Drink Mix Review Part 1

Because his departure is looming ever closer, we've begun to start accumulating more things and setting more solid plans. We seem to have a solid plan for storing all his stuff, and for moving some of my stuff from my apartment in to live with his stuff while I flee with the essentials to my hometown for the duration of this little slice of hell.


We also started taste testing water flavoring mixes, because we know he will need to stay super hydrated, and that plain water gets dull for him after a while. Neither of us like the taste of fake sugars, especially aspartame, and we wanted to stay as far away from those as possible. I soon realized that trying to find drink mixes with only real sugar was pretty much impossible though, so we started finding ones with less offensive sweeteners like sucralose and truvia. We know that he will get sick of just one type/flavor of drink mix, so we're trying to find a few that he likes. So far we've tried:


 True Lemon, which I loved, but E found too tart for his taste. Not surprising, because plain lemon juice in water is one of my favorite things, while he generally prefers sweeter drinks. So he found this boring, and it will probably not be included (though I get to keep the rest of the package =D).

We also got our hands on some Mio. I liked it after the first sip, but on the second, I noticed it tasted a bit like gasoline...and then I couldn't stop tasting gasoline until I just couldn't bear to take another sip. E, on the other hand, liked it a lot, though we both agree it needs to be very watered down. A little goes a LONG way. In any case, E wants to try a couple more flavors, but thinks this might be a keeper for him. It is super easy to use and will probably last a long time, plus its really small and will be easier than boxes of powder sticks to tuck into care packages.

The last one we have formally taste tested was Crystal Light Pure Lemonade. I liked this one the best, especially when I watered it down considerably to dull the burn your mouth sweetness that all these kinds of mixes have. It didn't have that awful aspartame tang and aftertaste, though you could tell there was still something fake tasting about it. But all in all, I thought it was the best so far. E agreed that it was good, though he still preferred the Mio, and thus it stays on our short list. 

We have a couple others I picked up at an REI store that have real sugar, that we are going to get to later this week. Other than that, school is heating up and I have a huge to-do list to accomplish this week!