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Turns out the cleverly-packaged VitaminWater is mainly sugar water (shocking, I know):
"When I bought VitaminWater, frankly I thought I was doing myself a favor health-wise," said the plaintiff, San Francisco, California, resident James Koh, who used to purchase and drink VitaminWater after working out at the gym. "I was attracted by the prospect of getting extra vitamins. But I had no idea that I was actually getting almost a Coke's worth of sugar and calories. There's no way I would have spent money on that, had I known."
(via)
The nutritional information is *right there*. Had he bothered to look, he would have known.
And, unless the formulations are different in Australia (which, thinking about it, it probably is—Australian coke doesn’t have the HFCS people complain about) VitaminWater appears to have about half the sugar of coke. Less than juices too.
I’m not saying drinking it all the time is the best idea, but it isn’t “almost a Coke’s worth of Sugar”.
Agreed. While I hate that people call sugar water something that sounds healthy, a really quick look at the nutrition info would have cleared this misconception right up.
@Paul: Of course the information is right there in fine print. But they know not many people read it, so they fully exploit this knowledge to create a product name that suggests otherwise.
Plus it's owned by the Coca-Cola company http://www.knowmore.org/wiki/index.php?title=The_Coca-Cola_Company Not a good experience for anyone involved...
I really think this falls under the "deceptive marketing" category. Add Sobe's "life water" to the list.
Certainly, people should be cautious about reading nutrition info (and people who watch their diets closely quickly learn to avoid these traps). But given the number of "vitamin water" and "life water" bottles I see in the cup holders on the ellipticals at the gym, this is clearly a widespread problem.