POP OF THE DAY: Enviga Peach

Category: Energy Drink
Ratings (out of 5)
Taste: 2
Fizziness Factor: 5
Bottle/Can Design: 4
Availability: 4

Enviga is here! I've been waiting months for this sparkling green tea beverage (a joint venture between Nestle and Coca Cola) that allegedly has NEGATIVE CALORIES! How does it work, you ask? As far as I can tell based on my extensive reasearch (which consists of reading the can), it's the holy alliance of caffeine and Epigallocatechin gallate, everybody's favorite antioxidant found in green tea. As you can read here, every can is supposed to increase your calorie consumption from 20 to 33 1/3 calories, provided you're in the coveted 18–35 demographic. Think that sounds spurious enough that you should maybe sue the manufacturers for trying to dupe gullible behemoths into adopting a soda-based diet plan? You're not the only one.

But what does it taste like? Befitting its hybrid status, my Enviga tasted like the kind of drink a six-year-old might make by mixing together leftovers from the fridge, if the fridge in question contained Coke, green tea, a slice of peach, and a handful of freakin' aspartame. In short, a taste to be tolerated, not celebrated. (Total Score 15/20)

Suggested Food Pairings: For a negative-calorie snack, try Enviga with 1 package active, dry baker's yeast (20 calories); 1 pat margarine (20 calories); 1 cup mung beans sprouts (30 calories); or 1 cup cooked common cabbage (30 calories).

UPDATE: I tried the Green Tea flavor and it was a tad tastier, but for me the "negative calorie effect" consisted of a stomach ache that made me avoid food for a few hours.

Hey, maybe they're onto something.

New Soda Will Have "Negative Calories," Will Also Make You Fly

A joint venture of Coca Cola and Nestlé, Enviga will apparently use a combination of green tea and caffeine to create what Dr. Rhona Applebaum, chief scientist of The Coca-Cola Company, calls "a negative calorie effect." Studies at the Nestlé Research Center (a lab made of chocolate in Lausanne, Switzerland) have estimated that if you drink three (3) cans of Enviga, "healthy subjects in the lean to normal weight range can experience an average increase in calorie burning by 60–100 calories." So Enviga is some sort of high-tech anti-food, which fills me to the brim with skepticism about how it will taste (or anti-taste). But still, when Enviga (available in green tea, berry, and peach flavors) comes to LA in January 2007 (along with all those actors looking to score in pilot season), you can be sure that I will be all over it like ugly on a monkey.