"VitaminWater" news and stories

Vitamin Water has been in the news lately with some contretempts over the caloric content of their brightly colored, somewhat nutritious beverages. So it's fortuitous timing that they're coming out with 10-calorie versions of several flavors. Up for the dietetic treatment are Energy (tropical citrus/yellow), XXX (acai-blueberry-pomegranate/magenta), Multi-V (lemonade/white) and Essential (orange/orange).

Can you tell the difference between the 25-calorie bottle and the 125-calorie bottle? Well, the Essential lo-cal version is, weirdly, sweeter than the original, while the Multi-V is about the same. Along with the lighter revisions. Vitamin Water has also come out with two new standard-calorie flavors: Tranquilo (tamarind-pineapple/chartreuse) and Sync (berry-cherry/lavender).

Well, no. Not exactly. For the average joe, Vitamin Water, one of those brightly colored, highly sweetened drinks that most people think is healthy (it's got the word vitamin right in the name!), is just fine to keep drinking.

However, if you're an NCAA athlete, you might want to take another look. According to Advertising Age, it has come to light that there are six flavors of Vitamin Water that contain some of the NCAA's impermissible substances. These substances include guarana seed-extract, caffeine, ginseng, taurine, L-theanine, green-tea extract and glucosamine. These additives are banned because they can cause a false positive on the mandatory substances tests that the NCAA requires its players take on a regular basis.

This wouldn't be such a big deal, except for the fact that the NCAA and Coca-Cola (Vitamin Water's parent company) recently inked a multi-year deal, making Vitamin Water Revive (a particular flavor, which does not include any of the banned substances) an NCAA sponsor. Seems like an odd conflict of interest to me!

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Wow, the confusion when buying water! These days, when you enter a grocery store and look on the shelf, you can view about 10 different flavored waters, each promising to be the perfect antidote to a specific ailment. There's Vitaminwater, Propel Fitness Water, Function Drinks, Sobe Life Water, Snapple Antioxident water, 24c Vitamin enhanced water, and much more.

Yesterday, I read an article from New York magazine about the entrepreneurs that started Function Drinks. And, for a brief moment, I thought that perhaps all these drinks were not bogus. Dr. Alex Hughes, one of the founders of Function Drinks, uses different dietary supplements to concoct beverages that help with a hangover, reduce stress, fight colds, improve memory, and even sustain sexual health. But, at the same time Hughes admits, "At the end of the day, we are not a pharmaceutical company. We're not trying to live up to those standards."

What's with the trend? Personally, when it comes to drinking water, I stick to non-flavored H2O that's not loaded with sugar.

Some of you may recall a post last month about a pending lawsuit filed against PepsiCo by Glaceau, makers of vitaminwater. Glaceau claimed that PepsiCo's new SoBe Life Water (left) too closely copied their own vitaminwater (right) in it's trade dress, which included the label, bottle and clear plastic cap. Last week, PepsiCo agreed to change the packaging of Life Water in a settlement reached in a New York federal court. The terms of the settlement remained confidential. Glaceau had also initially complained that the ingredients of Life Water too closely mimicked those in vitaminwater, but reports on the settlement haven't mentioned any changes aside from packaging. BevNET and Yahoo! have more.

Looking at the two bottles to the right, it comes as little surprise that the makers of Glaceau's vitaminwater (right) have filed a suit against PepsiCo for their new SoBe Lifewater (left). According to a recent article on BevNET, Glaceau claims that Pepsico's Lifewater copied their flavorings and ingredients, including a sweetener never before used in any PepsiCo product until now. The Washington Post has more about the dueling nutrient-infused waters.

[Photos: BevNET]