24c vs. Vitamin Water (sponsored)
March 30, 2009
The Setup
When I gave up soda at the beginning of 2009, one of the hardest ones to give up was Jones Soda. I got hooked on their Cream Soda down at BlogWorld Expo last year and I’ll admit, I’ve always been kind of partial to their quirky, offbeat approach to being “the little guy” in the soda world.
So when they contacted me to see if I wanted to compare their new 24c Water against Glacéau’s Vitamin Water I was totally game. Yes, they offered me a small stipend for my time and effort, but I would’ve done it regardless – as I’m always on the hunt for new drinks to replace the void that soda has left in my life. Sh! Don’t tell them that tho… if they knew how much fun it was for us to do this test, they might decide not to pay me – and I need to be able to afford more flavored enriched water!
Okay, so the Test then
You know that there’s probably an easy way to do this – but if you’re half as geeky as my family, easy isn’t nearly as fun as “scientific process.”
With the help of GeekDaddy – I set up a “triple blind” taste test of the 5 sets of flavors to be compared. First, we took 5 pairs of blue plastic cups and labeled the bottoms with a sharpie so that they had a number and a letter to represent each pair (i.e. 1a, 1b thru 5a, 5b) and put each pair in front of the bottled pairs. Then slid them around a few times, turned them over and assigned the appropriate bottle to each one on our list.
The first list was essentially just showing which bottle went to which cup. But after listing each one, GeekDaddy and Buttercup went into the other room while I poured each one into it’s respective cup and lined them up by pairs. Then before calling them back in, I shifted each pair around a few times randomly so I didn’t even know which one was which.
Then I went into the other room while GeekDaddy came in and did the same – playing the shell game with each one. Then he went and randomly switched the order the pairs were in. All we knew at that point was that each cup in the pair went together.
I came back in, sent him out again and rotated the cups yet again. At this point, unless you had memorized the color and clarity of each one, there was no telling which was which. We kind of tried to vary the taste order by color – but we knew we were going to be drinking water and eating saltines in between each to clear our palates.
So we started a new page and made a list that would allow us to taste each one and record which one each of us liked best. At this point, the kidlet was getting a bit impatient… after all, all this cup switching and whatnot was keeping her from “drinking the water already Mommy!” I have to admit, I was more than ready myself.
The Water
Before we get much further, I suppose you’re probably wondering my now what flavors of water we were comparing.
To save you from trying to peer at the picture above that has cups on top of bottles and determine what they were, I’m going to take a moment to show you what we were ‘experimenting’ with here.
Glacéau’s Vitamin Water has titles for their water, whereas Jones Soda’s 24c is just named by flavor. Since “energy” and “endurance” don’t exactly indicate the flavor, I just went ahead and used the flavor titles in my research data. Besides, the name for the Vitamin Water Blueberry-Acai-Pomegranate one is likely to bring in a lot of the wrong kind of traffic, see the picture if you want. We couldn’t get an exact match on flavors, but here were the lineups:
The Results
I know you’ll put up with a few more pictures here – just because well, I wanted to make sure that everyone wasn’t baffled by the process. We had cups that we couldn’t see the designation on, we had a hidden list that went with the cups, and we had a bunch of yummy water to try.
So you saw the randomly selected order above. I was keeping notes by hand, but it didn’t take long for the data to migrate to a spreadsheet. Yes, it’s true, I’m one of those kind of geeks. You should see the dozens of spreadsheets on my hard-drive, you’d laugh.
Anyhoo… as you can see, with the exception of the first go round, there was no unanimous decision. Nor were our palates always in agreement. I did take some notes as we went – but I think you can see for yourself that while we all loved #1 & #5, #4 wasn’t exactly a winner with any of us.
So we’ve got our list… to decipher it, I made another list (yes really!) of winners by cup.
Then I went back and deciphered the cups – because seriously, if you’re doing a triple-blind test, it’s kind of one of those “now which one does that mean we liked?” And because I like you enough to do it for you? Here’s the deciphered results: 
So what does that mean? Well, the Glacéau Vitamin Water Tropical flavor was a hands-down winner over the 24c – but for the rest of the groups, 24c edged out Vitamin Water on flavor. Granted, as you can see by the notes, all of us would drink either brand when it comes to the Peach Mango flavor. After Thoughts So they’re pretty comparable flavor-wise, but 24c tends to be a bit better to us on most variants. The prices are pretty comparable as well. So why choose one over another? Well, the 24c waters have 500% of the USRDA of Vitamin C and they seem a bit more vitamin enhanced than the Vitamin water… so that might be the tipping point for me. But honestly? I was a little disappointed in the labels. Yes, labels – I know, I should only be focusing on the flavor, content and vitamins – but I’m sort of hoping that the marketing guys at Jones realize that part of the reason I always gravitate toward their product is that I can find it in the drink case at the convenience store. Given how similar the labels of the 24c product are to Vitamin Water? I’m liable just to grab whichever one is closest in the peach mango flavor. Still, it’s nice to have some great new options to help me out in my resolution to drink healthier… Just don’t expect me (or my family) to go with the Berry-Pomegranate versions of either. They’re the only bottles that got poured out rather than finished following our experiment. Ick. Tasted like perfume.
Bring on the Peach Mango!!
*Administrative note: as mentioned early in the post and in the title – the author of this post was compensated by Jones Soda in order to participate in the taste test. All opinions expressed are the author’s or where noted, her family’s. Jones Soda and their representatives had no editorial input over the post, nor were the opinions in any way affected by the compensation, nor the amount of compensation impacted by the findings.
Comments
9 Responses to “24c vs. Vitamin Water (sponsored)”
Got something to say?
Pretty interesting that it was pretty close and that you could go with either one and only the label would steer you into buying one or the other.
It seems that Vitaminwater established the label game as to what consumers are drawn to and the followers are just trying to match it. Up here in Canada other companies that are following the vitamin-enriched water game have also copied the VW label design.
Lucretia, Great test!
My one problem with the product & packaging is that it looks like each drink costs only 24c. I’m sure that is not the case. Wish it were! I’d stock up today.
Jason: yeah, I was surprised at how close the results were. I’ve taken a lot of ‘taste test’ challenges myself in the past and usually there’s a clear preference. But label isn’t the only thing that would tip my purchase if I were being good – because the 24c actually has better vitamin content. But I was being honest rather than pretending!
Paul: ooh! A very good point! I think it’s supposed to indicate that it has all the vitamin C you need for a 24 hour period, but yeah, I can see that!
Our favorite downtown haunt (an indie coffee shop_ recently replaced Vitamin Water with the 24C. I was open, but ended up finding the 24c to taste overly sweet. Now I am back to maxing out on caffeine. Cool test!
You know, I think the Peach Mango was sweeter if I recall correctly… so that might just be one of those ‘palate’ things. Hopefully your coffee shop offers something less caffeinated that tastes better to you in the near future!
If you haven’t tried 24c you absolutely should… check out: http://www.24c.com. This is Jones Soda Co’s. version of a vitamin enhanced beverage and they nailed it on taste and nutrients.
Most Vitamin Waters are made with Crystalline Fructose and if you don’t know what that is… read this: http://www.thefitshack.com/2007/03/28/what-is-crystalline-fructose
Jones 24c uses cane sugar as its sweetener and it gives their vitamin enhanced beverage a far superior taste. Jones also provides a much higher vitamin, mineral & nutrient content count.
Here’s Some Quick RDA Facts Per Bottle:
500% Vitamin C
125% Vitamin A
25% Vitamin E
62.5% Vitamin B2
62.5% Vitamin B3
250% Vitamin B6
500% Vitamin B12
and many more key minerals and nutrients like Chromium, Folic Acid, and Zinc.
If you compare you’ll see that 24c is by far the best value on the market in regards to health, taste and nutrients.
Flavors Include:
Lemon Lime
Tropical Citrus
Red Grapefruit (new!)
Peach Mango
Mandarin Orange
Strawberry Lemonade (new!)
Berry Pomegranate
Kiwi Dragonfruit (new!)
Cranberry Apple
Blueberry Grape (new!)
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