Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Snapple Antioxidant Water Strawberry Acai


I couldn't review just one Snapple without reviewing it's sibling with similar energy drink ingredients in it as well, the Snapple Antioxidant Water Strawberry Acai. I was so impressed with the Dragonfruit that I delayed a few reviews just to get in this review to find out how it compared to the Dragonfruit. Now, I found this at my every day grocery store, and so can you, so I doubt you'll have trouble locating a bottle or two of these. Besides last review, I haven't had a Snapple in years, and I must say, they have really improved their line of refreshing drinks, including their newest line of "healthy" water. I believe that strawberry is commonly messed up in energy drinks because they're either sweetened wrong, or there's not enough actual strawberry flavor in that. I'm curious to find out how Snapple takes on their own version of strawberry, especially with acai mixed in. The bottle design is similar to that of the Dragonfruit, only with pinkish-red rain drops, and some with clear areas inside of them. The background is a simple white color with a complimenting cloudy light pink color, which is from the drink color by the way. Well, let's twist this one open to find out how good or bad Snapple made it, compared to the Dragonfruit

It simply twists off in one sweeping motion with plastic crackling noises and reveals an aroma much similar to the Vitamin Water energy drinks and the Dragonfruit, you know, very light and floral. The color is a cloudy and translucent pink hue, but with some lighter color mixed in, perhaps water, thus the reason it's 'watered-down', or diluted. Snapple Antioxidant Strawberry Acai definitely provided a flavor I wasn't expecting. The first thing I notice in this drink is the diluted strawberry taste, with a lot of earthiness. The next part of the flavor seems to be more acai-flavored and more earthy when you first taste it. Even though the flavor isn't the best, it really is refreshing, especially after an evening full of exercise. After drinking almost all of it, I found traces of melon and traces of mixed berry as well as more earthiness perhaps from the acai berry. I'd say that if you wanted the buzz from one of these waters, you might want to stick with the Dragonfruit. However, if Dragonfruit isn't your thing, like if it's too sweet or too intense, Strawberry Acai is pretty refreshing to drink. With slightly more sugar, there's slightly more gumminess, this one being a bit more noticeable and thicker in the mouth. Overall, this drink is meant to be chugged, not enjoyed, because if it were meant to be enjoyed, the earthiness in the acai will overpower your taste buds.

The ingredients are mostly the same as the Dragonfruit antioxidant water but a few differences linger. There is: purified water, sucrose, citric acid, natural flavors, potassium citrate, calcium lactate, modified corn starch, ginseng, caffeine, guarana, vegetable juices, acacia gum, ribose, niacin, ECGC, and B vitamins. Like I mentioned before, Snapple does a great job by putting in not just a few energy ingredients, but putting in more complex ingredients like ribose and electrolytes, which are just two of the many types of good ingredients for the body. This time, they only used vegetable juices for the color, which is reasonable because it gave more of a cloudy color and was less concentrated. Per 20 ounce bottle, you get slightly more than the dragonfruit, 140 calories and 32g of sugar. That is another one of those odd drink where there's more sugar than its sibling though it was much less sweeter. This is a perfect example for one of those types. Well, in terms of energy, you get 60mg of caffeine and in terms of antioxidants, you get 165mg of EGCG (Vitamins A and E). All in all, as much as I was excited to review this drink, I was slightly disappointed as it was much less sweeter and a bit more bitter.

Taste: 7 - The taste was somewhat sweet, but the strawberry was diluted and the acai overpowered the drink with bitter earthiness
Kick: 6.5 - The nice blend of electrolytes, caffeine, guarana, ginseng, ribose, and B Vitamins gave me a solid hour and a half boost
Overall: 6.8 - Hm, although it was refreshing, I recommend you try the Dragonfruit instead

Reviewed by: Chan

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Reviewers

Jeffery "Jeff," Chandler "Chan"