Saturday, April 21, 2007

An apple a day

Do Marks & Spencer put apple juice in all their drinks?

I first noticed this when I tried their vanilla & maple smoothie. I had acquired a particular taste for vanilla flavoured milky drinks when it was my favourite among the supercharged nutritional drinks I was given in hospital last year. The first taste of the M&S version made me splutter - rather than a slightly sweet creaminess I got distinctly sour. Examination of the label revealed that apple juice was an unexpected ingredient. I have since acquired the taste however

This week I suddenly noticed that the diet version of their lemon & lime fizzy water costs 15p less than the full strength version, which seems rather a lot for the difference between the price of sugar & saccharine. I normally avoid, on principle, anything which carries the rubric diet, or lite, or (ugh) lo-fat but I was intrigued enough to compare labels

Apart from the fact that the diet version tells you the country of origin of the lemons & limes, there are only 2 real differences between the 2 versions. The artificial sweetener is the same. So the price differential is down to the use of bog-standard carbonated water rather than mineral water, & the addition of apple juice to the full strength version