True - 9 Reviews

Sometimes, when you are in “fancier” settings, there will be a pitcher of water with an array of fruits and botanicals floating in it for your drinking pleasure. The idea is that the water absorbs trace flavors from the content floating within to give the drinker a nice little treat. I am personally a large fan of such refreshments. During my time in Hawaii our hotel had such a dispenser full of oranges and pineapple. There is also a nice little juice bar here in Buffalo that has been known to have basil leaves floating in their water picture; it's quite the treat. Such a little thing can go such a long way in making your day just a tad bit brighter.

By adding a packet of True Grapefruit to a glass of water, you are essentially skipping the actual fruit step in this process. The glass before me most certainly tastes like it was dispensed from a great glass urn full of the most plentiful liquid on Earth that has had giant chunks of grapefruit floating in it all day. It is impossible to mistake the flavor of this citrus fruit, yet the flavor is faint with no trace of bitterness. It has become flavored water, in the truest sense. There are no sweeteners or anything of the sort added. It is simply cold pressed and crystallized grapefruit that has been absorbed by the water. This is by far my favorite in the True line.

Let us start a petition to get lemons removed as the standard for flavoring water in restaurants. Lemons are overrated. They are low on the totem of citrus. I'm not exactly sure what is at the top; maybe blood oranges. Oh man, a nice slice of blood orange in your water would be fantastic. I am a realistic man though, and I know that's never going to happen right off the bat. Lets take baby steps and start off with limes. They are of close relation to the lemon; they even look the same, except green. I know they will still carry the same gross bacteria from improper storage and preparation, but at least it will taste a bit better.

If you're wondering what it would be like, because you don't understand how your imagination works, mix a packet of True Lime into a glass of water. It's pretty much the same thing as squeezing a slice of the actual fruit. Who needs imagination anyway?

There are trace amounts of cane sugar in this for some reason. I'm 99.9% sure the True Lemon doesn't have that, and I'm not exactly sure why it's in here. It doesn't taste sweet, but it gives me the illusion that this is the world's most watered down limeade. I just don't understand why it's necessary. Let the citrus do it's work, without assistance. It has to learn some how.

In the era of the diet obsessed 80's Crystal Light reined supreme. For those of you who don't know it was/is a flavored, artificially sweetened powder that you would mix in with water to make your very own “healthy” drink at home. While they have come a long way in recent years, the original flavors tasted like poison to me. It was just one big pile of diet grossness.

The True company is following in the same footsteps, except they decided to make their product from 100% natural ingredients. Instead of sweetening them with aspartame or sucralose they opted for stevia. While that has made a world of a difference with their other drinks, I don't think this lemonade ever stood a chance. Lemonade by definition is sugar sweetened lemon juice and water. If you deviate from that at all things start falling apart. The flavor of the stevia is far too overpowering in this to an extent that it's a little hard to make out the lemon flavor. Instead of tasting like lemonade it ends up resembling a creation that was brought to life by some cheap skate teenager at a local Dennys. I've been there before, in my formative years. You order a water with lemon and then put sweetener in it to create your own dull version of lemonade. The problem is this particular restaurant had stevia packets instead of sugar and everything just went wrong.

If I had endless amounts of money, or even a handful of expendable income, I would try to recreate this drink using some classic science. Here is what I would do:

Step 1: Get a dozen oranges and a dozen mangoes.
Step 2: Court a lovely chemist.
Step 3: Gain the chemist's trust.
Step 4: Convince the gorgeous chemist to let me have a bucket of liquid nitrogen, "You know. For science."
Step 5: Put all the oranges and mangoes in a bowl.
Step 6: Pour the liquid nitrogen into the bowl to instantly freeze the fruit.
Step 7: Smash up the fruit using something like a hammer or a clean shoe.
Step 8: Put the fruit dust into a bottle with water.
Step 9: Put a pack or two of Stevia into the bottle.
Step 10: Stir and drink.
Step 11: Get broken up with because that was not "for science" and I am a "liar."
Step 12: Shrug it off.

Until then, I will have to just buy this like some sort of civilian. I have no problem with that since this isn't half bad. It's a Stevia sweetened mango and orange juice. It cannot be reviewed any differently than that. It is pretty truthful to it's fruit roots. Fruit root. That's fun. This, science aside, is a good drink. I've had two or three of them myself and might be slightly disappointed when they are all gone. That might be the most significant part of the review. It's that good. Fruity and not overwhelmingly Stevia'd. Fruity rooted.

Lemon wedges in restaurants are dirty, dirty things. According to the news they rarely get washed and are full of bacteria that gets transferred to your drink. Ick. Lucky for me I'm not a huge lemon guy, and I like my water plain, so I stay bacteria free, well at least in that aspect.

For those of you that do like lemon in your water, try this much cleaner version. Adding a little package of True Lemon to water tastes exactly like you squeezed a nice big lemon wedge into your glass. It's powderized lemon juice, with no added sugar. I have friends who carry this stuff around like it was their bible. Come on, join the clean team.

I assume Georgia gets sick of being synonymous with peaches. Like Salem and witches, these places have more to offer than being a one trick pony? Now that we're on this horse segue, when have you seen a horse do more than one trick that it's derogatory to be known as a "one trick pony?" Horses run; not a trick, and they jump over fences; trick. A horse that is a one trick pony can now be just labeled as a horse. Backtrack...

Salem had witch trials in the late 1600's. We're four centuries past that and although they milk it, there are other people that live and work there that have other things to do that constantly carve pumpkins, affix faux moles, and practice their shrill laughs.

Salem; check. Horse talk; check. Alright, back to peaches. Peaches are fine. I don't like them but I don't hate them. There are just some foods that I don't eat for no reason other than I don't want to. Furry fruit is one of them. Look, they taste fine. I don't eat them. The thought of a peach lemonade entices me, though. I made myself a glass of this and slammed the whole thing. No problems there. What did I think? Well that's why we're all here, right? At the edges of our seats awaiting my very important review of a powdered peach lemonade. I shall serve you your main course of review right now. Please be seated.

This was the first time since I've been on a True Citrus kick that the Stevia was overpowering. It wasn't too much that it was undrinkable but it was distracting. The peach flavor was good albeit a bit "candied" for my taste. The lemonadidity (not a real word...yet) was about a five out of ten. Between the candy peach and the non-traditional sweetener of the lemonade, this took a turn for the unfortunate "average" column. A couple strikes will do that to you. Baseball strikes. A couple bowling strikes would put you on top of the world. That phrase simply wouldn't work if I was referencing bowling. I don't know much about sports but that I know. Strikes in baseball is bad. Strikes in bowling is good.

I feel like limeade is lemonade's underachieving sibling. Lemonade gets all the good grades, does extra curricular activities like pep squad, fundraisers, and bake sales. Limeade just wants to be an artist and sits in their room with headphones on listening to Jesus and Mary Chain writing blog posts about society and how it's let them down. Thing is, the posts are well written and Jesus and Mary Chain are great. Limeade is just misunderstood.

This limeade should be taken seriously in the future because they're trying to do something different. Yeah, we need more pep rallies. Please. Come on. The only reason we liked pep rallies in high school is because we got out early. We need more meaningful art and people talking about the problems at a young age and less fake friends and more meaningful acquaintances. This drink is pretty great and is different than the cookie cutter lemonade. Look, I love lemonade, but sometimes I need something different. Something dangerous. This has a bit of a Stevia taste for reasons that are as simple and blatant as it is made with Stevia. As for the black cherry, it's right on target. I like this more than probably every black cherry pop I've ever had and the lime makes it just bitter enough that it calms the super sweetness down.

I think that's what limeade would have wanted; just to be recognized as a hard working individual who is doing something different, doing something different well, and doing it with a purpose. They just can't hear you because "Just Like Honey" is playing too loud in their headphones.

We're getting there. I feel like with this, a larger company in the world of diet and concentrates, using Stevia actively as their sweetener, we are getting off the sucralose, corn syrup, and aspartame train and onto the future Hyperloop. Yeah, I skipped bullet train and went right to Elon Musk's vision of a better, faster, cleaner tomorrow. Is this that much of a jump? No, not really. Other companies have been using Stevia for years but it's just nice to see that it's trickling up into the bigger dudes.

Not only does it have a natural sweetener, but also the taste in itself is pretty good. It's got great lemonade taste and a good, fruity raspberry taste. All together it's not too sweet and not really too much of anything which mixes can tend to be. This is right on mark.

With the proceeds from the sales of this, maybe they'll help build that dream train. I'll ride that thing and take a transcontinental trip at over five hundred miles per hour all day long.

What's the matter boy? Ahh. Scurvy. Twas a terrible disease when we were at sea. There was all that water with no citrus to keep us from getting sick. We lost many men to that dreadful disease. I'll tell you, being a fisherman is not as glamorous as it sounds. Sure, you get to spend all day fishing, but have you ever eaten fish every day for sixty-two days? It gets old kid. Real old. Real fast. Especially when you run out of those McCormick spices. Paprika fish is great until it is no more. You end up marinating fish in other fish to try and get something different. Then you start mixing fish and potatoes or fish and old socks. I'm telling you. It gets bad.

So yes, vitamin C deficiency is no joke. Everyone's wives told them to bring these little packets of True Orange but they thought that they would be picked on for having flavor packets so they traded them for "tough guy" stuff like razors, cigarettes, and fingerless gloves. Me? I brought it and no one made fun of me. It was fine, too. It tastes like if you split a glass of orange juice between ten people and watered it down to make it work. It's lightly sweetened and still, somehow, 25% of your daily vitamin C intake.

I know you like the sea, lad, but please don't worry about what the other guys tell you. There is nothing cool about a dead guy wearing fingerless gloves because as cool as they were when he was alive, you certainly aren't going to take them off his cold, dead hands and call them your own. Well, unless you're Zeke. That dude is crazy.