Fruit 2 O Essentials

Fruit ₂O Essentials is a bottled soft drink that just pisses me off on so many levels.

Just the name, for example.  "Fruit ₂ O."  It's annoying to have to use fancy HTML tags to make a subscript "2" all the time.  Every time I have to type "Fruit ₂ O" it's like another little droplet of H₂O plinking upon my forehead in some bizarre sort of water torture.

Then there's the flavors.  There's some weird stuff going on there.  The flavor is listed on the label in bright white letters - like "Cranberry Raspberry" for example - and then, under that in tiny little letters just a shade lighter than the background ribbon, it says, "Natural Flavor With Other Natural Flavor."  What the hell is that all about?  "Yo, dawg, we heard you like fruitiness so we put flavor in your flavor so you can taste while you taste."

Something else about the labels piss me off, too.  They have big luscious pictures of fruit on the labels, and under it - again in big white lettering "2 servings of fruit."  Only when you turn the bottle and look closer might you notice that the banner actually says, "5 nutrients equal to 2 servings of fruit."  Holy shit, the scientists at Fruit ₂ O have determined the ESSENTIAL NUTRIENTS in fruit so they can declare their sucralose-water equivalent to eating the real thing.   And then they narrowed the list down to 5. That's some badass hardcore science there.  It should be in capital letters: SCIENCE.  Well, maybe not real science.  Fruit ₂ O is, after all, made by the Sunny D guys - the same company that pays supermarkets to display Sunny D in the refrigerated orange juice section of the store so people will think it's good for you - so my guess is that the "science" involved mostly thinking about how to get people to part with a couple of bucks for a few ounces of sweetened, colorfully dressed water.

And last of all, there's something about the chemical stew they stir into the brew that just dries the back of my throat out whenever I drink it.  Never fails to make me want to cough and clear my throat, whether I'm drinking a couple of swallows or chugging  a whole bottle.

I'm kinda sorry I wasted money on this stuff.  Fail from top to bottom.