Yum! Distilled Water and Crystalline Fructose!

I don’t understand “sports drinks”.

• Some people I know get sick after drinking Gatorade or Vitamin Water during workouts.
• They carry too many detrimental ingredients
• They’re expensive

Glaceau’s website has a colorful layout- clean cut and modern with pictures of athletes and a line of the popular Vitamin Water drinks in a cheerful line. Vitamin Water has been gleefully parading around with titles like “Hydrate Responsibly”- titles that in no way describe the drink. Each drink has a name beside the flavor; ‘Defense’, ‘Focus’, ‘Balance’, ‘Endurance’.

All hokey claims to helping your body aside, Vitamin Water is actually worse than soda.

Vitamin Water: Misleading Consumers Since 1996

Before I get into the issue, I’d like to point out the irony of the fact that the Coca Cola company bought Glaceau for 4.2 billion dollars. When the legendary owners of Coca Cola buy a company, their products have to be healthy, right? *heavy sarcasm*

Common sense here, people.

When someone takes distilled water- “soft” water stripped of vitamins not to mention that it is surrounded by controversy regarding if it’s bad for you- and then sits in a lab mixing chemicals until they have something that looks like it’s healthy on the label, (or somewhat), then what you’ve really got is an artificial substitute for water that’s worse than soda.

And what’s the culprit lurking in Coke and Pepsi cans all over the world? High fructose corn syrup. But soda doesn’t win this round for most unhealthful drink, because Vitamin Water evens the score with it’s very own crystalline fructose- which is the same thing. Talk about giving an old danger a new name.

Misleading marketing? I think so.

So to wrap everything up, I’d like to warn everyone that marketers are pushing the edge of what’s legal to get their products a good reputation with everyone. In the future something must be done, whether a new organization is put together to keep consumers informed or government action.

~Rika