Random Picture #108

Click to see a bigger picture. I'm not sure what the soymilk cookies are supposed to reset in one day (appetite?), but I have my doubts about their ability to suppress appetite. 

I think my brain goes in patterns and I'm not even aware of it. On Monday, I reviewed diet warabi mochi gelatin and the random picture that I chose (which wasn't even from the same set of photos, I assure you) is of diet cookies. I guess all of the junk food I'm seeing in the U.S. and the potential temptation has made my unconscious calorie conscious.

One of the things I remember my mother buying when I was a kid was a box of "diet" candy called Ayds. Setting aside the product name which would now remind people of a terrible disease, this product always seemed to me like a bad concept. The idea with Ayds, as it is with these diet cookies (which are rampant in Japan), is that you eat candy, cookies or bars instead of meals. While they may be packed with chemically distilled vital nutrients, I can't imagine that they fill the space in your stomach very effectively. I should note that, in addition to the plethora of these types of cookies made my Japanese manufacturers, there was also a big push for a much more expensive French-made diet cookie in many stores.

Still, Japanese people seem to be far better at "enduring" (gaman) hardship and deal with these meal substitution plans better than my mom did. The Ayds never helped her lose weight, after all. 

Tarami White Jelly

I keep talking about summer in my reviews, but with people melting onto the pavement and sweating in the intense humidity of the rainy season, and the various food companies pandering to all of us, how can I ignore the fact that the heat drives snack product introductions. That means less chocolate, more lighter, fruitier options, and especially more things that go down smooth and easy from the refrigerator case. That leads me to "jellies" (or, as we call them in the U.S., gelatin). There has been an explosion in the number of individually packaged gelatin options and most of them are pretty mundane fruit options. This "white jelly" caught my eye, because I don't know what "white" tastes like. That phrase could really be taken the wrong way...

I found this for 178 yen ($2.28) at Family Mart for 290 grams (10 oz.). That's on the expensive side, but it is a pretty large portion size. This is zero calorie jelly and I'm guessing the large amount is to fill a belly that wants to be full without any risk of weight gain. There are more and more of these products in Japan all of the time as the quest for an alien body image has spread here from the West to the East.

The company that makes this, Tarami, specializes in making a wide variety of gelatin desserts. Their main business is doing the kind with sugar based on fruit and real fruit flavors. Their zero calorie lines are split into two sizes with the smaller ones being fruit flavors and the bigger ones adding more esoteric varieties like cola and "white" to the line up. Their web site shows farms and lots of orange trees, but somehow I doubt their 400 or so employees are working the farms to fortify their gelatin desserts.

As for what "white" tastes like? It tastes like a sweet, slightly fruity Asian fruit cocktail and is somewhat yogurt-like. It's both a little tart and sour, but the flavor is on the mild side with no overwhelming sweetness. Since I'm accustomed to artificial sweeteners, this didn't bother me. In fact, I'm nearly immune to the chemical cocktails (Acesulfame K, Sucralose, Aspartame) that are used to formulate diet foods.

The part where this shines is in the texture. It's a cool, soft and slick jelly with chewy bits of nata de coco in the bottom. The textural variation that comes from the nata de coco is quite welcome and lends the illusion that you're eating something with a bit of substance. I should note that many Japanese gelatins like this include blocks of konnyaku jelly or nata de coco.

I liked this just fine, but I wasn't mad about it. The truth is that I can make more flavorful zero calorie jelly myself using plain gelatin, packets of artificial sweetener and whatever flavoring agent I want (coffee, tea, lemon, lime, etc.). That doesn't mean I couldn't see myself buying this again and it was perfectly pleasant. However, I'd only purchase it under the most unique circumstances because the size is bigger than I need and the price higher than I'd prefer to pay. Chances are, I'll never sample it again.

Just a gentle reminder that there is a contest running for two weeks to win a few snack and snack-related goodies. If you'd like to enter, the details are in this post.

Otsuka Calorie Mate Chocolate

 

Looking at the Calorie Mate packaing, I imagine they have one of the smallest design department staffs in the entire country. Every box of Calorie Mate is the same generic design with only a small variation in color and product naming. It must take all of a minute to roll out a new box when a new flavor is dreamed up by the alchemists who press together these little fortified biscuits.

Since I liked the maple flavor of Calorie Mate that I sampled, I decided to give the chocolate a try as well. Okay, I'll be perfectly honest about this review. It's a leftover from my "week of diet food" lot from long ago. In fact, there were several leftovers that didn't make the cut with only five slots to fill. I guess you can consider the chocolate Calorie Mate the "Miss Congeneality" of the lot from the diet and health foods week. 

In fact, I think that "congenial" is actually a pretty good word for this bar. It's pleasant enough, but rather bland. The chocolate flavor comes across as flat because there isn't enough sugar or fat in the bar to prop it up. Like all Calorie Mate bars, this is a bit on the dry side and is like low quality shortbread. Each cookie is 7 cm x 4.25 cm x 2 cm (2.8 in. x 1.7 in. x .8 in.) and there are 4 of them in the box I bought at Tomod's drug store for 150 yen ($1.62). As with all varieties of Calorie Mate, each cookie is 100 calories and you're meant to consume two cookies at once as a meal replacement.

This wasn't bad. It just wasn't especially good. There was so little chocolate as part of this chocolate cookie bar that I felt there was some lack of truth in advertising. If you're looking for inoffensive bar-type food which has been fortified, you could do worse than this, but I'd personally choose the maple flavor over the chocolate.

Slim & Slim Mango and Grape "Jelly"

When I first came to Japan, diet foods were pretty much nonexistent. There were pleasantly chubby Japanese girls, but they were seen as "healthy", not "fat". In the past decade and a half, diet foods and focusing on weight loss has grown exponentially. You see more products with "Zero" on them every year.

Part of me is sad about this because I think that it reflects diet obsession, which is never a good thing. Part of me is glad because I am a willing consumer of such foods. Of course, I have an excuse, I arrived in this country "pre-corrupted" by Western obsessions with dieting. Sometimes I think that the more we focus on our eating, the fatter we get, and I worry that the Japanese may eventually fall victim to the same problems as Westerners as their culture learns to promote fear of weight gain to sell products which eventually end up causing weight gain and food obsession.

Sociological issues aside, and I'm sorry to get so serious, but sometimes things take on a life of their own, I decided to finally dive in and try one of the plethora of zero calorie "jellies" (actually, it's what we call "gelatin" in the U.S.). I've seen big, single-serving size tubs of them in convenience stores and snack shops for quite some time and had passed on them. When these two varieties of smaller size jellies showed up for 89 yen (97 cents) per bag at Okashi no Machioka, I decided to dive in.

Note that I have tried regular (that is to say, sugar-filled) Japanese single serving gelatin tubs before. I wasn't a fan of them because they seemed toothachingly sweet. I can compare these sugar-free versions directly to that version. The first ingredient is Erythritol on both flavors and their respective fruit purees are the second. I don't understand how each can be zero calories and contain fruit puree, but there it is. The mango version is colored with carotene and paprika.

The mango has a pleasantly fruity smell and a nice mango flavor. It's not too strong, but it is rather sweet. It mainly lacks the citrus tones that you get with a real mango, but the flavor isn't bad at all. The grape smells like a grape lollipop and pretty much tastes like one. I think both of these would have a bit more punch with some citric acid or the equivalent.

I tried these both refrigerated and at room temperature and they're more pleasant when cold. The texture is pretty much what you'd expect for gelatin, though this is less firm and rather soft set compared to American gelatin like that you make with Jell-O mixes. Both also have a bit of liquid which tastes like juice around the outside.

These are pleasant tasting and not painfully sweet (which is better than the sugar-based jellies I tried before). They're even a little bit of a refreshing mouthful (each tub is 22 grams/.77 oz.) in hot weather when you have them cold. The thing that did surprise me though is that they tended to suppress appetite. Perhaps the gelatin is designed to achieve this effect, or it was just psychology, but I really did find that eating two of them (I tended to eat one of each flavor each time) killed my hunger for awhile.

I'd recommend buying these and putting one in your refrigerator if you're on a diet or have a tendency to eat more than you'd like. I think the mango is better than the grape, but both are fine. These aren't healthy at all since they have a chemical cocktail (Acesulfame K, Sucralose), but they seemed to serve me well when hunger struck and I either couldn't eat or didn't want to.

Lipton Grape Tea Zero

I think that I'm starting to have a stimulus-response reaction to anything in Japan with a big zero on it. Like the Pavlov's dog that drools when it hears a bell, I whip out my wallet when I see something with a zero. Though diet foods are more common than they used to be in Japan, something which is zero calories is still uncommon. I'm particularly drawn to drinks, as one can see by my track record thus far with reviewing beverages.



This is the third zero-calorie flavored tea that I've come across. Previously, I've tried orange and peach teas, and I think the shine is starting to wear off of the novelty of these drinks. While I feel this is no worse than the other two teas, I didn't feel that it was as enjoyable. The tea smells strange in that it doesn't smell especially like grape or tea but some sort of chemical concoction in between. It tastes a lot like someone stirred in a powdered packet of grape Kool-aid drink mix with some ice tea. It's really not bad at all. It's refreshing and mild, but it just isn't all that interesting an experience.

If you're a fan of powdered fruit drink mixes, you may like this more than I did. I finished the carton with no sense of discontent and with mild enjoyment, but I wouldn't buy it again.

Glico 80-calorie Rum Raisin Ice Milk

While researching rum raisin flavors, I came across the word A'bunadh; that is a word for a Scottish whiskey with a "rum raisin finish" (according to Wikipedia). I don't think that this whiskey had anything to do with the ice cream flavor, and I never did find out the origins of rum raisin ice cream. The only thing I did discover was that my notion that only toothless old grannies and grampies enjoyed it was dead wrong. Plenty of young folks seem to enjoy it, too, but perhaps that's because they think they're going to get loaded if they put away enough of it.

Though I'm not really a big fan of rum raisin ice cream, I decided to try this low calorie version because my only options in the Glico "calorie control" line are vanilla, chocolate with chocolate chips, green tea, and this. Though I haven't reviewed them, I have eaten the vanilla and chocolate before. The chocolate is very sub-standard. The flavor is very weak. The vanilla is also lacking in any real flavor, but does have a blandly pleasant generic dairy taste.


I went for the rum raisin because I thought it would be more flavorful than the other offerings, and boy howdy, I was right. This smells of rum and the first bite is super strong rum flavoring. As your taste buds get saturated, the heavy rum flavoring seems to mellow a bit, but it's still quite present throughout. The raisins are simply small shredded bits of raisin, so you can barely detect them either as a taste or texture. This is much more of a "rum flavored" ice cream than rum raisin.

When I ate this, I let it sit and get just so slightly melted around the edges. This makes gives you a greater sense of a creamy texture even though this is ice milk. Like the 80-calorie monaka that I reviewed before, this is made with polydextrose. It also contains Sucralose and Maltitol. For the privilege of eating 110 ml. (about a half cup) of ice milk, I paid about 150 yen ($1.68) at AM/PM convenience store. "Calorie control" certainly doesn't come cheap.

I liked this about as much as I'm going to like rum raisin as a flavor. I was pleased that this was so flavorful, but I wished that there had been actual raisins rather than the tattered remains of what looked like 2 raisins. I also wished that the rum flavor hadn't been so strong, but even a booze sissy like me didn't find it to be oppressive. I'd certainly buy this again if I found myself in the mood for this particular flavor.

Asahi Reset Body Bar (chocolate and orange)

Before I make my final review of a health/diet food for this week of such products, I'd like to say that there are tons of things which I didn't review, but many of them are very similar to what I've already mentioned and each other. One of the most common types of these foods which I passed on was granola bars. There was a cavalcade of them in a variety of flavors, including chocolate, vanilla, maple, and various fruits, but they all are essentially the same thing; that is, they are small portions of a standard granola bar fortified with certain minerals and vitamins. I skipped them because I didn't expect they'd be vastly different from any other candy bar parading as health food that you'd buy anywhere in the world.

I chose this bar mainly because it had a goofy name and was made by a company better known for its beer than its health food. Perhaps this is a little karmic balance for the good folks at Asahi. They destroy your liver on the one hand and then try to fix you a bit with a "diet support" bar with the equivalent of a multi-vitamin in it. Note that this is part of Asahi's "Slim-up" line of products.

I picked this up for about a hundred yen ($1.12) at a drug store not too far from my home called Tomod's. Tomod's is a chain so you're not unlikely to see them sprinkled all over Tokyo. They have quite a big display of health food bars including wafer, protein, granola, and meal replacement bars like Calorie Mate. Many of them aren't low calorie despite being marketed overtly as diet foods. I go to Tomod's mainly for the cheap toilet paper, and it was walking past their health food snack display that inspired me, at least in part, to do this week of reviews.

The bar is about 60% the length of its total package size.

When I opened the package, this smelled like a brownie with a chemical mixed in with it. It smelled good for a brief moment, then not so great. I think what I detected as "chemical" may have been the orange flavoring. I noted that the packaging is incredibly misleading in regards to the size. The calorie information also is for one of the two bars, not for the whole package. I think this is meant to make people think they're going to get more for the calories than they do. The size is about the width of one finger of a KitKat bar, though this is a bit longer.


Unsurprisingly, this has a cocktail of sweeteners and chemicals. The first ingredient is flour and the second is Polydextrose (a sugar substitute). Shortening, Erythritol, and Maltitol also appear high in the list of ingredients and Sucralose makes a guest appearance near the end. The only surprise is "coconut milk powder", though I didn't taste or smell any coconut.

In terms of taste, it's okay. It's like a low quality chocolate brownie with orange mixed in, though I did experience a strange metallic aftertaste in my mouth after eating one bar. The main problem is the texture which is tough and chewy. It reminded me of the evil spawn of an unholy coupling between a Tootsie Roll and a brownie. It was just weird and brought home the fact that this was something no one would ever eat for pleasure, but only in some vain attempt to get nutrition from some food-like substance. Of course, if you're an Asahi beer customer and are drunk enough, you may not be able to tell the difference.

TopValu Light Meal Konnyaku Jelly (Lychee)

Some time last year, I started to notice more and more zero calorie jelly (what we call gelatin) products for sale in convenience stores. This "light meal" nutritionally balanced drinking gelatin is something which has also been around for years, albeit not in as many zero-calorie forms. I wanted to sample it for my week of diet/health foods, but I'm a bit squeamish about the prospect of a drinking jelly.



I squeezed some of this into a glass, and what I saw didn't encourage me. You can't see it from the picture I took, but there are little wispy shreds of clear jelly suspended in a yellowish liquid. They resemble amoebas with a thyroid disorder. Of course, you're not supposed to squirt this stuff into a glass and drink it. You're supposed to suck it out of the tube at the top. This is good because it's very difficult to squeeze out. The packet is designed to keep it from spilling out. It works like a steel can of evaporated milk that only has one hole pocked in it. There's not enough of an exchange of air to allow the free flow of the jelly.

This is made with konnyaku jelly, something which I have been far less than keen on in the past. I tend to dislike the texture of it when it's put in stews and other Japanese dishes. If you don't want to read the Wikipedia entry, I'll tell you that it's jelly, often in a mottled gray block form, made from a plant (konjac). Konjac is a "corm", which is similar to a tuber or yam, but doesn't have the same properties. It is consumed for its texture, and its high fiber, which fills the stomach and aids digestion. In Japan, it's usually salty and used in traditional dishes, but it's popular in Asia in jelly drinks as well. People sometimes choke to death on it, but I can say that there is little risk of choking on the soft konnyaku in this beverage. It's too wispy for anyone to get lodged in his or her throat.


I chose the TopValu brand because it was cheap. I paid 98 yen at a local supermarket for this 180 gram pouch. There are a plethora of other choices, and I'm guessing most of them are roughly similar to this one in consistency and in having a huge list of added nutrients. Clearly, this is meant to fill the belly of dieting people who want to feel full, get nutrients, but consume no calories. This packet was fortified with B vitamins, D, E, Folic acid, and Panthothenic acid. It contains a pretty hefty cocktail of artificial sweeteners including Erythritol, Acesulfame K, and Sucralose. It also contains kale, which is popular in Japan for its nutritive properties. You can buy powdered kale and dissolve it in water to drink; it tastes as good as it sounds.

In theory, this is a great idea. The big question is about how it works in practice. The texture isn't nearly what I thought it would be. It's not slimy, but rather like drinking super soft tapioca bubbles. I have never had bubble tea, but I imagine this is a distant cousin to it texturally. The smell is rather fruity, like a cross between an apple and a peach. The taste at first is very sweet and like a fruit gelatin. I rarely eat lychee, so I can't know how faithful the flavor is to the fruit. It's not an impressive flavor, but it's unoffensive. The main drawback is that there is a bitter aftertaste after you've sucked down (literally) some of it. The only other drawback is that I feel goofy as an adult suckling on a tube like a baby with a bottle.

This type of food isn't meant to be some fantastic and tasty snack, but rather as a palatable health food to stop you from snacking on things that aren't good for you. I can say that it is inoffensive, and the sweetness is initially quite gratifying if you're hungry. I can also say that, without a doubt, it made my stomach feel full and that I would recommend anyone who counts calories and struggles with hunger give this a try. I don't know if it would actually replace a meal, but it would certainly help you stave off a case of the munchies between meals and I'd buy this again. In fact, I wouldn't mind keeping one on hand when I'm having one of those days when I just want to eat all day. Note that these last for months.

Otsuka Calorie Mate Maple

Click on this picture to see a bigger one that will allow you to read all of the ingredients clearly.

Calorie Mate is one of those things which nearly everyone who has been in Japan is aware of, and thanks to a video game appearance even those who are not in Japan may have heard of it. I'm not so sure that everyone who has seen it has tried it. I know that I had no inclination to sample it until I started this blog.

I've never been 100% sure of what the point of Calorie Mate is supposed to be, but I've always guessed that it is meant to balance people's bad eating habits by offering them a couple little fortified blocks. One of the reasons I never saw the appeal was that they aren't low calorie as a snack at 100 calories per cookie, and I eat fairly decently anyway and don't feel the need to eat this type of thing to balance my life nutritionally.

The Calorie Mate web site emphasizes nutritional balance and even provides a chart of the number of calories, amount of protein, fat, vitamins, etc. that an adult needs to maintain weight and health. For the record, the calorie count that Japanese men require according to the site is 2,650 and women need 2,050. I believe that the bars are supposed to be considered possible meal replacements if you are trying to cut calories in addition to being used as supplements if you feel you need more nutrients.

Calorie Mate is often sold in convenience stores and drug stores in Japan for around 150 yen ($1.67). I got mine from a huge display of health food cookies and bars at Tomod's drug store. Most of the other items were variations on granola bars and whole grain cookies.


There are quite a few flavors of Calorie Mate available including fruit, cheese, chocolate, and this maple version. I chose maple because I wanted to buy a variety that my husband would be willing to try. Each cookie is 7 cm x 4.25 cm x 2 cm (2.8 in. x 1.7 in. x .8 in.) and there are 4 of them in the box. They smell strongly of maple and, well, general cookie smell. The cookies are very dry and crumbly and have a decent, though rather artificial, maple flavor. They're like a poor quality shortbread cookie. Occasionally, there are fragments of what appear to be nuts in the cookie which isn't surprising since almonds are one of the ingredients.

For what they are, these are pretty good. I wouldn't be doing cartwheels over them or selecting to have one rather than a real cookie or an authentic treat. That being said, if you want to have something cookie-like which is healthier or at least less unhealthy, these are enjoyable both in texture and in taste.

Note that there are a lot of Calorie Mate commercials on YouTube featuring Kiefer Sutherland. Since "24" is so popular in Japan, they love to show him in his headset being frantic about something or other and then having some Calorie Mate product. Here's one commercial:

Cheerio Mega 700 Lemon

There's an episode of Seinfeld about a Pakistani restaurant owner who occupies a space near Jerry's apartment that seems to doom anyone who does business there to fail. The location seems practically cursed. I've got a few places near my apartment that similarly seem to suffer that problem. It doesn't matter who sets up shop or what sort of place they open, they close down in a year or so. Walking by these places always makes me feel a little sad. This feeling was dredged up when I bought this bottle of "Cheerio", despite the names connotations of "cheer", happy goodbyes, and breakfast cereal.

Bottles of Cheerio drink sat in a cardboard box outside of the local convenience store for months as I walked by the shop. The number of unpurchased bottles never seemed to go down so I'm guessing nearly no one bought any, or the store had every nook and cranny of its storage space filled with more of it. It's a mark of the power of the tendency to anthropomorphize that I felt sorry for the company that made this as its product was neglected by consumers.


The manufacturer is Cheerio Corporation. It's interesting that a relatively minor beverage maker has an English Wikipedia entry when some bigger companies do not. I expected to have to mine the Japanese Wikipedia site for more on them, but my life was made a bit easier. Apparently, this company's drinks are available in a limited area for the most part and that's why I was unfamiliar with them despite my many years of shopping in Tokyo.

I finally gave in and bought a bottle of this when some of it was moved into the refrigerated section of the store rather than parked outside. I also noticed that it had "calorie off" written on it and only has 16 calories per 100 ml. The bottle is huge at 700 ml, so it's 112 calories if you drink it all at once. The first ingredient is "grape sugar", but this is also sweetened with Acesulfame K and fortified with Vitamin C. My guess is this is marketed at the same people who purchase C.C. Lemon.

I didn't know if this was carbonated or not when I bought it, but it turns out that it is not. It smells lemony, but the scent is not powerful. The flavor is mild and close to "lemon water" or weak lemonade rather than a lemon drink. It's pleasant and light, but not sour and lacks a citric acid bite. I think that the type of people who like to have water with a slice of lemon would really enjoy this, and I thought it tasted fine. The main issue for someone like me is that I like stronger flavors. With lemon in particular, I'd like some sourness with my lemon and prefer some more acidity. I think that, had this been carbonated, I might have liked it more as is.

I wouldn't say this isn't worth trying. I actually think it is quite fine. It's just a little bit on the bland side for my tastes. I would buy it again if I were in the mood for something really mild and light, but that tends not to happen very often with me so I'm rather indifferent to it.

Glico 80-Calorie Monaka

I've often thought it would be interesting to create a blog devoted to low calorie, diet and health foods in Japan. Of course, I soon realized that such a blog could only update about once a week, if that, because there aren't many of such products. In America, people can create entire blogs devoted to low calorie, reduced fat, and healthy foods, but I'm hard-pressed to find anything in line with their review fodder except the odd zero calorie soft drink. I realize that eating "fake" foods in order to save calories isn't the best way to approach one's diet. However, I also think there is nothing wrong with the occasional indulgence that doesn't come with a hefty calorie price tag.

All of the ice cream in Japan is very rich and fatty. I rarely find a small cup of ice cream with less than 285 calories, and many are over 300. The only exception is Glico's line of 80-calorie ice milk treats. They sell small cups (110 ml.) of green tea, chocolate with chocolate pieces, rum raisin, and vanilla for 150 yen each ($1.69). These are difficult to find, but I can locate them at Natural Lawson's and one of the Family Mart convenience stores in range of my apartment. I have never seen them at local markets.

I was surprised to find that they also carry a low-calorie monaka ice milk sandwich. It is also about 150 yen, but has only 82 ml. of ice milk. According to their web site, they offer green tea and vanilla versions of these monaka, but I've never seen them. The vanilla version has red beans on it instead of the chocolate coating that this one has. All of these are part of what Glico calls their "calorie control" line.


One thing that one has to keep in mind when eating these types of foods is that the bar has to be lowered relative to other types of ice cream and ice milk. The question isn't how this stacks up to full-fat ice cream, but how good it is as a cold confection for 80 calories. Keep in mind that the first ingredient is polydextrose, a form of soluble fiber used to replace sugar. It also contains artificial sweeteners and tofu. Some of the ingredients aren't listed, however. The chocolate and monaka are simply listed as "chocolate coating" and "monaka".

When you give it a sniff, the first thing you smell is the monaka and that is like a cake cone. The monaka is rather soft and has absorbed a bit of moisture. I don't know if it might have been crisper if it hadn't sat in my freezer for a week, but my guess is that it wouldn't. Monaka aren't exceptionally crisp even when fresh.

The ice milk has a bit of a generic dairy flavor, reminiscent of powdered milk but not in a bad way. The chocolate coating is very sparse, but there is enough of it to add flavor. If you look at the picture above, you can see that the coating is fragmented rather than a solid sheet like I got in the Morinaga Jumbo Monaka bar. Mainly, it tastes cold and sweet with some bittersweet chocolate flavor. The flavors are not strong and I really wish there was a vanilla component to the ice milk.

This was fairly enjoyable. I can say that it was definitely worth 80 calories, but it won't do if you've got a hankering for some real ice cream. It will do if you have a craving for a cold treat. I would buy this again, but I can't say that it really "wowed" me so much as simply pleasantly satisfied me.

CC Lemon Zero

C.C. Lemon is one of those drinks that I've had an interest in for quite some time because it is packed with Vitamin C and who doesn't enjoy a good lemon beverage? My former boss used to drink it on occasion and some of my students swear by it as a way of keeping colds at bay.

I don't like to drink my calories and I particularly don't like to drink sugary acidic sodas because they have a bad effect on the teeth. This is what has kept me from sampling C.C. Lemon for all these years. I especially wanted to try it around the time that the Simpsons were used heavily in their promotions as there were some nifty bits of swag available at that time. Unfortunately for me, the Simpsons aren't being used now when a zero calorie version is available.

I investigated the name "C.C. Lemon", but didn't come up with any explanation of what the "C.C." stands for besides the fact that it's supposed to be packed with a lot of Vitamin C. The American Wikipedia page says that there has been some controversy about whether or not the advertised amount of C is really as claimed, but the Japanese page doesn't mention anything about it. The weird thing is that they don't mention the amount of Vitamin C in terms of usual measures, but as the number of lemons worth of C. A 500 ml. bottle of C.C. Lemon zero supposedly contains 70 lemons worth.


The soda smells pleasantly lemony and you can tell it's lightly carbonated when you open the lid since it makes less of a "pop" noise than other fizzy beverages. The lemon flavor is pronounced, but not overwhelming. The sweetness level is just a tiny bit higher than I'd personally prefer and you can detect the fact that this is made with a cocktail of artificial sweeteners, but it's far less obvious than some of the other diet beverages I've sampled. After the first several sips, the artificial sweetener taste tends to mute (but not disappear) a bit as your tongue grows accustomed to it.

This was a very refreshing lemon drink with a good balance of flavors and a very mild citrus bite. It's flawed because I wish it had a little less of an artificial sweetener flavor, a little more carbonation, and a little more citrus bite and less sweetness, but it's pretty good for a diet version of a beverage. My feeling is that diet soda beggars can't be too choosy, but this is pretty good regardless. I will definitely revisit this if it doesn't end up vanishing as so many zero-calorie drinks in Japan seem to do.

Suntory's web site for C.C. Lemon is currently sporting a strange space ship made from a drink bottle motif. It includes a little Flash-based game, but you have to read Japanese to play it and some desktop pictures and a screen save that can be downloaded. Among the desktop pictures, I find the diagram of the internal structure of the imaginary spaceship rather amusing because of all of the lemon-shaped furnishings.

Coca-Cola Plus with Fiber

On October 26, Coke released yet another version of its expanding "plus" line of no calorie beverages. Though I've only reviewed the green tea version, I have tried the version with Vitamin C, and I wasn't a fan. That being said, I wasn't offended by it. I just am not a huge fan of the lemon with Coke flavor that is in it.

If you live in Japan, you might realize that the Coke Plus line of drinks is a way of more directly competing with Pepsi Nex. First, there was Coke light with 50% of the calories of regular Coke. Pepsi introduced zero calorie Diet Pepsi so Coke finally came out with zero calorie Diet Coke (Coke light is part of history now). Now, they sell Coke Zero. Then Pepsi came out with a diet lemon-flavored version called Pepsi Nex and Coke countered with this stuff. It's interesting that Coke is constantly playing catch-up with Pepsi in Japan when it's the reverse in the U.S.


Though I didn't care for the lemon Diet Coke that is Coke Plus, the fact that this has fiber hooked me in. I paid 147 yen for this at 7-11 because I imagined I'd pour this into a glass and see little bits of grain floating around in it. Of course, that's not the way it is. It's more like Metamucil has been dissolved in it, I'd guess. It looks like normal Coke, has the mouth feel of, and smells like Coke with a twist of artificial lemon.

This isn't awful, but the difference between this, Coke Plus with Vitamin C and even Green Tea Coke is practically non-existent. There's a Simpsons episode about the making of "Duff beer" where they show the beer pouring down three pipes into different containers. The pipes says "regular Duff", "Duff Dry" and "Duff Light", but the liquid pouring into the pipes is coming from the same central barrel/vat. This image came to mind after sampling this Coke Plus. It's as if Coke is pouring the same stuff into different bottles.

If for some strange reason you'd like a desktop picture with Sarah Jessica Parker hawking Diet Coke beverages or the design on the bottles, you can download them here.

Green Tea Coke Plus with Catechin

You'd think that living in Japan would mean I'd be right on top of every new release, but the truth is that one would have to make it a priority to stroll through every aisle of a convenience store on a daily basis to see new items or keep an eye on the news of new releases in Japan. I'm too busy for the former and too lazy for the latter. The truth is that I was completely unaware of this new green tea Coke until Marvo at The Impulsive Buy brought it to my attention. It's because of him that I sauntered down to the local Family Mart and bought three bottles (one for me, two for him) and that you're seeing this review in such a timely fashion.

I didn't realize it when I first looked at this, but this Coke is meant to appeal to the type of people who will buy junk food that has been "enhanced" to make it healthier. It's "Coke Plus" for starters, not "Diet Coke" or "Coke Zero". Coke Plus is the ugly stepchild to the other calorie-free Cokes. It has vitamins or minerals or some such crap added to it such that it has a weird aftertaste. I tried Coke Plus once, and decided that I'd never allow it to darken the doorway to my taste buds again.

The "catechin" is supposed to be the "plus" in this whereas the "plus" in the more commonly available Coke Plus is Vitamin C. Catechin is supposed to reduce your chances of developing cancer or hardened arteries. I'm guessing that you'd be lucky if the catechin in a bottle of this canceled out your chances of developing cancer from the artificial sweeteners in it.


The first ingredient in this is green tea extract followed by caramel flavor and then another type of green tea acidulant flavoring (which adds a sharpness to the flavor). Other ingredients include both of the artificial sweeteners aspartame and Sucralose. You'd expect it to be bursting at the seams with green tea taste given the ingredients list, but taking a whiff of it doesn't really reveal much except an off-brand cola smell. The first several sips also didn't overwhelm me with tea flavor, but as I drank more, there was more and more of a sense of the grassy flavor that comes along with green tea. Halfway through the bottle, it became increasingly more pronounced. It's as if I had to build up a sensitivity to the flavor to detect it more clearly.

The sense I got from this is that it carries the basic flavor of green tea, but without any trace of its trademark bitterness. This gives it a strange flavor which seems reminiscent of Stevia. It's like a grassy, malt flavor. I'm not sure that a green tea aficionado would recognize what this is as actual green tea taste, but I'm pretty sure a Coca-Cola fan would recognize that something was not quite right with it.

This certainly was not bad at all. If I were in the market for a calorie-free Cola and couldn't buy regular Diet Coke or Coke Zero, I'd buy this without fear that I would find it unpalatable. I'd take this over the Coke Plus with Vitamin C for certain. However, I don't see this as particularly special or appealing and it'd definitely be second to a regular plain old Diet Coke. Unlike Pepsi's weird flavors, Coke seems to be attempting to make something more subtle and palatable.

Note that there is currently a contest going on with all Coca-Cola beverages where numbers in the cap can be used to win J-League (Japan Soccer League) shirts and other bits of flotsam if you're inclined to fill your life with useless possessions. You have to go to the contest web site and enter your numbers and manage in Japanese, and you have to care enough to bother.

This is also reviewed at the Impulsive Buy.