Crystalline Fructose - 57 Reviews

When you see that something only has 15% of an ingredient in it that seems kind of laughable. 15% is such a small amount, and one would think that it might not even register much in the way of taste. The thing is that 15% of juice in an energy drink is on the high side of things and somehow it makes all of the difference. Phyzix does not taste like a traditional energy drink, and it actually tastes like juice. This actually tastes more like pomegranate than acai to me, but the two are fairly similar and I'm not complaining. I drank this faster than expected as it didn't taste fake and chemical.

A nice thing about this is that the energy doesn't hit you all at once and give you the jitters. It has a nice pace to it that kept me going for hours. It wasn't as crazy a burst, but I prefer it this way. I mean I'm not taking speed here; I am just looking for a little boost. This is the direction that I would like to see the future of energy drinks heading.

I am not crazy about the name of this company. Purposefully misspelled words was such a 90's thing to do, and I honestly hoped that we were over it. I would expect something called Phyzix to be a Nu-Metal band and not an energy drink. They sound like they should be on a mix along with Korn, Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park.

What I am crazy about is the taste of this drink. It tastes like a pina colada with some orange juice in it (maybe a little mango as well). Usually when drinks are labeled as Tropical they are just a general amalgamation of various citrus flavors. This actually tastes like something that should be drunk at a tropical location. It's sweetened with a mixture of crystalline fructose, erythritol and stevia. The cool crispness and normally unmistakable zero calorie sweetener flavors are somehow masked by the tropical flavor and that is a very good thing.

On top of that there is no taurine in here, so it doesn't have that expected chemical energy drink taste. The energy you get from this beverage comes from a blend of guarana, green tea, cha de bugre, ginseng, l-tyrosine, maca and yerba mate. I'm pretty sure that if this was all natural they would boast about it, but I don't see anything that isn't natural in the ingredients. This is a straight up pleasant beverage to sip, and I am willing to overlook their name choice for the quality of the product.

Drink this in. I received a case of Just Chill in the mail. I excitedly put a couple in the fridge to cool down and then went about my day. The next morning I am woken up by my ladyfriend who is crying hysterically because she fell down the stairs. I somehow assumed the role of decent boyfriend and jumped to make sure that she was not seriously hurt. I mean I'm not a monster, but after discovering that no real harm had been done I could see myself going back to sleep. I did not play the part of the jerk that day and I consoled her, as she was really shook up. She was pretty worked up, as any normal human being would be after tumbling down a full set of stairs at 7am. I really, really wanted to have her drink one of these to help calm her nerves, but as soon as the thought crossed my mind I instantly knew that if I uttered the phrase, “You should drink a Just Chill” all she would hear is the word chill and assume I was telling her she needed to chill out. In hindsight I should have just gone and grabbed her a can, but it was early and I am part monster, and the warm bed won out. Eventually she calmed down and went to work and I did the same. It's a longwinded story, but the fact is that these drinks do what they are supposed to and it actually would have been appropriate for her to drink one at that time. I feared getting stabbed so I didn't' bring it up. No one likes to be stabbed.

In addition to their functionality these drinks really do taste great. They do the whole mixture of sugar (crystalline fructose) and stevia thing to keep calories low, but retain a decent taste. I don't know how they do it, but I would never guess that stevia was involved at all just by the flavor. I have not ruled out sorcery. Rio Berry is light, but realistically fruity. I appreciate a beverage that actually tastes like berries and not artificial garbage that we are told taste like fruit.

I believe that this beverage is the first sign that the dystopian future that was portrayed in all of those movies from the 80's is our current reality. To be fair the rise in popularity of energy drinks was probably the first sign, but this is a drink that GLOWS IN THE DARK. Sure, you need a black light, but it still GLOWS. If that's not a sign that the future is now I don't know what is. Think about it the world IS a pretty miserable place nowadays. There are disasters everywhere, people live in fear, and the police force is out of hand in a lot of cases. What we need is an action star to come and save the day. He/she would probably end up drinking this energy drink to aid them in his/her vigilantly-ism.

This may glow in the dark, which still seems insane to me (it's the quinine that causes it to happen), but most of the aspects of this beverage would actually make it a healthier energy drink. There is no taurine involved and the sugar mainly comes from fruit juice with a little crystalline fructose mixed in. It was formulated to give you a nice energy burst, without the crash. That's what this society really needs. The crashes make everyone miserable and make them “medicate” more often and before you know it a large portion of the human race is downing mass amounts of energy drinks just to make it through their day. No one wants to be in that situation, and Neon seems to be fighting the good fight in that regard.

As far as flavor goes, this is tropical fruit flavored. 24% of the ingredients in this can are juices including pear, passionfruit, blueberry, raspberry, strawberry, cherry and cranberry. Only one of those is tropical in my book, but the combination is pleasant on your tongue. There is a slightly harsh bitterness mixed in that I can't quite pin down, but it gives the drink character. When I drank it right out of the fridge it mostly tasted like passionfruit and strawberry, but as it gets closer to room temperature the other fruits are more apparent. I enjoy a beverage that tastes slightly different depending on how you drink it. It's the future, it's science, it's scary, but oh so tasty.

After nearly 20 years the world's questions have finally been answered. Nearly twenty years ago a commercial was aired where a teenager read off the contents of his fridge to his friends so they could choose a beverage; “OJ, purple stuff, soda, Sunny D.” The purpose of this was to show that kids preferred Sunny Delight over other beverages. We all know that is a fallacy, as the stuff is fake orange juice that is so syrupy. I don't know a person now who would accept a glass if it were presented to them. The mystery has always been what was the purple stuff? Was it grape juice? Kool Aid? Some other weird concoction? I now know that it was a product that was ahead of its time and the children in the ad simply did not know what to do with it. Purple Stuff was/is a calming, relaxation beverage.

Now call me old fashioned but when I think about relaxation, drinking a cola isn't the first thing to come to mind. Actually, carbonation and relaxation don't commonly fall into the same sentence. Finally the time came when I was freaking out about the house I am in the process of buying and I needed to just calm down or I was going to give myself an ulcer. I sat back, cracked open the can, took a deep breath and sipped away. I was surprised at how good it tasted. It had a very nice cola flavor and the cherry is also pleasant, but in a way that is almost like an energy drink. With each sip it starts off as a normal cherry cola but slowly shifts into a candied aftertaste. No part of the experience was gross or weird though. In addition to a pleasant flavor this also helped to slow my brain down a bit so I could continue with life and not be consumed about all of the little things I had to get done from the road in order to close on my house. I could make a dumb joke about that British army saying, but you've seen enough puns of that for a lifetime, so I'll leave you alone.

This…€¦smells…€¦weird. It's like unbaked bread and vitamins had a baby that a liquid. Sometimes working your way past a smell can lead to great enjoyment for your other senses though. I woke up this moment feeling like doo-doo for some unknown reason. I was just worn out and achy. One would think I had a hangover, but that certainly wasn't the case. I did some things around the house and still felt like garbage, so I decided to take a nap. Of course it was this time that my sleep paralysis decided to come out for the first time in months (For those of you who don't know it's when you're sleep rhythms mess up and you get stuck between slumber and waking. You are aware of our surroundings and know that you're asleep, but can't move or fully wake up. It's the worst). When I finally convinced my brain to wake up 100% I felt even worse. I was just in a haze. That's when I remembered this was in the fridge. I started drinking it and within 10 minutes I was feeling noticeably better. Not only was my predicament improving but I was also really enjoying the taste, minus the weird smell.

This is carbonated lemonade, if lemonade has made with lemongrass as well as regular old lemons. Now I don't know if there is actually any lemon juice in here, but it certainly tastes like it is. There is also a nice ginger flavor to it, but without any hint of a burn. Around the edges there is some hints of the vitamins and other such things that help with recovery, but they are mainly just hanging around in the background. One thing I need to point out is that this is ridiculously carbonated. If you're entering into a belching competition, it would be wise to slam a can of this right before you go on. Then you'll be burping like an angel. Seriously though, look past the strange scent of this beverage and you may find yourself with a new little friend.

It's harsh out there in this post apocalyptic world we live in. Ever since the beginning of the end us humans have had it rough. There are food shortages and finding clean water is proving to be harder and harder. The only electricity we have is through generators, and it's only matter of time before all the gas is gone and those prove to be pointless. We should have all listened to Ed Begley Jr and installed those solar panels. He's living like a king in his home watching old videos of Transylvania 6-5000, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, and A Mighty Wind.

As you all know the atmosphere has gone into the toilet and in order to even breath the air around us we need to up our immunity systems. Lucky for all of us that Neuro stepped up to the plate a created a once a day beverage that does just that. The beverage that is helping keep us all alive is packed with vitamin D, vitamin C, zinc amongst others to keep us healthy and alive.

Since we have to keep on our toes, due to the roving packs of mutants that threaten our very existence, the drink is sweetened with sucralose along with crystalline fructose. No one needs those extra pounds holding them back these days. Well actually, we won't have to worry about those extra pounds once the food shortage gets worse, which is inevitable.

As diet as this might be, it doesn't taste horrible. Tangerines were a wonderful fruit when they still existed. Neuro does a good job replicating their taste, and the citrus taste really cuts through the diet garbage. Is it an ideal flavor? No, but it's much better than it could be and sacrificing a little flavor is fine by me for the benefits it gives us, you know like staying alive.

It's a harsh world, indeed.

We've drunk A-Game before but now, and this is no pun intended, they have brought their A-Game because this is pretty great. It's got the drinkability of a Gatorade but has a tiny bit of bite from the lemonade and a pretty good strawberry taste. Strawberry lemonade is pretty much always a win for me but I won't put it by companies to screw it up. This drink doesn't have any sort of unwanted bite like you might get from some other lemonades that are made with garbage sugar. I'm no scientist but whatever crystalline fructose is, it makes a good sweetener. There is also honey in here and actual sea salt. It's a pretty good drink all around. A-Game, A-Game.

When I think of bliss the first thing that crosses my mind is shoegaze. If you're not familiar it's a style of music that sounds very dreamy (sometimes droney) with a lot of effects on the guitars. As soon as I hear the word bliss either a Slowdive or My Bloody Valentine song pops into my head and I like to take a moment and just bask in it's strange pop bliss.

Is this beverage the liquid version of those songs? Not even close. While the added ingredients may have reduced my stress in the long run, I got no relaxation from the flavor. The sole reason for that is that even though crystalline fructose is the main sweetener, there is also sucralose in the mix, and as we all know if it's there at all it is overpowering. Without the sucralose this could have been a very pleasant, lightly carbonated raspberry drink. I keep trying to block out the fake sugar taste and I know there is a truly enjoyable beverage in there somewhere. I can just tell it's something that I would really, really like. Unfortunately the sucralose buries nearly all of that taste under its grossness. If you are one of the people who walks this planet that are unaffected by sucralose, like those who like cilantro, you will probably be all over this.

Hey Steve, what do you want to call our new line of drinks? Steve's Sweet Styles? You do realize that is the dumbest name I have ever heard, right? Like, it's beyond bad Steve. Not in the better than bad it's good way; in the so bad I want to punch you right in your stupid hole that those words fell out of. Well fine, I will come up with something better. Juice Sparklers? No. Oh, I got it! Let's name it after what we do to make it! All we do is mix all the ingredients together in a basin, minus the fruit and then mash that all up on a screen above it to collect the precious juice. Let's just call it MASH. It's a good, simple, non-offensive name. I mean the way we get the juice out of those grapefruits it's pretty violent, but no one needs to know that, so the name won't conjure images of us putting all our weight onto cinderblocks and just mashing the daylights out of that citrus. The results do sure taste right nice though.

I didn't have faith in you when you wanted to use crystalline fructose and sucralose to sweeten it, but the way we mixed it all together, no one would ever be the wiser that this was a diet drink from the flavor. Well, I guess it's not too diet. There are still 25g of sugar in our 20oz bottles. That's much better than our competitors though, those guys use two to three times as much sugar as we do.

This is one fine pink grapefruit soda though. It tastes nice and crisp. It carries the sourness of the fruit nicely without making you pucker your lips. Also, kudos to you for calling it a “low calorie sparkling juice drink.” That makes it seem much fancier than calling it grapefruit pop.

Despite what Derek says I will always believe, and spread the word, that the name of this here website is derived from a Mitch Hedberg joke. “You don't have to be sweating and holding a basketball to enjoy a Gatorade. You can just be a thirsty dude. Gatorade forgets about this demographic. I'm thirsty for absolutely no reason, other than that liquid has not touched my lips for some time.” Funny? Yes. Truthful? Also, yes. Many times in my life I have drank a Gatorade or similar drink, while not in the throes of some physical activity. I was thirsty, it was a beverage that would solve my thirst, and on top of that it tastes pretty good.

With all of the above being said, I don't think I could ever see myself drinking one of these bottles of Cytomax for pleasure. It is a beverage with a specific function, and I think I will save it for that. Sure it's basically the same sort of beverage as Gatorade, but the difference is that along with crystalline fructose, stevia is also used as a sweetener in here. That just throws the whole thing off. It's citrus flavored in the way that popsicles are, but with the stevia it's like a natural diet popsicle. There is something inherently wrong with the idea of such a product existing. Since this is a performance beverage and not a frozen summertime treat, it is acceptable, but I wouldn't drink it just for enjoyment. I would drink it after spending some time on the court with that previously mentioned basketball though. That is it's intended purpose, so I suppose Cytomax has produced what it was aiming for.

For some reason these Mash drinks are one of the most visually appealing beverages on the market. Whenever I come across then in a bodega my eyes are instantly drawn to them. I don't know what it is. They just look like someone took a crappy one liter soda bottle and squished it down. Perhaps it's just the simplicity of the label. I love clean design work.

Besides for the look of this I am also drawn to it because it has ginger in it. I will always gravitate towards the ginger based beverages. I knew it wasn't going to be very strong in this, but it was even weaker than I anticipated. It tastes like someone took the weakest ginger ale ever produced and added lemon soda to it. I know I haven't painted the greatest picture of this, but it is enjoyable to drink. I just always want more, and apparently like to complain about things that are perfectly fine the way they are.

This is sweetened with both crystalline fructose and sucralose, but luckily the diet flavor is nowhere to be found. There is so much lemon flavor in here. I think it covers up all the other flavors. Luckily it doesn't taste like lemon rind, which could have easily been the case with a name like lemon peel. We dodged a bullet with that one.

After yesterday's heart palpitations and then evening crash, it's amazing/stupid that I would drink another energy drink. Perhaps I felt the need to re-up myself to a standard energy level, of course forgetting that come eight o'clock, I can not be close enough to a pillow. We will see about that. Until then, allow my non-sleepy hands to tell you what I thought about this drink.

You all should know that I think acai is pretty bad. It's some newfangled superfruit that I was fine not knowing like that person everyone thinks is awesome but really offers nothing to the conversation. Acai was fine where it was, wherever it came from. Look at how much research I did on that. Acai, you generally suck. In this case, you are welcomly overshadowed by everyone's buddy grape and are presented with an energy drink that tastes a little bit powdery, you know, because it's made from powder, and tastes like a grape drink. Not the homage to Dave Chappelle with the lack of the word "juice." It's not too sweet and doesn't have that crap bitterness that acai brings with it.

I am feeling a bit lightheaded and I think I can attribute it to this drink but I've really been milking it all day for some reason. Probably because I don't want my body to fall asleep while I am not ready to. I also don't want the sweats and erratic heart beats that yesterday's energy drink brought us.

Whenever I think about Muscle Milk all I can envision is a bunch of cows hanging out at Muscle Beach in Santa Monica just getting ripped. They are doing reps, they are doing sets and it is all for the tourists who watch from the other side of the fence. Seriously think about a cow bench pressing it's own bodyweight whist wearing a neon torn up tank top with a rad bandana on. I hope they have spotters. I wouldn't want any of them getting seriously injured.

Since the bottle clearly states that this contains no milk, and it is lactose free I can only assume that Muscle Milk is what those cows sweat out while they power lift on the beach. Obviously this flavor is the sweat from a brown cow. I never knew that sweat could be so thick. This actually tastes like high quality chocolate milk. You know the kind that someone actually melted chocolate into, instead of just mixing in a powder. It does a good job at not being chalky like protein shakes are prone to be. Now please sit back and giggle as you think about cows working out in the California sun.

I know that grinning is supposed to be a good thing. It's supposed to mean that you're happy, but there always seem something menacing behind it to me. I think that it's the bearing of the teeth that puts me on edge. It's like a more aggressive smirk, as if the person doing the grinning is going to just leap out at you and rip our your jugular with those teeth they are so keen on showing off. I don't know about you, but I don't want that happening to me. I like my jugular just fine in its current placement.

Now Grins Naturally Flavored Water on the other hand is definitely a good thing. It's got a bunch of vitamins in it and not too much sugar. Most importantly though is that unlike a lot of beverages in this wheelhouse it has the consistency and feel of actual water (well at least remotely). A lot of these companies call their drinks flavored water, but there is so much sugar and other junk in them that I would never in a million years associate them with H2O. While Grins does have sugar and a handful of other ingredients in it, it's way lighter than it's contemporaries, and that is something I can get behind. I'm so sick of the obscene amounts of sugar in drinks these days. I just want nice light drinks, and this works for me.

This flavor is citrus and it's heavy on the lemon lime side of that grouping, but there are some other fruits at work in there as well. Overall it's light, and it's smooth in a way that you can drink the whole bottle without really realizing it, at which point you look at it, and wish that it was larger. It is good that it isn't though , because let's face it as a nation we really need to learn portion control.

'Tis a rainy day in the "City of Good Neighbors." All neighbors in this fine city are opening their doors and letting the tired and wet in their living rooms. Homes across the city are filled with the memories of wet strangers and not-so-coincidentally, stories of why said wet strangers were allowed to come into their homes.

Although it was raining regular rain, in one section of the world it rains grape rain. Yes it is sticky and yes it smells good but even something that smells good can get old very fast. The stickiness gets old as soon as you get the first drop on you. Stickiness always sucks. Anyhow in the section where it always rains, a company called "Grins" did what they always do when it rains; they lay out square miles of open bottles and fill up all the bottled and then one at a time, screw the tops on and fill up a truck.

When the bottles come in they are washed off and then off to the markets. Even in the wettest of weathers, we in West Coast, NY will still drink water. Flavored, sparkling, or still. This is great because it's light, has a nice candy grape taste, and isn't too sweet. It really goes down smooth and it's in a small bottle so you don't get carried away and drink a gallon of it, which I don't doubt I could drink.

Stay wet Buffalo. Internally and externally. It will help you grow.

Glaceau and the team over at Vitamin Water have "borrowed" kids from all countries of the earth, flown them out to their headquarters in the coldest parts of mother Russia, fed them a diet of crackers and water and the occasional Flintstone vitamin and had them create the most "kid like" lemonade taste buds have ever tasted.

The kids worked day and night for almost a month and actually did it. Glaceau's resident scientists have drunk too many drinks in their lives so they taste buds have been skewed. A child's palate is more novice and can really have an open mind when it comes to drinks. Together, these kids made good lemonade that's a "lowest common denominator" type drink. No offensive pulp. Lightly tart. Moderately sweetened. Overall good lemonade.

Once the kid's sole task was complete, Glaceau gave them an envelope with $1000, a note to give to their parent's that said, "We're sorry but we needed help. You will receive a case of Squeezed as soon as production is complete. Sincerely, Glaceau." and a box set of Jake and the Neverland Pirates to watch when they get home. I'd say that's fair.

There certainly are a lot of "waters" out there. There being the rough streets of Drinkburg. New ones come out every week and although we, the Thirsty Dudes, try to keep up, we're only three incredibly attractive men in our early thirties who look better naked than you could ever imagine. We cannot do it. We do our best, don't get us wrong, but between Glaceau coming out with new lines bi-daily and people trying to keep up, we simply cannot do it. What we can do, which we do do (poop) is drink more than we should to make as much as a dent as possible so that we make it easier for you to make informed decisions on things that you don't really care. You think we don't get it? We know our worth. We know that no one cares about half the stuff we drink but you keep coming back because we offer that "wow" factor...or something.

Slop drinks aside, this is not slop. Quite on the contrary, this drink is both refreshing and delicious. Yeah, you've had kiwi strawberry and you've also probably also had strawberry kiwi drinks and this, albeit not revolutionary or daring, is very good at what it does. It's lightly sweetened, quite fruity, water or, as I like to call it, a friggin' juice. I don't know the difference between this and a juice. Did the word "juice" somehow become offensive like the day I woke up and the term "Mulatto" was racist? Seriously. I was taught that term in school and, yeah, I'm progressive enough to move forward as soon as someone tells me what happened in the last twenty years that made that word and the word "juice" bad words.

Potential racism aside, this drink is pretty great and something about the word "grin" actually makes me smile. I feel like I don't hear it anymore. I need more grins, this drink, and a list of words I cannot use since I learned them in school and that's all I need. Oh, and this paddle game! And that's all I need.

My history of sports is as follows; I grew up with friends who loved sports. We lived on a cul-de-sac and played football, hockey, and did it all the time. I was never good but loved playing with my friends. The older I got, the more I accepted the fact that I don't care about sports. Not that I didn't enjoy playing, but there were other things that I liked doing, like music. I started playing music in between plays on a drum machine that I still have. So from that point on, I felt that sports drinks just weren't for me. I would never get as much out of them as the rest of my friends did. Yeah, anyone can drink Gatorade but it's not made for me.

Fast-forward to fifteen years later and I still don't play sports but I work on a drink review site where I drink all sorts of drinks that "aren't for me." This drink would be enough to make most couch potatoes want to pick up a racket and sweat it out on the court. The mix between the cherry and the pomegranate are totally fantastic and I wish I had more. It's a water type drink that has a dark fruit taste. I've often got an issue with cherry where it tastes a bit medicinal but this has none of that. This drink is sixteen ounces of pleasure.

I don't hate sports. I don't play sports. I don't pay attention to sports. I was disappointed when our city's hockey team's goalie dropped his limited edition ice cream flavor. That's as passionate as I get with sports. I am missing out on the bond people have where they sit together and talk about this guy and that team and all that other stuff. I would rather sit down and play video games with friends and talk about bands no one cares about. I think I can say the same for Jay and Derek.

I'm not a big fan of powdered drinks. They are hit or miss in my eyes, but usually a miss. Finding this box at Big Lots (where drinks go to die) didn't make me too excited to try it. But I have to, for science.

When the first ingredient is sugar, you know it's downhill from there. This taste like watered down orange Gatorade and Sunny D. As far as the energy portion goes, I guess it works but the taste is so bland that I'm not very inclined to drink more than a few sips of this so I doubt I'll get the desired "energy". All I can think of now is that I have several more of these tubes of powder, as well as a 2nd flavor, and I'm trying to decide what to do with them. You know those dumb kids who use to snort pixie sticks? I wonder if now that energy powder like this exists they are trying that.

Excuse my ignorance because I've never done it, but wouldn't snorting an energy drink powder be similar to cocaine? I wonder if head shops that sell "legal drug substitutes" would sell this.