Becca Jane St Clair

I’ve been seeing the commercials since I got back from the UK for a new energy drink from Ocean Spray called Cranergy. Cranergy boasts 50% fewer calories and less sugar than “traditional energy drinks” and contains “green tea extract & B-vitamins”. First, I need to correct something. One serving of dragonfruit flavoured Vitamin Water (the bottle is technically 2) also only has 50 calories, and Vitamin Water now makes a new 10 calorie version. If you purchase the 4C brand Vitamin Stix or Energy Rush, those actually have 0 calories. But we’ll forgive Ocean Spray.

I love anything cranberry flavoured, so I really wanted to give this a try, but at over $3 for the large bottle, I wasn’t willing to purchase it in case I didn’t like it. I was going through the coupon offers on coupons.com on Friday, and I discovered a $1.00 off ANY Cranergy item coupon. Then while we were at Weis, I saw the 4-pack on sale for $2.99, making it only $1.99 with my coupon, and each bottle only $0.50.

So we picked a pack up, and I cracked open one of the 12 oz. bottles around 10PM when I was feeling a bit tired and still had a lot of work to do. The first thing I noticed was the overly sweet taste of sucralose. As I said above, I love cranberries, and what I especially love about them is how tart they are. It goes without saying that I was a little disappointed with the sweet taste of Cranergy. It tasted just like the Diet Ocean Spray (a product I dislike for it’s overly sweet taste). I couldn’t taste the green tea or the grape juice the ingredient list claims it contains.

As far as the vitamin content goes, it has 100% Vitamin C, but it also lists 70% for Niacin, Vitamin B12, Vitamin B2, Vitamin B6, and something called Pantothenic Acid, which I’ve never heard of before. A quick search on Google tells me that it’s simply another name for Vitamin B5. The only other vitamins mentioned on a regular bottle of Ocean Spray are 1% Iron and 1% Calcium, both missing from Cranergy. The small print on the side of the nutrition facts also tells me that due to the green tea content, Cranergy has 83mg of caffeine. A strong cup of hot black tea contains between 50-100mg of caffeine to give you a comparison.

Around 11PM last night, I decided to go to bed. I was still tired, and was going to chalk up the Cranergy as just another gimmicky product. But as I was checking e-mail and other things for the last time before bed, I started to feel a bit more awake. I got into bed and started watching Season One of Eureka and stayed awake until past 2AM. I blame this entirely on the Cranergy, as I’ve been in bed lately by 11 or 12!

Today, I foolishly drank 2 bottles – one this morning at breakfast, and one in the early evening. I completely forgot it was an “energy” drink and grabbed it for the cranberry flavour. Whoops.

So I think I would recommend this drink if you can handle the sweet cranberry taste and are willing to wait an hour or so for the energy boost to kick in. I still think the regular price for the bottles is a bit steep (the large bottles are smaller than regular bottles of Ocean Spray, yet cost more), but if they plan on offering $1 coupons more frequently, I’ll continue to pick up the 4-packs. But if you’re looking for a beverage that will provide energy and more vitamins (and still don’t mind the taste of sucralose), I’d go with Vitamin Water or 4C Vitamin Stix, personally. If you’re looking at it purely in terms of cost, Vitamin Water frequently on sale for 10 for $10, making it the same cost as the Cranergy 4-pack at regular price. Vitamin Stix are sold 14 to a box and cost around $4 for the box, making it less than $0.30 per bottle. Of course, with Vitamin Stix, you have to have a bottle of water to mix it into, and if you don’t have a bottle to fill with water, you could wind up spending more than $1 on a bottle of water, which would significantly up the cost.

Wonder how long I’ll be awake for tonight?