Fit Fare

I prefer, whenever possible, to limit my consumption of artificial ingredients. I’m not militant about it, but I do check ingredient labels at the store. I’ve been amazed at some of the places you find high fructose corn syrup for example. My favorite type of thin wheat crackers for example has high fructose corn syrup! But that’s not what I’m here to talk about today. I’m here to review a new product I found at my local supermarket a few weeks ago: Zevia Natural Soda. The supermarket had samples, and so I tried one (orange). It was tasty for the small sample size, so we brought home a six pack.

Before I tell you what I think, here are some facts about Zevia.

Zevia is marketed as “The Natural Alternative to Diet Soda”. In fact, they don’t even call it soda. It is a “Carbonated Stevia Supplement”. Zevia does not contain Aspartame, sucralose, or saccharine. The ingredient list is short: triple filtered carbonated water, natural erythritol, citric acid, natural flavors (orange oil), stevia (leaf), and annatto. Now I don’t know about you, but I had to look a few of these things up.

It turns out that erythritol is a sugar alchohol, produced from a glucose/yeast fermentation. I’ve never heard of it before, and it does not appear that erythritol = stevia in any way.  Stevia I know. In fact, last year I actually grew stevia in my backyard. It’s super sweet. In fact, some sources say it’s up to 300 times sweeter than sugar, so a little goes a long way. Annatto is used to produce a red food coloring and has a very slight peppery flavor. It can apparently trigger some food allergies, so be warned.

So overall, I would say that this product is pretty natural. Everything in it does come from nature, or is made by processes in nature. Put one in the Zevia advantages column.

Now on to the taste.

The first thing I noticed was that the carbonation in Zevia feels finer than that in other sodas. The “bite” is still there, but it’s refined. The taste is relatively clean, with very little aftertaste. In fact, I’d have to say that this is one of the best things about the soda. There is little to no aftertaste. Two minutes after taking a sip, I couldn’t tell I’d had any. There’s a pleasant orange smell that really comes through when you taste it. It’s not overpowering, and in fact is probably a little lighter than your average orange soda. Occasionally, even a caffeine free diet soda will cause some minor stomach issues for me and Zevia did not. The orange and lemon lime varieties are caffeine free, and the cola variety is caffeinated with natural caffeine from “coffee, tea, and kola nut”. The caffeine content for the cola is almost identical to Diet Coke.
My husband tried the cola version of Zevia. “It tastes like every other non-Coke or non-Pepsi cola tastes,” he said. So whether that’s good or bad is left up to you.