Sucralose - 291 Reviews

Everyone I'm on tour with kept making fun of me because I wanted to stop at a Big Lots to get drinks. I understand it sounds ridiculous, but that closeout store is a goldmine for drinks and $3 DVDs. Joe from Night Birds grabbed some DVDs I grabbed a buttload of drinks.

This one was the opposite of stellar. As Joe said it tastes like a goddamn melted lime push pop, but only drenched in sucralose. Ickville.

Some drinks have a special purpose and when reviewing those drinks it's hard to decide what is more important flavor or functionality. The Celsius drinks score great in the realm of functionality. I can't say whether or not it burns the calories on it's own, but it definitely gives you more energy to exercise. When I drink one of these before jumping on my bike I end up riding way longer than I normally would.

On the side of flavor they sometimes leave something to be desired. That is because of their good friend sucralose. The sweetener that tastes sweet in all the wrong ways. I wish they would just switch over to stevia. If you're not going with real sugar stevia is the way to go in my book.

This is the best tasting Celsius I've had thus far. I think that's because it's a tea and not a "soda." It still has the sucralose taste, but it's masked a bit by the tea. It basically tastes like a diet raspberry tea. I don't taste the acai at all, but really who needs it when you have raspberry in the mix?

I've been inside for far to long today. This can is now empty so I'm going to go jump on my bike and ride around the city for a while. Try not to hit me.

I recently moved back to Buffalo from living in Portland, OR for 2 years. When I got back, fellow Thirsty Dude Jay gave me some drinks from his stash to get my queue going. He pawned this drink off on me, presumably because he wasn't looking forward to it. I don't blame him, it has all the characteristics of a horrible energy drink: no flavor listed, company you've never heard of, diet/sugar free/0 calories, bad artwork, etc... Oh, the pull-tab says "buzz" on it too. Ugg.

After a little research on their website, I found out this is pink grapefruit flavored (or should I say flavoured since this is a Canadian product?) This was good news to me since, as I've said many times, I love grapefruit flavoured drinks. But it's still a diet energy drink so I was still skeptical.

Here is my thought process after opening it:
Hmm, smells like grapefruit and not like chemicals.
*takes first sip*
Definitely tastes like grapefruit, now lets wait for the chemical aftertaste.
*it never comes*
Wait, really?
*takes another, bigger sip*
This diet energy drink is awesome! It tastes like Squirt and doesn't taste gross at all. After a half dozen sips, I already feel energized and can't wait to be productive the rest of the night. Once again, the fine folks of Canada have made a great product.

Jay and I love to ride bikes. Problem is that it's been raining like every single day for weeks and we can't do it. A few days ago, Jay and I went all over the place and ended up riding 28 miles. That may not be a lot for some, but it is to us. I've ridden in a couple benefit rides and clocked 60 miles before, but that doesn't happen when we're just cruising around.

Tonight, Jay, Thirsty Dudes editor Dan, and I rode around looking for some bike path. It should also be noted that it was 10:30 at night when we left, so it's not like we were taking some daytime stroll. Long story short, a train-yard got in the way and when we eventually got around it, we somehow made it closer to home than to some mystical bike path that we weren't sure existed in the first place. Total ride was about 18 miles.

On top of that, I did like 5 hours of gardening today by pulling up shrubs that I didn't want and cleaning up the leftover holes. Needless to say, I burned a couple calories and I knew that it would be time to break out one of my protein drinks.

This one I've been sitting on for quite some time and as phallic as it is, it still had to be done. I thought that it might be super sweet and maybe stingy with all the vitamins, minerals, and just plain stuff but I couldn't be more wrong. If you drank this without knowing was it was, like out of an unmarked Solo or Dixie cup, you would swear it was just some regular juice. I don't know about the citrus berry, but what I do know is that this drink smells and tastes like strawberry Twizzlers and that is fine with me.

Obviously I can't judge this based on it's supposed effects since I drank it one time and not regimented like it would probably ask for. If anyone has, I would love to hear your results. I know that if you're looking for some protein and can't take those shakes anymore, three rather delicious sips and you're done.

So far this has been my least favorite of the Celsius line. The sucralose in this is just overpowering. It somehow tastes like a diet ginger drink with some diet berry flavoring added to it. If you're used to the diet taste it's probably tastes fine to you. I didn't really enjoy it at all. I will still give this a three-bottle rating though as it gave me all the energy I needed to exercise. So much in fact that Mike and I rode our bikes for nearly 30 miles last night and I didn't feel exhausted at all. Hopefully it also actually burned off those extra calories like it promised to as well.

This is a diet water based drink similar to Vitamin Water or Gatorade. I took a sip and it tasted a bit strange. It was slightly chalky and tasted of citrus. There was something else there that I couldn't quite place. I handed the bottle off to Editor Dan and he couldn't place it either, although he was familiar with it. It was at this time that Dan discovered the downfall of this drink. He looked at the ingredients to try and sort out what the mystery flavor was. He didn't find what he was looking for. Instead he found that the drink contained cod, pollock, haddock, hake, cusk, redfish, sole and flounder in the form of "fish gelatin." What the hell!?!?!! I don't understand it at all, and I certainly don't approve. One sip was all that I ingested of this drink. It was mediocre at best to begin with, but the fact that I was drinking Nemo makes me say no thank you.

I think that if Jesus was straight edge, he might make fruit punch. Think about it. It's either that or grape juice. Grape juice may be the better choice since "grapes is grapes" but let's play along.

It's hot. It's the desert so you really should have brought more water with you. The poorly designed, worse photocopied brochure you had clearly stated that you should have brought more water. Well now you're in for it. When you think all is lost, you come across a stream. Clean, pure drinking water... is boring after thirteen days and nights. You need something else. You ask around and the only person who can save you is Jesus, the dude two tents over. He said he could turn water to low calorie fruit punch. You kind of cringe as you are not currently on a diet although all the mutton you've been eating has been going straight to your hips and inner thigh area.

"Fine, dude", you say to Jesus, "We'll try your fruit punch. " And with one turnaround from Jesus, some strange squeezing sounds coming from inside his technicolor and Hypercolor dreamcoat which he has borrowed from his college roommate Joey, he presents you with a bowl of fruit punch.

You quickly drink every last drop and you are surprised that it doesn't taste more like diet. You thank Jesus for a change of pace to which he responds, "namasde" and starts making strange squeaking noises under his coat elsewhere.

I opened up the paper today and this is what the headline read: "Thirsty Dudes Makes Reviewers Fat." Print doesn't lie my friends. I can't speak for Thirsty Neuls, but I know Mike and I have each put on weight since we started this website. How could we not? Do you know how much our sugar consumption has increased it's ridiculous. At this pace we'll be starring in the next installment of the Big Mamma's House franchise (for the record I've never see any of those movies). Instead of cutting down on the amount of drinks I imbibe for the sake of Thirsty Dudes, I've cut down the rest of my diet. Also, since the weather is nice I've been exercising a lot more. Specifically I've been riding my bike a decent amount every day.

We had received these "Ultimate Fitness Partner" drinks a couple of months ago, so I figured I'd review the rest of them as I try to lose some weight. The other ones I've had haven't been too bad, but like most things in a concentrated form this tasted like poison. It's as if someone grabbed a bottle of booze to spike the punch at a high school dance, but instead of grabbing the bottle with three X's on it, they accidentally grabbed the bottle with three skull and crossbones on it. Has there ever been punch at dances since the 60's?

So this may taste like Poison Punch (I think that was the name of Mike's band when he was in junior high) it did seem to have the desired effect. I can't confirm that I burned more calories, but it certainly gave me more energy while I was out riding. I was exhausted when I went out, but about 10 minutes into my ride the drink kicked in and I rode for way longer than I expected.

For flavor I would have given this drink a negative 5, but for it's functionality I will give it a 3. I really need to stay away from "shot" drinks.

Drinking this beverage is like voluntarily taking a vacation to a diet nightmare. Think of yourself as a standard man. You love hamburgers, french fries, milkshakes, and you drive a sweet '64 1/2 Ford Mustang. You have enough product in your hair to be considered a natural disaster and all you wear is blue jeans, black shoes, and white V-neck T-shirts. Sure, all I know about being a man apparently came from "Happy Days", but that was when men were men and women were women...not really, but you know how these reviews tend to go.

So you're a man. While eating a cheeseburger from some chrome diner, you meet another woman's glance and you fall in love. You go to the drive in. You go to whatever a sock hop is. You listen to records. All is great in the world. You decide to get a place together. You first shopping excursion, you buy the following standard items; hamburgers, Murry's pomade, toothpaste, new pack of shirts since yours all have greaze on it from working on your hog, and some cereal. Your girlfriend is trying out dieting even though she can't clock in at more than 110. I mean, she's got a killer body and you can lift her all day long, and you do. She buys items like, low fat milk, egg whites, Lean Pockets, and Sparkling Ice Pomegranate Berry.

You pay the $7.32 bill and head home, not having any idea of the torturous night you have ahead of you.

You make some hamburgers for yourself since you girlfriend wouldn't dare eat meat because it's too fatty and she's endlessly watching her figure, so she makes an egg white omelet. You think it's fine because she's so easy to look at and you ask her for something to drink while she's in the kitchen. She grabs you one of her six Sparkling Ice drinks. You sit down to a nice meal and you take a bite of your burger, love it, and then take a big, manly sip of your drink. You can't believe it. Your otherwise perfect girlfriend is trying to poison you. Surly, no one who is trying to live would drink this. It's fruity but so fake tasting that you swear it's flavored plastic fruit like the kind your grandma has on her living room table like she's permanently doing "still life" art drawing of the same fruit. You take another sip. It's no better than the first. It's so sharp, so strong. It's cuts through the flavor of your meal and slices it's way down your throat like candy coated razor blades.

Needless to say, you and her do not work out and it's unfortunate. She had everything going for her, and people aren't going to understand. You'll catch flak for it for a while until people realize that this "diet" thing that's going on is not good for business. You'll be fine and you will grow from your experience while she will search endlessly for results that will never be enough and she will forever be unsatisfied.

Ho-lee-crud does this stuff work. Let me tell you a story.

I have a son who is 3 months old. Currently, he is watching TV and is awesome. Yesterday...not so much. Screaming. I work outta-da-home Mondays and Tuesdays and I typically get about 4 or 5 hours worth of work. Yesterday he was a jerk. Yeah, he's three months and he was a three-month-old jerk. I might have gotten two bad hours of work done and he screamed for hours. I just kept saying, "He's only a baby. You can't get mad at him." all day. From about 7 - 9 he was screaming for some reason. I needed to calm down. I went into the stash, saw that little bottle, and knew it was time. Frankie says "Relax".

I drank it in two sips. First sip was a very berry taste with a little bit of diet and the second sip flipped but it was over before it started and we were off to the races. Literally, fifteen minutes later I felt as if I was holding 50-pound dumbbells in each arm. You know when you're sleeping and you don't want to move your arms when you just wake up? That's where I was. You know when your significant other asks you to get a glass of water at 3 in the morning because, apparently, their legs are broken and you respond with something like, "A goose is at the door. Wait...what? Yeah, water, sure." That's where I was, promptly.

I would have slept soundly if it wasn't for that meddling kid, but when I did fall asleep, I don't think that you could have woken me up with a cannon, and this was only the Relax drink. Also, if it needs to be said, I didn't have any strange dreams.

What's worse than a gross energy drink? A gross diet energy drink. Going into this I knew this wasn't going to be good. The initial taste isn't bad. It has a generic orange soda mixed with red bull taste. But as soon as it goes down, the usual battery acid energy drink feeling kicks in, which is intensified by the Splenda in the drink that make it "low-carb". Yuck.

Also, did you notice the warning at the bottom? "Caution: May Suppress Appetite". This is kinda messed up. I highly doubt people are worrying about having their appetite suppressed. This is obviously a clever way to market this to people trying to lose weight without putting the dreaded word "diet" on the can.

Seeing as none of the Thirsty Dudes drink alcohol we had our friend Ryan help us with this review. He got trashed and drank the bottle at the end of the night. This is the review he wrote:

In order to properly test this product, I felt it necessary to make sure I gave myself a pretty bad hangover. I know my body fairly well, and it doesn't like tequila. So, last night i started off with 2 pint sized margaritas, followed by 4 pints of beer. I figure the mixture would give me a sufficient hatred of my decisions in the morning.

When I got home I drank down the Gtox shot. I'd love to give an accurate review on what it tasted like but let's be serious, I don't quite remember. I vaguely recall it being a very watery tang-like flavor.

The true test results were when my alarm went off at 5:20 this morning and my head felt like Paul Bunyan took an axe to my cranium. There's that hangover I expected to have. I'm not really the puke-your-guts-out hangover type to begin with, so perhaps this stuff could help with that. But as for the headache, Advil and lots of water is still the best cure.

I doubt anyone is buying one these to drink for it's flavor, so I'd give it a one-bottle score for it's function.

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In order to follow through with the taste, as Ryan was too drunk to remember, it's citrus flavored. It really reminds me a lot of the original yellow Gatorade flavor. It has that same slight harshness on the back of your throat. Actually it's somewhere between Gatorade and a melted Freezee Pop. I don't mind the flavor at all. I will give it a three for flavor, since that's really what Thirsty Dudes is all about. Ryan stands by his one bottle for function though.

Wooooo.....mistakes. Look. I am not responsible for myself. Here's the new deal. No, not Teddy Roosevelt's "New Deal", but my house's new deal. Monday and Tuesday I stay home and watch Max, my little dude. I have this thing where I work too hard and don't make time to eat. I did eat a yogurt at about 11 but that's it. Now it's 3:30 and my stomach is aching for nutrition, but who cares because Max is sleeping and I can finally lay down some code. So I'm working hard, got thirsty about a half hour ago and decided, yeah, Celsius.

I weigh 150 pounds. I don't eat terribly well, but I don't eat a lot so it all balances out. Celsius would aid me in losing more weight, even though all I'm doing is running Max up and down the stairs only to find out that he was going to wait until I have his diaper off to pee. Jerk. That tiny jerk. So I drink it and it's something. It's diet-y, and even though there is some element of a fruit flavor, there is this diet, burning undertone, and it kicks in fast. You see, they replaced the calories with caffeine is bugging me out, much like John Leguizamo in "House of Buggin'". My hands are shaking and my torso feel hot, like it is summertime and I'm wearing a vest like a stupid idiot.

All that being said, I guess it's doing what it's supposed to. I'm not working out, per-se, but I am typing a mile a minute and I've been doing stairs like it was that strange time in your high school gym class and you did step aerobics like a bunch of girls. Yeah, I said it. Girls do step aerobics. Men know that they have stairs at home that women, ironically, hate going up and down.

As far as I'm concerned as of today winter is finally over in Buffalo. It was 50 degrees and sunny. Not a cloud in the sky. To celebrate I went on my first decent bike ride of the year. I was planning on just doing a little ride, but every time I reached a destination I decided to keep going. By the time I had listened to Bowie's Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane was coming to an end 14 miles had passed and I was at my front door. From here on out I will solely use David Bowie albums to measure distance. It's the new science. Can you feel it on the horizon?

Before I left on this little adventure I decided it was as good a time as any to try out a Celsius drink aka "Your ultimate fitness partner." It's a mostly natural drink that promises to burn calories, reduce body fat, build lean muscle and give you lasting energy. By the end of my ride I was toned and semi-ripped like Michelangelo's sculpture of David. I'm talking like busting out of my shirt muscular. I'm a scientist, so I cannot tell a lie. That's part of the scientific oath right? I know I had you all convinced that I now look like Mr. Universe era Arnold Schwarzenegger, but truth be told I still look like a semi-dumpy 30 year old from Buffalo. I did have a decent amount of energy on the ride, and I feel way better than I expected to after not really riding in the past 5-6 months (yes our stupid winter can really last that long). So the drink has that going for it.

As for the flavor of it, when I took my first sip I was shocked at how good of a ginger ale taste it had. Within half a second I changed my mind as the diet hell of sucralose set in. Bear in mind that I have no tongue for diet drinks. I know there is a whole world of people out there that don't mind them. If you are one of those people and you're trying to lose weight, or put on some muscle, give this a chance. I think you will be pleasantly pleased with this ginger ale.

Ladies and gentlemen I'd like to be the first to thank you for coming to this ceremony and for purchasing this bottle of Under Way. It brings joy to my heart that all of you purchased this beverage in order to help out with breast cancer awareness. As you know breast cancer is a horrible thing, but by purchasing this drink you are.....wait....what? Under Way has nothing to do with awareness? Why on Earth did they use that pink color for the bottle then? Don't they know that that specific pink is reserved for breast cancer and penicillin? Did they want people to think of antibiotics when they drink this? Oh.....it's a Canadian company. I guess that makes sense.

Even though it's packaging is completely misleading in my world, the drink itself is fairly decent. The diet taste is only slight. The acai and pomegranate flavors overpower it nicely. I don't know how a Canadian drink made it's way down to a U.S. discount store, but it did, and I drank it, and I enjoyed it.

My sleep habits have been absolutely terrible lately. I blame this stupid cold that I got. It started with me waking up way early for no reason, and being completely awake for a few hours before exhaustion set it. As my sickness progressed I started waking up for periods of time in the middle of the night. Last night it got to the point where I just couldn't sleep. I forgot to pick up some more cold medicine, so I downed this little guy.

I think they forgot to list all of the ingredients on the packaging. I think that because I didn't see Rohypnol listed. If you didn't know Rohypnol is the clinical name for "roofies." I feel like it has to be in there, because I was wide-awake, I drank this bottle, I laid down and the next thing I knew it was 9:30am. This was the most effective "relaxation drink" that I have had yet. I was out pretty much instantly. It's a bit diety and medicinal tasting, but since it's only a shot I can deal with that for the effects it has. It doesn't taste like toxic sludge, but it's not something I would drink due to the taste.

If you're at a bar or party and you see these little bottles lying around don't drink those drinks. No one wants to wake up in a dude bros gross bed, or worse in a tub full of ice with a note that you're kidney has been removed. Beware the dark harvest!

In a world where corporate America tries to take over a poor girls lemonade stand, stands one girl, the owner of the lemonade stand, against corporate America. It's the age-old tale of the big guy versus the small fish. It all started out on a suburban street on a sunny afternoon. Alex is making lemonade to help her family pay for her cancer treatments when along comes a masked man wearing all black in a black limousine. He buys a cup of the sweet little girl's lemonade, listens to her story, and raises his brow. "Jackpot" he thinks to himself. He quickly drafts a contract for the girl that says they will handle all distribution and she will get a portion of the profits and they wouldn't touch the recipe at all. Alex, who put everyone else in front of herself, happily signed the contract. With that signature went her patented lemonade recipe. The man in black took the ingredients and made a crude and cheap knockoff version of the original recipe leaving America with sugary, mediocre lemonade. As soon as Alex found out that her original recipe had been altered and the breach of contract had been made, Alex fought to get her fair and decent drink out of the greedy hands of corporate America.

Watch as a frail, little girl fights the unbeatable fight in this tearjerker of a blockbuster film. Coming this summer probably straight to VHS.

One Christmas, my Mom bought me a case of Kool-Aid. I'm talking recently, like within the last 3 years recently. It had grape, cherry, and fruit punch. They're all great. Who didn't drink it growing up? It's a staple as a kid. Like those Hug barrels that are now like drinking poison. Honestly, if you still drink those, you might have the worst taste in drinks of all time. If someone is having a get together and you drink one for classic times, awesome. Way to have a good time. If you fetch them out and drink one on a Tuesday night because you've had a long day and you don't have kids, you're a dork and need to seriously treat yourself to something better.

I don't know why my Mom got me this stuff. It's in a cabinet at work. There were like 40 powder packets in there and it's taking me an awful long time to finish it. I don't drink one every day and since I've been doing Thirsty Dudes, I haven't had the time. I think it's ever since my mom found this dude called Anthony who sells old dry goods at a fraction of the price. My mom found this dude in some parking lot by my grandma's house and swears by him. I think between April and August, she only buys things like cereal, fruit snacks, granola bars, and all those types of things from him. "Oh, I got it from Anthony!" she exclaims more times than you can imagine. Dude's cheap and she's a lunch lady. It makes perfect sense to me.

So this drink doesn't give me a lot of pomegranate, but it does give me a nice, under-flavored grape Kool-Aid flavor and that I can get behind. I don't need the sugar. Sure, it makes the real thing taste like magic as it makes its way down your gullet, but I'm smart enough to know that drinking Kool-Aid can easily be supplemented with something else. This is a good "something else."

Up until recently I had no idea that there was a world of protein based fitness drinks out there. You would think I would be aware of such a thing being a professional drinkologist and all, yet it eluded me.

XAPP says to drink this beverage to "Refresh, Refuel, Repair and Recover." Basically the ingredients will do wonders for helping you with muscle growth for working out. You know it's something that Arnold would have drunk all the time before he became a governor, and even before he was an actor. Man, after a brief Wiki check I found out that was back in 1967. He is way older than I ever thought. Regardless, I can see him as a teenager at the gym talking to a higher power, "XAPP, I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad. Why we fought, or why we died. All that matters is that two stood against many. That's what's important! Valor pleases you, XAPP... so grant me one request. Grant me PROTEIN! And if you do not listen, then to HELL with you!" It may have been 50 years later, but the gods listened.

This is a carbonated light fruit punch that is sweetened with sucralose. It tastes like a better version of diet energy drinks. I had expected it to be grainy and thicker being a protein drink, but I was happy to find out I was wrong.

Smells diet, doesn't taste diet. Is that a clear winner? We're going to have to go over to our line judge to determine. John?

Well Mack, can I call you Mack? Anyway, it's a difficult decision to make when it comes to diet drinks. On one hand you've got the taste and on the other you've got the smell.

Mack, that's very true and also very obvious. I hope we don't pay you by the word because everything you said was quite stupid.

Thanks, John.

You're welcome, Mack. So honestly, what did you think of the drink?

Well, John, this tasted just fine. One squirt per eight ounces of water and I was on my way. It definitely would make me drink more water. It's gulp-able. It's got a real high gulp-ability factor.

Gulp-ability...is that a technical term, Mack?

Why yes John, it is. You can drink and know you're not drinking a tea, but you're drinking more than water. It's good and I think that people are really going to gravitate towards this. Dieters or not, this product doesn't scare people away.

You really redeemed yourself with that one, Mack. Thanks for coming down.

Thank you, John.