Waist Watchers Diet Citrus Frost

That's the bottle six months after I first opened it, being photographed in my work room.


Waist Watchers Diet Citrus Frost

I bought this at a pseudo-fancy market in NYC right before descending into an abandoned bank vault basement, yes the vault itself had multiple levels. I had to paint a floor. They whys and hows of this situation I'll leave to your imagination. Suffice it to say that I brought along the bottle of Diet Citrus Frost and enjoyed it much more than I ever would have imagined.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to enjoy the whole bottle and brought it home with me. As I tend to do, I put it in the refrigerator to review later and promptly forgot about it. Six months later my wife walks into my room, slams it down on my desk, gobbles up a bunch of my candy while I'm still distracted, then demands I finish reviewing it. Finish? I haven't even started. And how am I supposed to review a beverage six months flat?

Poor poor Waist Watchers Diet Citrus Frost.

Anyways, I guess I need to choke down some of the stuff to get a reminder of why it didn't offend me from the outset... Yeah, it ain't so bad, even as old as it is... Okay, my wife is yelling at me to come into the living room and look at the TV. Hold on. All right, she showed me the beginning to a movie called "Tropic Thunder" which had a commercial for a fictitious drink called "Booty Sweat". I guess this somehow relates to me being in here trying to write a soda review.

Thank you dear.

Anyways: This stuff is made with Splenda and not aspartame, I'm not a big Splenda fan but in this case it's great. Ain't got no complaints, it's sweet and delicious and none of that diet flavored funk. I can't imagine a drink living up to the Citrus Frost name any better. It's primarily a grapefruity drink, but just a touch.

Ha. The ingredients list says "Crystal Clear Carbonated Water". That's a new one. What the hell does "crystal clear" mean? Why? This is good, Adirondack Beverage Company, no need to gussy it up in fancy talk.

So I'm done with this review. I'm now being summoned into the other room to watch the rest of the movie. Bah.

Zevia Natural Diet Cola

Why did I shoot this photo in front of my bicycle? What was I thinking? It's not necessarily that this is a bad, or embarrassing thing, but it's just boring.

Zevia Natural Cola

As a cola Zevia Natural cola ain't nothing that special, as a diet cola it completely rocks. Incredibly carbonated, it's best when it's very very cold, otherwise the burn of the carbonation has no soothing balm of chill to help smooth over the wincing. I'll confess that I opened the can last night at room temperature, it was undrinkable because of the carbonation and a nasty middle taste of cantaloupe rinds. Cold, though, and slightly less carbonatey due to being left open in the fridge, it's good.

The ingredients are what makes this stuff special:

TRIPLE filtered carbonated water
natural erythritol
natural caramel color
natural tartar acid
stevia
natural fumaric acid
45 mg of natural caffein from coffee
natural flavors (citrus oils, cola nut extract)
citric acid
and in big caps after the ingredients: ZEVIA DOES NOT CONTAIN ASPARTAME OR SUCRALOSE

I'm going to cheat on my blog vow of ignorance, and look up "erythitol"... Hmph. According to these folks http://www.stonyfield.com/OurProducts/erythritol.cfm erythitol is a sweetener derived from sugar through some yeasty process, and is described as "sugar alcohol." Hmm. Don't know what I think about the principal sweetener in a drink named after stevia to not be stevia.

Of course, the principal sweetener in Coca Cola isn't corn syrup but is actually the blood of the oppressed. Stevia seems to have taken a much more reasonable route.

And for those of you who don't know what stevia is, it's an herb/plant/thing that has remarkably sweet tasting leaves. I used to grow it in my studio and use it as a tea sweetener. If I remember rightly, the leaves sort of look like mint leaves but I might be wrong.

Anyways, Zevia Natural Cola isn't bad at all. It's certainly better than most off-brand colas, and it lacks the burned corn taste which plagues Coke. It's sort of like a lighter Pepsi, without any of that sweet slime left on your teeth. The more I drink it, the more it grows on me, and the more assurance I have when I say that this is the best "diet" drink I've ever had that didn't involve dark cherry flavoring.