Interested in your results. I mix camu camu and acai into my smoothies. Whether placebo effect or not, I like em.
Laundry list of thoughts:
1. Fairly pricey. I bought the 32-pack as a one-time-purchase for $32 shipped, which is $3.20 per packet (one packet per drink). Price goes down as you buy more & if you subscribe, especially if you get the permanent 30% founder's discount, which gets each packet down to like $1.50 a pop, which is much more reasonable. So over three bucks for a packet of powder is pretty high, but you're getting a high-quality product & if you were to buy a fresh juice locally, you'd probably be paying at least that much. A large cup of fresh juice in my area typically starts at $6 a bottle, for reference. DIY juicing isn't much cheaper because fresh produce is expensive, plus you have to wash/chop/juice/clean.
2. Starter kit included a fairly cheap shaker bottle. Construction is borderline super cheap & I didn't like the design for a variety of reasons: the mixer grid is built into the bottom of the cup, when you pour the powder into that area, it overflows, powder gets stuck under the cap when shaking, and it's a pain to clean if you don't rinse it out immediately, which kind of negates the idea that you can just tear open a packet, mix, and drink, because then your blender bottle is gonna get nasty if you don't wash it out right away. Just get a regular protein shaker cup with a mesh metal ball, or get an electric volcano mixer, or use a blender. It doesn't mix well by hand (I tried it with a fork), just clumps up.
3. As far as I can tell, it's just freeze-dried fruits & veggies, blended into a powder. If you've ever had something like freeze-dried strawberries, that's about what you'll get with the powder. So you can taste it, but it's not like it's super-delicious or anything. You'll be drinking this for the health benefits, not for flavor, is what I'm getting at. Looping back to cost, freeze-dried fruit is pretty dang expensive, so I'd be curious to see a cost comparison of buying freeze-dried stuff & blending it up yourself & mixing it yourself vs. buying these packets. For convenience, they can't be beat, but for a one-time purchase at $3.20 per packet, hmm.
4. For all their talk about saving plastic, I found it odd that they sell the powder in plastic tubes. Boxed Water comes in a paper-based container, so I wonder if they could have used something biodegradable like that for packaging instead. iirc my batch expired in April 2019, so it has a pretty long shelf life for something as high in fiber & nutrients as this is, which would explain the plastic sealing for protection.
5. I'm not a huge fan of supplements. I use protein powder sometimes, mainly for fun, like to make weird dessert creations that are also protein-packed, but I don't use anything like multi-vitamins or creatine or BCAA's or anything like that. I like to try new things though, and swing between whole foods & stuff like Soylent & everything inbetween. I do, however, like the idea that this powder can give you the full nutrition of the fruits & veggies in it, in a format that you can blend into a drink (or bake into food), and that there's no additives in it...it's not just a random vitamin for the sake of being a vitamin.
6. It's a bit gritty & some of them burned my throat a bit (which is to be expected). If you let some of them gel for five or ten minutes in the blended drink, the chia seeds will thicken it up a bit. It wasn't super enjoyable & smooth to drink, but it wasn't terrible, either. Way better than drinking water & psyllium husk, for example.
7. I like the idea of using these for kids, especially picky eaters. Throw a packet in a homemade milkshake or smoothie in the blender & they'll never know. Bake it up in something yummy to eat & you can hide the evidence pretty easily.
Per the five questions I posted about earlier:
1. Flavor (is it concentrated, like freeze-dried strawberries?): It's okay. Not super strong. Not super concentrated either, like when you eat freeze-dried strawberries in Special K (which probably have sugar added, haha. I personally wouldn't buy these for the flavor aspect. Maybe just to flavor Soylent, for fun, to make a
little better, but not as like a serious flavor enhancer.
2. Digestibility (easy way to add fiber to your diet!): No digestion issues at all.
3. Use in smoothies (especially as an alternative to or supplement of fresh produce): Yeah, I like the idea of using this for smoothies, especially now that dairy is back in my life (prior allergy), so I can use real milk, yogurt, and so on. Each packet has 2 servings of produce in it, so that's a pretty easy way to get your fruit & veggie boost in for the day. So this has a strong convenience feature in it, from that perspective.
4. Use in Soylent (flavor + nutrition boost): Yeah, it adds flavor, but it's light & fleeting. I tried water, milk, etc. Surprisingly not bad with cold milk! #gomad lol
5. Use in baking (bonus nutrition): I don't know what effect heat has on it nutrition-wise (probably nothing), but you can throw one (or two) of these packets into something like banana bread if you want, although unless you eat the whole loaf, you won't get as much nutrition in each slice of bread unless you add extra packets of powder in. I have some recipe ideas from
ProteinPow that I want to add them into. I suspect this would be a good addition to
Protein Fluff. I may also give this
fruity whipped cream a try.
I only have a few packets left, so I have to decide where to put them to use next. Will I order again? Probably. I mean, you can get a good vacuum-sealer for $35 these days, so you can vac-seal all of the fresh fruit & veggies you want, and blend those up into smoothies or whatever anytime you want - or just buy the pre-frozen kind in a bag, if you want. So is this powder worth it? Depends on your lifestyle. Shelf life is six months, so it has a reasonably long storage period before you have to use it.
So, I like the idea. I wish it was cheaper. Like if it was 99 cents a packet, sure, I'd buy a big box of them. Do I want a subscription at this point in my life? Not at the moment. I do think it's a good buy for people who want extra nutrition from real food in their lives, or who want the convenience, or who are just starting out in eating healthier & want something that is more manageable to begin with.