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Saturday, June 14, 2014

GREEN DAKARA - Taste & Review

Green Dakara is a mineral-replenishing drink made by Suntory. It's not an energy drink but more like something in between a sports drink and flavored water. Perhaps "A less fruity tasting version of Vitamin Water" would be a good way to describe it.

What's inside Green Dakara?

This interesting drink contains the juices and extracts of 14 different ingredients.
6  of them are citrus fruits, grapefruit juice, lemon juice&peel, amanatsu, pomelo, shiikwaasaa (peel), and yuzu (peel). The other 8 are aloe vera, salt, seaweed (extract), tomato (extract), sugarcane, black sesame seed, sugar, and honey.

The ingredients that are used most are the grapefruit and lemon juices. On the label it says that there are less than 10% of those grapefruit and lemon juices contained so it's basically almost all water.

How does it taste?

The drink is very soft and not too sweet, much like most flavored waters(although Green Dakara is not marketed as flavored water). You can clearly taste the grapefruit but you can't really make out the other ingredients. So it's basically a grapefruit flavored water with an added softness due to the added minerals from the other ingredients.
Overall, it's a nice refreshing drink, and can be a healthy and efficient way of quenching your thirst on a hot summer day.

Friday, June 13, 2014

Kirin Amino Supli C - Taste & Review

Found this in a vending machine while walking home, cost is typical for a pet-bottled drink in Japan, 150 yen. This would not fit into the category of the "medicinal" energy drinks I have reviewed so far as it is more of a sports drink.

Taste:
Refreshing and sweet with a taste similar to that of Vitamin Water XXX, just much sweeter. However, there is no similarity in the ingredients used to flavor the drink as Kirin Amino Supli C uses lemon and acerola(Malpighia emarginata) juices whereas Vitamin Water XXX uses acai, blueberry, and pomegranate extracts. And yes, it is also worth noting that Amino Supli C uses less than 1% of those juices. But let's also not forget the main thing that Kirin is trying to market here are the Amino acids and the Vitamin C. This drink includes 1000mg of Vitamin C and 400mg of an amino acid called Ornithine.

Additional Info:
  • The drink mainly uses sugar as the sweetener but also uses artificial sweeteners.
  • Uses tomato coloring, gardenia jasminoides coloring, and caramel coloring.
  • Amount of liquid is 555ml instead of the standard 500ml.