Glucoholic - Sugar Free Snacks

Crystal Light has been a staple for dieters for years. Kraft Foods, the owners of this esteemed brand, have done two things to provide consumers with good options when considering a flavored water beverage purchase. First, they’ve started producing bottled beverages. Second, they’ve used Splenda to sweeten these bottled beverages. These two developments address two of the most commonly heard complaints about Crystal Light products - having to mix the powdered drink mixes and aspartame as the sweetener.

We put three of the Crystal Light bottled flavors to the test for this review - Classic Orange, Lemonade, and Raspberry Ice. The products were judged based on taste alone, as each of the flavors have practically the same nutritional information; save one flavor, which we’ll get to in a bit. Each bottle contains 16 ounces, which provides two servings. Each serving contains no caffeine, 5 calories, 10mg of sodium, and 0 grams of anything else of any importance. All three are sweetened with Splenda and acesulfame potassium.

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What a treasure! The Glucoholic was strolling through a Cracker Barrel Old Country Store recently and came across a few bottles of Sioux City Diet Sarsaparilla. Always looking to try out a new diabetic friendly soda, he picked up a bottle. And what a bottle it is - beautiful amber glass with raised “Sioux City” lettering on the shoulder and a graphic of a real life rootin’ tootin’ cowboy coming out of a saloon. It’s impossible to tell if he’s in Iowa or South Dakota, but that doesn’t really matter because the bottle does tell you that you’re looking at “The Granddaddy Of All Root Beers.” Little did The Glucoholic know that trying to find another bottle of Sioux City Diet Sarsaparilla would become “The Granddaddy Of All Mysteries.”

Heading to the oracle of all obscure information, the Internets, we found little information about this soda. Sioux City sodas are distributed by White Rock Products Corp. of Whitestone NY, and lots of information about their traditional products like root beer, ginger beer, and cream soda is available. White Rock’s website does not even mention the diet version of their sarsaparilla. This strikes fear in The Glucoholic’s heart because of one simple fact. This sarsaparilla tastes awesome! The fear that this product is no longer available is almost too much to bear. The slight vanilla hint and the sweetness and lack of bitterness provided by White Rock’s wise choice to use Splenda makes this one of the best diet sodas we’ve ever tasted.

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Fighting out of the yellow corner, Tropicana Sugar Free Lemonade. Fighting out of the, errr, other yellow corner, Minute Maid Light Lemonade. This one’s going to be a thriller folks. Let’s take a look at their measurements:

Stewart’s sodas are the kind of sodas you love to have as a treat in your favorite malt shop or burger joint. They provide a fun and tasty alternative to your usual “stuck with whichever choice the owners made between the two beverage behemoths” choices. The Glucoholic recently came across Stewart’s Diet Root Beer and jumped at the chance to sample it. The taste is not very strong for a root beer, but that’s to be expected because many root beers really seem to power up the sweetness with massive amounts of sugar. This root beer is sweetened with aspartame and really begs to be sweetened with Splenda, which would greatly improve it’s flavor and probably cut out the slight aspartame aftertaste.

Nutritionally there’s almost nothing to complain about with this diet root beer. Serving size is one bottle and that contains only 25mg of sodium and that’s it. No calories, caffeine, or anything else. If Cadbury Schweppes would just make the switch from aspartame to Splenda then this root beer would be a certified home run.

Not reaching potential. The Glucoholic’s parents heard this often around report card time so he knows a little something about the concept. Sprite Zero’s report card doesn’t sound much better. Let’s start with the basics. Sprite Zero contains zero of almost everything known to man, except for 25mg of sodium. It’s sweetened with aspartame and acesulfame potassium. This combination makes the drink much more tolerable than diet sodas of yesteryear, and the original Sprite flavor is evident. What cannot be escaped is the unrelenting, unemotional, uncaring aftertaste of that aspartame. Even cut with acesulfame potassium the bitterness is still there.

Here’s where The Glucoholic gets to do some report card filling out of his own. Coca-Cola, this drink could have been a home run. Simply choosing to sweeten it with Splenda would probably have yielded a soft drink indistinguishable from it’s naturally sweetened sister. As driven, this drink is a potential A+ student doing B- work.

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