Whoah! Extreme title right?  Well it was an extreme night!  Better grab the popcorn because this is a really big blog snack!

Friday night was date night with my fellow nutrition blogettes – Corinne, Janel, Jessica, and Elizabeth – and boy did we have an ambitious night planned.  First, we played our own foodie version of “The View,” as we taste-tested vitaminwater’s entire line of the new vitaminwater10 flavors. After that, we jetted off to Watertown, MA, for a fun-filled evening at Red Lentil – my first dining experience at a 100% vegetarian and vegan restaurant.

A Serving-Size Surplus

Now, I have to be honest up front: historically, I have not been the biggest fan of vitaminwater. It may be jam packed with vitamins, minerals, herbals, wonderfuls, moonbeams, and sunshine (which you will pee out of your system in a matter of hours, by the way) – but it’s also jam packed with sugar! That sugar jacks each bottle’s caloric total up to a whopping 125 calories! Yeah, you heard me!

But, what’s that you say? You say the bottle claims it only has 50 calories? Eh eh, not so fast. This is where your smart label reading skills come into play. Check out the serving size – 2.5 servings! Tricky, huh? Now 125 calories isn’t much on occasion, but on a daily basis it probably means you’re going to have to kick out some other tasty indulgence to balance the scales. I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather trade in a flavored water for a cookie any day.

Buyer beware, there are a lot of products out there that pull this trick, and many of them are those packages that appear to contain only one-portion:

Just another reason why you always want to flip over whatever product your honing in on to check out that little black & white box on the back.

vitaminwater10

vitaminwater is going for caloric redemption now, with their newest bev, vitaminwater10. This new draft in the vitaminwater line-up has significantly fewer calories than its evil alter ego, but wait! We can’t forget our new-found label reading skills just yet: don’t be fooled by the “10″ in the title; it has 10 calories per serving, but how many servings are there in one bottle do you think? You guessed it – 2.5!

So what will it take to burn off a whole bottle?

• A 25 minute nap
• 25 minutes of channel surfing
• 25 minutes of online shopping
• 25 minutes of online dating
• Brushing your teeth for 10 minutes

So while 25 calories for a sweetened beverage is a lot friendlier to your waistline (and leaves more room for that cookie later – yay!), the lesson is to always check those serving sizes so you don’t get carried away.

The folks at VitaminWater were nice enough to send me some of the new vitaminwater10 to test out on Healthy Blog Snack, so I rounded up my fellow faim femmes Nutrition Bloggers – Corinne, Janel, Jessica, and Elizabeth (from left to right in the video, plus me on the far right) – and we sat down for a good old-fashioned flavor face-off before dinner; check it out below!

*Note: We are in no way affiliated with vitaminwater, nor did they pay us to do this. We are just some foodie girls having a fun night on the town!*

Bottom Line

That said, it’s all about making choices and being aware of what you’re eating and drinking. I’m all for indulging in the occasional treat – cookies, brownies, cupcakes (I’m an Easy-Bake Oven girl at heart, can you tell?) – and I think flavored drinks have their place as well. But that is all vitaminwater10 should be in your food repertoire: a flavored beverage treat; it is not going  to change your life with its water soluble vitamins and aromatic herbs (though, its zingy labels will most definitely keep you entertained).

What I do like about vitaminwater, is that they have stepped up to the plate to offer vitaminwater10 as an option that’s toned down on the sugar, allowing for your flavored-drink indulgence sans the large amount of sugar and high number of calories.

So the wrap-up:

• vitaminwater10 = 10 calories per serving = 2.5 servings per bottle = 25 calories per bottle.
• A multivitamin costs about $0.08. vitaminwater10 costs $1.49 per bottle. If you’re looking for vitamins, it’s not the most cost-effective route.
• Sweetened primarily by crystalline fructose, a sweetener containing 98% fructose and 2% water/trace minerals. Crystalline fructose is estimated to be 20% sweeter than table sugar.
• If you must have a sweetened drink, this is a better choice than your regular soda, but that doesn’t make it good for you.
• Always check your serving sizes! Don’t take calories at face value.

After the tasting, we headed out to Red Lentil, for my first dining experience at an all vegetarian and vegan restaurant! The restaurant only opened a few weeks ago, but it has already become the bumpin’ place in Watertown to go. Luckily, we made reservations!

I ordered the Near East Seitan with Teff Crepe, and oh my goodness it was delicious! The dish consisted of pan seared seitan, braised in creamy fenugreek sauce, stuffed inside a teff crepe, served with wilted baby spinach and a black-bean-pineapple salsa.

Now, if a lot of that sounds foreign to you, not to worry – it did to me too! Janel, my vegan guru, enlightened me on seitan: Seitan is frequently used as a meat substitute in vegetarian dishes, as it has the consistency of chicken, but is actually made made of gluten, the protein in bread products. Teff is a type of bread that is often used in Ethiopian dishes (it’s the brown wrap you see below). All together it amounted to pure yumminess!

After all that food, I almost had to be rolled home! Best part? I had vegan leftovers for lunch the next day J.  If anyone has any other delicious vegan restaurants they love around the Boston area, I would love to hear your suggestions!

Whew okay that was a HUGE blog snack guys; I hope I didn’t wear you out!  Hope everyone’s week will be as choc-full of good food as my weekend was, and as always…

Happy Snacking!

Lindsey

• Previous Entry: Healthy Blog Snack Awarded as “Over the Top!”
• Next Entry: A Healthy Blog Snack Holiday: Mashed Potato Adventures and My 5 Healthy Holiday Rules