A fruity water or a watery fruit drink? (Volvic Revive)

Member Name: iamasadlittleboy

Product:	Volvic Revive
Date:	17/09/09 (44 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Taste, Price

Disadvantages: Possibly links to cancer via Bensene, Sports bottle, not the strong of "reviving" features

Looking on the shelf for drinks I've yet to try has become harder and harder as I've pretty much tried to sample every available drink in the local shops. Though when I saw this deep red Volvic I realised it was something I hadn't tried, so snapped up a bottle of what turned out to be Volvic Revive. Coming in a 500ml bottle with a square base and at a mere 39p this seemed like a value buy.

As far as bottled water goes, it seemed to me that Volvic, despite it's claims of "Volcanicty" was more similar to tap water than anything else, and sadly this made it the most drinkable of quite a sorry bunch. However looking at Volvic Revive struck me as something that was entirely different, from the colour to the claims on the bottle, it seemed there was something special here. With a name like "Revive" it was easy to think this was something more like an isotonic drink than a pure water, it wasn't just "Volvic" it was "Volvic revive". The grey and red label has eye catching phrases over it like "Stimulating Hydration", "Invigorating lift" and of course "Berry Blast", these sounded alive, alluring and exciting.

Though the bottle, like so many now a days comes with one of those annoying sports caps that I can never quite work with. Why does a "water" drink come with a "sports" cap, it makes no sense, sports drinks are isotonic drinks or glucose based energy drinks (funnily enough glucose drinks don't seem to ever actually sports caps). A personal dislike of sports caps as they make drinking the contents much more difficult leads to the question, why do so many company's use them? Are they cheaper?

So aside from the anti-sports rant, what does the drink actually taste like? Well it has a light and rather weak fruity taste with the juices of Grapes, Black currants and blueberry's used to make the drink it comes as no surprise they do form some of the taste. Though as they account for just 2% of the overall contents of the drink, it's easy to realise they are completely out powered by the water contents (97%) that dilute the taste of the fruit combination. The drink also has plant extracts including Ginseng, Caffeine and Anthocyanins (which despite actually having an E number of 163 are a natural colourant in some plants, used to give the drink it's red colour, and are seen as being beneficial). As well as these the drink has added sweetners in the forms of Sucralose and Acesulfame K and without getting into a huge argument, neither pose much of a risk at the levels contained in the drink (in fact it's assumed that with out going into excessive consumption of either you'll be fine with them in a regular diet). The sweetners are evident whilst drinking the liquid as they are almost as noticeable as the fruit juices making the drink.
Finally the drink also has a preservative Potassium Benzoate, this is E212 and it's advised that children don't consume it, so this might be the only real health concern with the drink. Though there does appear to be ongoing tests on the product as it's closely linked to Benzene which is a carcinogen, and so consuming it could end up being a problem, though the UK Foods Standards Agency have shown the people are at a minute risk of benzene forming in drinks.

Nutritional Information (per 500ml)
9.5 Calories
1.5g sugars (<1%)
0g Fat (0%)
0g Saturates (0%)
Trace Salt (<1%)

Overall the drink holds the middle line between "bottled water" and fruit juice, much better than any of the flavoured water drinks do, which always seem to taste terribly poor. However it must be admitted that the "Invigorating lift" never seemed to kick in sadly, though the taste was delightful if a little bit on the weak side, though at 39p it really was a bargain. Well worth a try if you're happy at the infinitely small risk of benzene.

For those worried about benzene, the preservative which is featured in a lot of soft drinks (Potassium Benzoate) can be seen as being to blame for 3.1micrograms in an average persons day. This is the same as 50 seconds stood at the petrol pump filling your car. Not much of a risk at all.

Summary: A lovely drink, though writing the review and research has made me aware of cancers :-O