"We allow customers to decide what 'challenge' means to them."

UM, WHAT?

But they have a COLOR and a FLAVOR, so they must be good.

(Let's not forget the alarmingly high calorie count of these jerkwaters.)

It has a flavor.

Expensive water is expensive.

I get my vitamins from FOOD.

I just take a plain water and crush up a multi-vitamin into it. About half the content is water soluble, adding a delightful flavor. The rest of the pill is fat soluble, so I just consider that "bonus crunchies!"

As much as I know that there isn't much of anything to VitaminWater, I still like the taste. I'll put down the extra bucks for it once and awhile. That said, I always get annoyed when I hear someone talking about the "health benefits" of the stuff. Just eat healthy and exercise, dammit!

Sounds like the main " Ingredient" is Bull Shit!!!

"Theanine can reduce blood pressure"

That shit best be written right on the side of the bottle, unstated pharmacological effects are bad .

I think Sobe is drinking a different kind of water.

Yea, it's the same with Diet Coke Plus and whatever. Sure, drink it, but if you start lauding the health benefits of your aspartame and artificial coloring you're going to get backhanded.

I don't understand why people buy water. I can understand people buying filters for tap water. Some city water taste and smell funky even if they are healthy.

But why pay $6+/gallon of water when you can buy a month's worth of water including shower for $6?

Additionally, VitaminWater has 13g of sugar per 8oz. Kind of defeats the purpose of it being water, I think?

@superlayne: That Diet Coke Plus is awful. It completely ruins the aspartame aftertaste I know and love so well.

People sure are stupid buying into the "enhanced water" garbage. Nothing beats fruits and vegetables for vitamins and minerals. Why should I drink distilled water with crap just to reap some kind of benefit?

They should market one called "VitaminWater B-Relaxed Jackshit" or "Sobe Life Water - We Challenge Your Intelligence" because that's what it is. Consumers are so freaking stupid to be constantly taken in by this crap.

Go ahead and waste your money on flavored sugar water you dummies and as a bonus you get to fill up the landfills with the empty plastic bottles.

@linus: $6/month? Where do you live? My minimum monthly water bill is $78 for 3,000 gallons (thank you small town water utility and your decades of gross mismanagement...) Still, at ~$0.03/gal, it's substantially cheaper than bottled...

@linus: But why pay $6+/gallon of water when you can buy a month's worth of water including shower for $6?

I was with you until that last part. A small house with two people, 1 shower a day each, a few loads of laundry on the weekend, and no sprinklers...and my water/sewer bill is over $50 a month. Usually closer to $70.

/yes, I drink nothing but filtered tap water

I feel like Vitamin Water "Revive" helps me with hangovers better than regular water, but that might just be a mental thing. The rest of them are too sweet for me to drink with any regularity (and they're free at work, so they've got to be extra-bad for me not to drink them!).

You forgot "Perfect Water," sold by (Amway) Quixtar. (Google search for perfect water scam.) Those snake oil salesmen were at the expo for a triathlon I volunteered to help with a couple of weeks ago. They claim it's purified, remineralized, ionized, microstructured (wtf?), and oxygen rich (with proprietary MBO technology). Yes, they really claim that they somehow manage to get more O into H2O. Riiiiiiiight.

I gave them my spamtrap e-mail address, and what do you know...they're spamming me. Scumbags.

@BlondeGrlz: Ya, nothing beats the taste of possible cancer and memory loss.

@linus: Convenience? It's like anything else, you put it into a portable package and people are willing to pay a premium (just look at the price difference between two liters of cola and a 20oz bottle).

@FitJulie: I enjoy the remineralized portion.

Perfect Water, we take the minerals out and put them back in again to pass the savings onto you.

@Ash78: @linus: I drink bottled water when I stay at hotels, just for the consistent taste. I drink bottles of water that I buy by the gallon at home for just 75 cents (I want to get one of those tap filters but I need a new faucet first).

In Hurst, Texas, my water bills are about $50-$60 a month (before they add only about 6 bucks for trash and recycling), this covers my wife showering 5 minutes a day, me showering about 30 minutes a day, frequent clothes and dishwashing.

I'd love to have the 6 dollar water bills mentioned above!

"It's what plants crave. It's got electrolytes".
Idiocracy

Never really bought into that enhanced water crap. I prefer filtered tap water, bottled spring water and tea just fine, thank you very much.

---

@Bladefist: Yessir. If the weird bitter aftertaste of the aspertame laced drink isn't a good enough reminder, I don't know what is :-)

I take half part pomegranate Juice and half part water and POOF thats my "vitamin water" minus the sugars.

adding vitamins to your diet has no proof of doing anything for you.

eat your vitamins like we're suppose too

@rmric0: According to Wiki, theanine is naturally present in tea, so it's not some crazy abnormal chemical. If someone has dangerously low blood pressure levels, I would think they're already watching their diet religiously and know not to drink silly flavored waters.

"We allow customers to decide what 'challenge' means to them."

That is probably the best thing I have ever read. How nice of them to let us decide what it means! Although now that I think about it "challenge your life" doesn't really mean anything in the first place, so I guess we kind of have to decide anway.

@Bladefist: I know, so refreshing!

I guess they're running out of room in the herbal aisle; with so many new quack products they are starting to spill out into the normal food aisles.

@FitJulie: Reminds me of the time Dasani had to pull out of the British market once people realized it was just expensive filtered local tap water.

[en.wikipedia.org]

Why are so many Americans obsessed with sweet stuff? Why can't people go a day without drinking sugar water?

@FitJulie: You do realize that a bottle of water isn't pure H2O right?

FYI, short article on Oxygenated water. [www.chem1.com]

@Televiper: ZOMG, are you serious? You mean water has...stuff...dissolved in it? NO WAY. I thought all bottled water was distilled.

Yes, I realize that. Thanks for the beginnings of an Amway marketing pitch, though.

@Televiper: Okay, that was bitchy. I didn't see your next posting about scammy oxygenated water. My apologies.

PerfectWater is still a total scam, though.

@FitJulie: I always pick on people who try to sound smart by calling water H2O while forgetting that in general water is H2O + a bunch of other things. Especially the ones that ask "how can water be more pure? It's H2O!"

@sir_eccles: JUST filtered tap water? Au contraire, dasani is filtered tap water with a bit of salt added.

Water tastes so drab and dull, I can understand why folks want flavored water. But I yanked a bunch of lemons of the neighbors tree and flavor my filtered tap water for free.

How could they call it 'Vitamin Water'? There should be two ingredients. Vitamins and water. once you add sugar and coloring to the product, it isn't much different from coca-cola.
If it is ok to call it vitamin water, why don't we rename everything else so it sounds much healthier than it is.
Let's call coffee "Legume energy water" after all it is mostly water.
Coca-cola will now be called "cola-infused water"
Orange juice from concentrate will now be called....um...vitamin water.
Human Beings are mostly water. We should just be called "people shaped water".

I like the water that comes out of the tap at home. I can't stand bottled water, tastes like plastic. As for the flavored water: I have that already, it's called Kool Aid.

I'm drinking a bottle of Costco's VitaRain water as I type this...according to the label this particular product has no calories, no fat, no sugar, and a few vitamins. I guess I should stop buying VitaminWater and just keep stealing these from my co-worker.

I'd be more concerned that the vast majority of these are produced using tapwater from Georgia or Texas, which are not only regions currently in a drought, but which tend to have poorly treated tapwater.

Cus that's all these are. Tapwater with food coloring.

@ark86: I like the taste as well. And, on the days that they're on sale for a dollar, I can get them cheaper than regular bottled water when I'm at work and need something to drink.

@The Count of Monte Fisto: I always wonder about the placebo effect of these so-called "vitamins". If people think it's making them healthier, do they act/feel any healthier?

@suburbancowboy: I like the "people-shaped water" one :)

@Daemon_of_Waffle: Were this Fleshbot, I'd have the perfect macro for that. ;)

Bottled water.... man I wish I had thought of that. The ability to charge people more for it then fruit juice, milk, or soda. Sweet deal for company profits.

@FitJulie: Very, very frustrating, isn't it? And then we wonder why humans are failing at sustaining the planet--let alone one another.

@AD8BC: Hurst, Texas? Hey, I'm from Hurst, Texas. Small world.

Ah, the wonderful city where the tap water turns brown if you leave it sitting out for more than half an hour.

A filter on our tap at my parents house sorted that out.

But, in relation to the article - all bottled water is a scam.

@rmz: even worse, it has 150 Calories per bottle... pretty cruddy for something that is supposed to be a "healthy" drink

I crack up laughing everytime I see a fat person walking around with a bottle of " Vitamin Water " ...

oooooh LOOK, he's " Healthy " cause he is drinking " Vitamin Water " ....

riiiigggghhhttttttt .....