Vitamin water is one of those brands tailored to the individual, to show that you `get it'. Drinking a specific Vitamin Water, like chanting a yoga mantra, implies that you know yourself.
I’m sipping a raspberry-apple defence Glaceau Vitamin Water. It tastes like pre-masticated chewing gum or a weak Ribena squash now home to paint-brushes - and the bottle is telling me ‘to stay perky and use sick days to just, erm, not go in’ among other gaudy pearls. The 60% water part of me is not convinced by this ‘enhanced beverage’; it’s been listening to the hecklers enforcing us to drink more water at every opportunity for years. 3 litres a day, 8 glasses, down it, sip it, glug it, hydrate, dilute, drink. Water, water, water. It’s every health-kick's fuel, every facialist’s demand as if the constant imbibement of H2O will keep us awash from sin and looking like Jennifer Aniston rather than biltong.
The only time my mother is without a small water bottle, brim from her Brita filter, is in that small scanning chasm in the airport after she’s lopped one and before she’s acquisitioned another. But water is boring, sometimes it’s so boring that it won’t go down no matter how much you know necking 3 pints before bed after your Margarita fest, will do you good.
J Darius Bikoff decided the answer to this insipid tedium was Vitamin Water. This ballsy coloured flock arrived on the scene in 2000 and on English shores in 2008, forcing Evian, Vittel and Volvic to drop a rung on the racks and look humdrum. I was seduced by Vitamin water when living in New York 5 years ago. Working in a restaurant in Soho I would dive into the local deli for a V- Water and a fistful of 50c caramels. Vitamin Water looked more alluring than plain water and made me look more alluring than a plain water drinker, I thought. Plus Kurt, the gay bartender with mini hips, was a fan of the Dragonfruit kind, promising ‘to ignite your inner beast’, and he knew what was good for him. I opted for the English orange ‘essential’ to be drunk at ‘day-break’ with the Twilight cast.
Vitamin water is a classic case of a lot of blurb, philosophy and instruction drowning out a thin, wishy-washy product; it reminds me of the film Hook in that it suggests if you really, really believe, as some V-Water drinkers do, there will be a colourful and imaginative explosion. I wait. As it was I stood on the end of the New York bar with a straw inserted into my orange water, only to be met by a vague idea. I took another sip. Was Kurt getting something else from his? The lack of flavour was imperative to the goodness, I decided, cramming in caramels.
Vitamin water is one of those brands tailored to the individual, to show that you ‘get it’, that you are choosing your own specific blend of Vitamin b3, b5, b6, b12 and c, a cocktail for you in your own hue that sounds like a classroom orgy. Drinking a specific Vitamin Water, like chanting a yoga mantra, implies that you know yourself. But truth is they all taste the same despite their raunchy colours – of a post dessert snog. And neither are they the health-bombs they claim to be. Glaceau’s Vitamin Waters are a subsidiary of Coca-Cola as of May 2007 and with 23g of sugar per bottle are probably as likely to spirit away an old tooth as the black magic doctor himself. Rapper 50 cent reportedly got $400m for his 10% share in the takeover, for his endorsement of 'they do a good job of making water taste better'.
Vitamin Water is perhaps a better option than Firefly or This Water, part of the Innocent drinks empire, which recently had an ad banned for failing to mention the whopping 42g of sugar they’re sparkling with. The ad was deigned to be misleading, which pretty much sums up the Vitamin Water industry – misleadingly better than water; you might as well just eat some strawberry laces and have some fun. The bottled water industry is predicted to be worth £86m in 2011, up 41% since 2006, and so flavoured water is just the inevitable fun aunt to boring water, cashing in on our thirst for turgid cells and longevity. That said I’ve necked my ‘defence’, eyes are stalked on sugar and I’m off for a run….