@Floobtronics:

Because despite what some people might think, a calorie is NOT a calorie. A can (12oz) of soda has 150 Kcal made up of almost all (35g) of high fructose corn syrup. A bottle (20oz) of vitamin water contains 35g of crystalline fructose, (which from my understanding is just a derivative of HFCS). As someone who consumes nearly 4000 Kcal per day and couldn't be considered anywhere near overweight (5'9" 195 lbs 9%BF) I have learned that a calorie is NOT a calorie, and for those trying to lose weight little changes in diet are huge. If I were to consume 4000 KCal in HFCS, transfats, and bleached flours I would likely have a much different body comp than I do now. I would certainly not advise anyone to drink either soda OR vitamin water, but if they must drink one, VW would be an obvious choice over soda just because its a lower calorie dense food, and the general public seems to have trouble deceiphering a simple food label.

In other words, I DO agree with you calorically, but NOT practically.

I stand by my statement, instead of drinking several vitamin waters a day, have a donut. Drink water and take a multivitamin. You'll get your vitamins, you get hydrated, and you get a donut out of the deal, all for roughly the same caloric intake. Skip the donut, and you're 300-500 calories ahead now.

As an added bonus, you don't have to wonder who left their bodily discharges in your drink.

You probably wouldn't see as much in plain water because there's less raw material to work with (nutrients, e.g. carbon & nitrogen in flavorings, etc.).

Bottled water = yuck. There's a reason soda and other drinks are acidic; it's to keep the bacteria counts down. Can't easily do that with water. 'nuf said there.

Reverse-osmosis & distillation will easily take care of any chemicals in the water.

@Floobtronics:

Might as well drink soda??
Not even REMOTELY accurate.

[en.wikipedia.org] ?

Yucks! (yes, plural)

That is pretty gross. I'm glad my New Year's resolution was to not drink my calories--took myself off of all soda, gatorade, bottled teas, etc.

Get back onto plain old Dihydrogen Monoxide.

It doesn't have 150 calories per bottle. 2 or 3 of those a day is like eating a donut, calorically speaking.

You gotta make the food and drink yourself if you want perfection (or close to it).

Man, that's disgusting.

Having to drink that sugary water to get your man-shake?

This is not an issue with one company or a certain product but an occasional yucky thing which requires you to, ya know, grab a different bottle or entirely different brand of drink if you're too grossed out.

Get over it.

look it up it's true!

Vitamin Water tastes like the flavoring they put in cough medicines anyway. I don't get why people like it so much.

Lunchtime comes around, the place clears out and Joe has just GOT to relieve some stress. SO Joe goes behind the line, thinks about that hot new girl in bottling, and as he's about to relieve that stress, he realizes he doesn't have anything to relieve himself IN...

One man about to erupt, a million empty bottles just waiting to be filled with something.

You do the math.

I used to guzzle Snapple like it was going out of style, until I (nearly) swallowed one of these WTF-is-its.

This was 1994, and I have never drunk any kind of bottled fruit juice or gimmick water since.

It looks like it have been lugified by someone - nasty!!

Stop it, just STOP IT. You've already ruined Snapple for me! This needs to be the last yucky crap in a bottle post!

Luckily I don't buy into vitamin water but I still drink diet coke from time to time and I don't want to see jizz floating in it.

It is glucose or fructose congealing. It happens after awhile, probably an old bottle. Kind of like a gelation. I tok a swig of a gatoraid that had a big glucose slug in it once without noticing, pretty disgusting.

the bad thing was i took a swig of my water and spat it out as it tasted so incredibly bad.

oh i'm sure it's just some extra vitamins.....