve sometimes frozen chunks of melon like watermelon, making a sort of ice cube, to suck on during really hot days.
Also, recently saw a “life hack” I thought was pretty good - you take a reusable water bottle and put some water in it, but not so much that when you lay it on it’s side the water comes up to the opening. You put it on it’s side in the freezer, resulting in a long line of ice on one side of the bottle. You then put your beverage of choice into the bottle. The surface area of the line of ice chills your drink down fairly fast, faster than having the ice as a lump on the bottom of the bottle. Not sure if that explanation makes sense or not.
I tried MiO once or twice. It seemed like I burned through the little bottles awfully fast, so I went back to using drink packets. Ultimately, I don’t mind having the choice of how much flavoring to use made for me.