Tournament of Zero – In Search For the Best Sparkling Water

In the years since giving up Coke and other sweet beverages, I learned to increasingly rely on sugar-free sparkling water as a substitute. After exploring a dozen or so different brands and flavors from a variety of grocery stores, all I could say was that some options were much better than others. I began to need a systematic approach to determine the best sparkling waters and help me remember what to avoid.

I’ve been a fan of food rankings and taste tests. Food Theory’s recent video on diet cola also inspired me on the best format for conducting these tests. Thus we went to work… and collected sixteen sparkling waters to fight it out, tournament style.

CRITERIA

The market had such a vast selection of sparkling waters these days, that buying every brand and flavor to try would require more floor space than we had at home. To narrow them down for this exercise, we came up with two basic guidelines. The first was zero calories: no sugar, and no sugar substitutes. The second was a simple citrus flavor: a common denominator across most brands for comparability, and generally better tasting than the likes of cherry coffee. A few exceptions were made:

• AHA’s lime watermelon and citrust green tea flavors: these combos were rather crazy, but AHA didn’t have any basic flavors and I wanted to include Coca Cola’s brand since, well, it was the largest beverage company out there
• Spindrift had 4 calories per can due to the minimal inclusion of fruit juice… not ideal, but in order to include a major brand name in this space, I could overlook less than a stick of gum’s worth of calories
• Artificial sweeteners: Genki contained erythritol and sucralose, while Sunny Select contained aspartame. I thought it was somewhat problematic that they marketed themselves as sparkling water and the packaging didn’t make it clear that they were sweet drinks

The full list of the 16 contenders:

• AHA lime + watermelon (can)
• AHA citrus + green tea caffeine (can)
• bubly lime (can)
• La Croix lime (can)
• Crystal Geyser lime (plastic bottle)
• Dasani lemon-lime (fountain from McDonald’s… this brand vanished and was replaced by AHA in retail stores)
• Genki citrus (plastic bottle)
• Nixie lime ginger (can)
• Perrier lime (glass bottle)
• Soleil (Safeway) lime (can)
• Soleil (Safeway) lemon (can)
• S.Pellegrino lemon (can)
• Spindrift lime (can)
• Sunny Select (Lucky) key lime (plastic bottle)
• Trader Joe’s lime (plastic bottle)
• Waterloo lemon lime (can)

All four members of our family participated, taking turns to pour drinks for one another. Two products were placed in a pair of cups for each match, and each taster chose his or her preference without knowing which was which. The winning product, for each person, advanced to the next round. Rinse (the cups) and repeat until a final champion was determined. The 16 contenders were seeded two different ways to avoid a potential finalist being eliminated too early.

This event turned out to be incredibly fun for all of us, even though I was the only one who actually drank sparkling water at any frequency. The kids learned the tournament chart and were engaged through the whole thing. Our opinions differed quite a bit from one another, even in matches that I thought would’ve been clear-cut (for example, the kids didn’t find AHA’s watermelon flavor as nasty as the adults did). The one thing all of us agreed on was that premium brands of sparkling water, such as Perrier and S.Pellegrino, were definitely not worth it.

Winner(s)

Hong and both kids gave the championship to Sunny Select key lime sparkling water, a store-brand under dog that we picked up just to fill a slot. We didn’t realize it contained an artificial sweetener, which was easily the deciding factor. They also unanimously agreed for Genki citrus to be the second place because it was the other sweet contender. In hindsight, including a couple “diet sodas” in a tournament of sparkling waters may have been too much of an apples and oranges situation. In our defense, both products marketed themselves as zero-calorie sparkling waters. If you didn’t read the ingredient list or know which chemical compound were sugar substitutes, you wouldn’t realize how they were in a different category of beverages.

While I also enjoyed Sunny Select and Genki, I focused my mind on the clean, crisp nature of the unsweetened sparkling water that I set out to find. The ultimate champion for me was Dasani lemon-lime sparkling water. It was hardly a surprise because it was the very drink that drew me into these drinks (I had my first can on an American Airlines flight to Dallas), and never thought any alternative came quite close to its Sprite-like taste. Unfortunately, this was also the result that I feared because this product may not be around much longer. Coca-Cola had discontinued Dasani in retail stores and replaced it with the funky AHA brand. While the Coca-Cola Freestyle Machines at many fast food restaurants still dispensed Dasani, there was evidence AHA may take over that space as well. This tournament was in part an attempt to search for a more widely available alternative to replace Dasani, but color me disappointed…

Full Tournament Charts

Aftermath

Going through the full tournament necessitated 4 rounds totaling 15 matches. At max efficiency, each of us would’ve had 30 sips of carbonated liquid. Most matches in reality required multiple focused tastes, and we almost always finished the leftover sparkling water in each cup. We were so bloated from the bubbles that it was impossible to eat dinner. And we now had dozens of cans and bottles laying around in the kitchen… including some truly hideous flavors 😉