A First World Problem

People around the world are dying of thirst.  They may have only one source of water and that is either polluted by chemicals or it could be polluted with dirt, filth or disease.  Water is the reason why wars are fought, not over gas, but pure, clean drinkable water.  In third world nations, people have to go through great lengths to get water that they can drink.  In first world nations, like the one I live in, we merely walk over to the sink and turn it on.

Now, as I mentioned here, I have a first world problem:  I don't like the taste of water.  Even though I lived in St. Louis for most of my life, which routinely is voted with the best tasting water, I still never liked to just drink pure and clean water.  Where I live now has water that is rich in a chlorine flavor and smell, reminiscent of drinking pool water sometimes.  Even my Pur' filter can clean it and take some of the nasty flavor out, but not all of it.  So, when I want a drink of water, what do I do?

Well, before I used anything from propel to kool aid, but lately, I have been doing the new Mio flavor products:

As you can see, we have two new flavors here: black cherry and green thunder.  What makes these different than the normal Mio flavors is that these have sugar free, 0 calorie syrups in them which can turn any glass of water into a non-carbonated energy drink.  That's right, one of these puppies will set you back a forgettable $3.99 but you have the ability to flavor a gallon of water.  Imagine how many times you could run around the world with a gallon of energy drink.

A single serving size, about 1/2 tsp or one small squirt, has 0 calories, fat, sodium, carbs, sugar and protein.  So, it really is just flavoring, with an added bonus.  Each serving size has 10% of your Daily B3,10% of your B6, 10% of your B12.  It also has some caffeine: 60mg per serving.  A serving of coffee has about 130 mg of caffeine.  So, what you have here, is a way to flavor water, add a few vitamins and caffeine.  I have beee using this daily and multiple times.  It is better than any other energy drink I have used because I cannot over dose on vitamins or get too much caffeine.  I rate these both a 5 out of 5 and if you love energy drinks, pick these up.    

MiO: all that it is

Okay, at some requests, I thought I would try the MiO water enhancers.  That is what they are called; "water enhancer".  As much as I want to dive in with some super secret issue or dangerous side effects, I can't find any.  The drink is tasty and comes in four flavors:

You have Sweet Tea, Mango Peach, Berry Pomegranate and Fruit Punch.  They are made with all chemicals, it appears and it is sweetened with sucralose (splenda).  Now there are some who claim that this artificial sweetener is bad for you, but only because of the process to make it.  It is bad, if you ingest large quantities of it at one time.  There are no calories in these flavorings so you could use it to flavor anything, besides water.

It reminded me of something else and upon some research I discovered that it was not connected to Pur water flavorings.

Kraft Foods makes so many other things and they are not connected to the flavor enhancers that are inside of the Pur water filters.  As I stated, the flavorings are good and tasty and come out in many colors.  One quirt in 8oz of water will give you a small taste of the flavor.  More squirts can take you from Crystal Lite to that super sweet Bug Juice/Orange Drink that McDonalds used to sell.

Now what would be fun, is to use these for other things.  It wouldn't be difficult, since they are already in liquid form.  They could be used as a flavoring agent in ice cream.   They could be used in a marinade for meats.  They could also be mixed with some multidextrin and turned into a powder to be used in some baked goods.  A friend at work suggested making muffins with the Mango Peach flavoring. 

So, my unbiased and true thought is that MiO is safe and tasty.