Starbucks Refreshers Raspberry Pomegranate and Orange Melon

Starbucks Refreshers: Natural Energy from Green Coffee Bean Extract

Sparks (or at least sparkling juices) fly when energy and refreshment unite in a lightly carbonated blend of juices, vitamins, ginseng, and green, unroasted coffee beans. It's a delicious energy boost, without any coffee taste.

Starbucks Refreshers are a relatively new line of beverages that are advertised as giving you natural energy, which comes from the green coffee bean extract. Their line includes tea beverages that you can order in the shop, the powdered Via sticks, or they come in a can (which is, as you can see in the picture, the one I am reviewing today).

So let's get started on green coffee bean extract itself. No there isn't separate color of coffee bean that you can buy, for those of you who don't know. It's not like regular beans where they come in a red, white, and black eyed variety. Green coffee beans are just like the regular coffee beans you buy at the store, but they are the raw version. When you pick coffee beans from the little plant, it looks like you are picking some sort of red berry. But the seed inside is a coffee bean and it is a nice bright green color. 

So why are they better for you than regular coffee? Isn't regular coffee still natural even if they roast it? Hell yeah it is. But some benefits are lost in the coffee bean through the roasting process. This includes some special antioxidants and something called chlorogenic acid. Chlorogenic acid will help you lose weight because of the way it helps your body metabolize some of the sugars you have eaten throughout the day. Suppliers of green coffee bean pills claim that you can eat as you please as long as you take the green coffee bean supplement. Apparently it has helped people lose weight and is completely safe to use as far as we know. Dr. Oz even recommends it. This acid is what has made green coffee bean the new superfood/weight loss supplement on the market. People are crazy about it and I am starting to see it everywhere. Just like the acai berry, green tea, and greek yogurt craze before; companies want to add it to anything and everything to make people buy their products which they advertise are healthy. Side rant: Greek yogurt ice cream, or any frozen yogurt type of ice cream is not healthy for you. It is not even a healthier alternative to the real stuff. So what, you get 2 more grams of fucking protein than the regular ice cream? Let me tell you this, at the end of the day those 2 extra grams are not going to matter. Especially next to all that sugar in your frozen yogurt.

Well back to coffee beans. Why not just eat them raw and whole? Well cause they are bitter as hell and you won't be able to eat them no matter how well you trained your taste buds to bitterness. So you can either take it as a supplement, buy it as a powder, or buy it in prebottled beverages.

Now let's move along to the refresher. Raspberry pomegranate is the flavor I am reviewing. So I pop open the 12 oz can, which is an average of $1.99 wherever you buy it, and I do get a raspberry pomegranate smell. The can is all cool looking, nice and skinny and long. How does it taste?

Well it tastes pretty okay. Nothing special. It has the raspberry pomegranate taste you are looking for but it doesn't have such a strong flavor of it though. I was hoping for a heavily flavored juice with a nice aftertaste, but after it goes down your throat you feel like you drank just regular old soda.

The carbonation is not very heavy, as they have stated, but it does not taste like flat soda either. It is pretty smooth and the carbonation is preserved in the can pretty well. 

Like they said, no coffee flavor, which I actually prefer the coffee flavor but that is just me. I love the java. But this is more like a juice like substance.

Overall all I give it a 4/10. I mean, it is nothing special and the health benefits are almost none. I do like how there isn't any artificial sweetener in it, but there is too light of a flavor for me. Not to mention, it is ridiculously priced.


Now for the Orange Mango flavor, which I decided to add to the end of this post because I also had it today. I am a bit of a caffeine addict since I had two cans of this stuff today in addition to my giant pots of coffee sipping all day.

So the Orange Melon flavor is alright. Like the Raspberry Pomegranate the flavor is really light. But it also has a decent Orange and Mango flavoring, which apparently is from real juices since 1/4 of the can is real juice. I actually prefer the Raspberry Pomegranate which seems to be a little heavier in flavoring. Usually I prefer the tropical flavors though. But I do like how well the flavor of the fruits are captured in these two refreshers.

Sorry for the crappy camera pics.

Jell-o Mousse Temptations Caramel Creme

Before this day I had never tried mousse before. I had an idea of what it was, which is why I wasn't too eager on trying it. Mousse is like an aired out pudding. It just reminded me of whipped cream, so I wasn't too curious about it. But today at Walmart, I decided to pick up a pack of Jell-o Sugar Free Mousse Temptations for $2.98.



I have to say I was pretty amazing by the flavor. As usual, Jell-o knows how to make their puddings and snack packs taste good. The Caramel Creme is the only one I bought, and it honestly tasted a lot like Brach's Caramel Chews. The texture was almost exactly like Jet-puffed Marshmallows. I wasn't too wild about it; I prefer regular pudding to this any day.

The after taste of this stuff wears off pretty quickly. I actually feel something pasty going on in my mouth, which isn't too pleasing. I am assuming it is the sugar alcohol they used to sweeten this cup.

Despite the fact that the packaging looks cool - in a nice black 4 oz cup - I would have expected way more from Jell-o

Tuttimelon Frozen Yogurt

There used to be a frozen yogurt place near my house called Tutti Frutti. It closed down a couple months ago, most probably because it ran out of business. I heard of it from a friend who took me there. At first I thought it was the coolest place ever because you could pour yourself your own yogurt from the machines on the wall and pay for it by the ounce.

It looked cheap too, only 39 cents an ounce, but who knew how fast those ounces add up to make each trip cost nearly $5. In the end I do prefer regular ice cream to frozen yogurt, but I like to mix it up once in a while. I walked back there twice before they closed it down.

It was sort of disappointing. Fortunately, I noticed a new place called Tuttimelon at my local mall that was almost like a replica of Tutti Frutti with an addition of gelato on the menu.

They do not offer as many flavors of frozen yogurt as Tutti Frutti, but they have some of the primary stuff. I poured myself a small serving of chocolate topped with coconut and brownie chunks.



It was quite delicious. It tasted exactly like Tutti Frutti and I enjoyed it. The yogurt itself tasted like a nice cold hot chocolate in a creamy form. But the toppings easily over powered it. The brownie pieces were a bit stale for me, but the coconut flakes added a nice touch. For future reference I won't add those again.

My mom also came along on this trip and she poured herself strawberry yogurt and topped it with some coconut. Her yogurt was a little too tart for me. I remember Tutti Frutti's being a bit better. But the coconut added a nice touch to her yogurt as well.

If you haven't noticed, loving coconut runs in my family.

Like I said, it's a bit pricey for me considering I'm not in love with frozen yogurt. I would prefer a trip to Baskin Robbins for the same price cause I like the thicker ice cream stuff. I would actually prefer a Starbucks Frappuccino to this. But for frozen yogurt lovers out there, have a go at it.

I will go back for the gelato though. It sounds good.

Yoplait Original Harvest Peach

For years now Yoplait has been bragging about the health benefits of their products. Obviously most people believe them because Yoplait is growing bigger and bigger as time goes by. It seems like every time I hit the supermarket they have come up with new flavors and products.

I lived my whole life on homemade yogurt. So when I saw the label on a Yoplait yogurt for the first time I laughed at the fact that it was even called "yogurt". There was so much crap in there that probably 10% of it was actually real yogurt. It even contained the evil high fructose corn syrup, which from my understanding, has been taken out of their products now. Nevertheless, I still don't see it as a health product, but more as a dessert or snack.

Not that I am completely against Yoplait. I mean, I've tried their stuff before at my aunt's house. When I was in elementary school they used to serve us Trix yogurt on occasions which for some reason was so exciting because it was in a package.

A friend of mine was giving these out a snack so I picked the Harvest Peach variety, recalling that I liked this flavor. I do remember disliking some Yoplait flavors due to the fact that they had a sickening chemical flavor to them, but maybe I misremembered.

The Yoplait Harvest Peach tasted like I remembered. I did like the flavor. It was very creamy and had some occasional tiny peach chunks. Unlike most packaged yogurts, the fruit chunks were not at the bottom, but dispersed all around. But they didn't really taste different than the yogurt itself and they were too small to really make a difference anyways. It was delicious.

Yoplait has made each container of these yogurts contain 50% of your daily calcium needs. I say that is fantastic because the youth of today don't get nearly enough calcium in their diets anymore. Most kids don't drink milk, and if they do it's the sugared/flavored milk that does give calcium along with 100 pounds of excess fat to the child's body. Which in a sense would be a negative affect for the calcium because the bones would be fragile anyways because of the excess weight that the person has put on.

Nutritional Information:
1 container
Calories: 170
Fat: 1.5g
Carbs: 33g
Fiber: 0g
Protein: 10g

Just like those milks, these yogurts are filled with sugars. There are over two tablespoons of sugar in each of these little 6oz servings. This makes the yogurt almost 20% pure sugar alone.

Overall, consider these things like a dessert or a treat. Think of them as portion controlled ice cream with added protein and calcium. They do have a wide variety of flavors to choose from and plenty of people love them.

Costco Braided Apple Streudel

It's almost a crime if you hit Costco and don't pay a visit to the bakery section. Today the Braided Apple Strudel was one display. A nice sweet woman was giving two-bite samples of them. I found myself wishing she was my grandma cause she insisted on calling me "sweety" and "honey" with a wonderful grin on her face. See what not having a grandma figure around does to you?

I have seen them before. The Braided Apple Strudel look delicious and fancy. I was never into the flaky desserts, I mostly prefer the moist stuff so they never really caught true attention until they were given out. Taking a good look at them really made me crave some. Lucky for me the woman was offering them.

They were better than I expected, but still not that great. They weren't sweet enough for my liking. Although I bet they would have been better with vanilla ice cream; a popular way to serve apple strudel in this country.

The texture seemed to me as good as it could get for a flaky pastry. But for most I think it would be soggy. If that is a problem for you, you can place these in the oven for 12 minutes and they crisp up. There is a generous amount of apple filling with real apple chunks. There was also some sugar crystals sprinkled on top of it.

The smell was sort of like apple pie. Matter of fact, the taste was like an apple pie. Kind of like a portable apple pie if you can imagine.

They were a bit pricey as well. It was $6.99 for a box of 8 pastries, making each pastry just under $1. Granted they are a decent size, even for the calories.

It's one of the worse tasting Costco bakery products, but it has probably one of the best nutrition stats for the size

Nutrition Information:
1 large pastry
Calories: 390
Fat: 16g
Carbs: 58g
Fiber: 3g
Protein: 5g

This wasn't bad tasting if you like puff pastry type of stuff
Since I'm not into it much I give it 4 points
Don't get me wrong, it's not disgusting at all and perfectly edible.