The Ice Box is a great way to ruin your teeth if you aren’t careful. It is also an excellent refreshment. Chunks of flavored ice with a sweet and tart flavor. Like tasty lemonade. Pictured here is the sour apple flavor. The chunks are always smaller than a marble and each cone-shaped container is enough for two people to enjoy if you don’t mind sharing. There must be a little salt in the mix to keep the ice a little soft at freezing temperature. (The same reason icecream stays softer than a rock in the freezer.)

It’s not advisable to chew ice if you ask any dentist. But Ice Box is to it’s credit softer ice in a cute convenient box. And it’s hard to not want to have another once you’ve found this snack. Unlike many snacks in Japan that just disappear, we have found them at 7-Eleven and the grocery stores in Japan for several years, though more available during the warmer months.

Most people probably don’t know what Aspartame is. It’s a sweetener found in a lot of processed food and drink, candies and gum. There is a controversy around aspartame which is whether its chemicals, or byproducts are carcinogens, cancer-causing agents, from ingestion of the chemicals or the reaction and change in them that occurs during digestion. Read the Wikipedia entry on the Aspartame controversy, and please check the label on any goods that are sweetened without sugar. It’s probably Aspartame, or Splenda. Probably avoid both of them. Diet Coke would be the most popular product using it.

You don’t have to listen to me though. Research for yourself. I think you’ll find that interestingly products containing Aspartame aren’t anything remotely important in your nutrition anyway, so it’s very logical and easy to avoid them. Diet Soda? I mean come on. You want diet soda? It’s called water, or even tea. Add a little lemon if you like.

Pepsi has created a natural drink with some striking ingredients. The “concoction” is called Pepsi Raw. Apple extract, plain caramel colouring, coffee leaf, tantaric acid from grapes, gum arabic from acacia trees, cane sugar and sparkling water. Sounds a lot better than corn syrup and phosphoric acid if you ask me. Apparently it’s a little less fizzy and likely doesn’t create havoc with your system quite as much as regular cola. But that probably doesn’t matter to us here in the United States because it may not see the light of day here.

So it makes me wonder, does Pepsi require a petition of 10,000 signatures before they might let us enjoy it. I doubt the U.S. is ignored because the test market failed. Why? Because people drink everything here, even ridiculous bottled water. Jone’s Soda makes a killing on the turkey cola. Are we not good enough for Pepsi Raw? Hey if that’s the case, then fine. Just own up to it Pepsi. Tell us American’s that we are slobs and will never understand the discerning English palate.

This story from Yahoo! News talks about the increasing popularity over niche drinks. These are the already bottled or canned drinks you’d buy at the store such as specialized teas. I’m not really surprised by this news by any means. The selection at Whole Foods for drinks and many other snacks has twice the variety or more. Most would see this as a good thing. I say, just don’t forget about the snacks and drinks you can make yourself. In Japan, the drink vending machines have a smaller selection of sodas and more teas, hot and cold coffee and sports drinks than you typically might see in an average vending machine. Even the vending machines in more rural areas have a big selection.

WikiHow is fun. It’s a community tutorial wiki site. Being a wiki, anyone can change the text themselves in the web browser to improve on each of the tutorials for everyone else. Delicious concept. Also an occasional source of humor such as the useful How to sneak candy into your room. This article on creating OpenCola was the perfect one to share here at Snackhunting. I love the idea that we can be snack innovators. Open Cola, unlike say Coca Cola is a recipe that you can copy, modify and share. Open, unlocked, free. If you like, you can even start a company and sell it. You’ll have no royalties to pay. Most people probably won’t do that because most people don’t want to be in the soda business. But we all want to snack on good drinks. Plus, the ingredients call for Granulated sugar, not corn syrup. Depending on what your take on corn syrup is, you may turn to Open Cola above the more popular drinks. As my good friend Tim from back in my movie theater days would say, “Mmmm, good soda!”

Here’s a recipe for Open Cola from WikHow

An article from the BBC news website. It is reported that the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition studies have found that Tea not only rehydrates as well as water does, but it can also protect against heart disease and some cancers, UK nutritionists found. Experts believe flavonoids are the key ingredient in tea that promote health.

Tea Healthier than water? (From BBC News)

FTA:

Dr Ruxton said: “Drinking tea is actually better for you than drinking water. Water is essentially replacing fluid. Tea replaces fluids and contains antioxidants so it’s got two things going for it.”

She said it was an urban myth that tea is dehydrating.

“Studies on caffeine have found very high doses dehydrate and everyone assumes that caffeine-containing beverages dehydrate. But even if you had a really, really strong cup of tea or coffee, which is quite hard to make, you would still have a net gain of fluid.

“Also, a cup of tea contains fluoride, which is good for the teeth,” she added.

I personally don’t find this surprising, but I have to say, I disagree with the flouride comment. In fact, I think flouride in the water is not only useless, but harmful. Flouride has been known to be most effective through direct application to the teeth, through brushing. I believe flouride is harmful. I don’t believe it’s good for human ingestion, especially not by adding it to our water supply. What the heck is up with that?

Yahoo food gives us the 7 reasons to drink green tea. But for me the question is, when did Yahoo start its own food network? I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of seeing Top 10, Top 20, Top 7 lists everywhere. At least this one is actually good for you.

I’ve only had the pleasure of one of these beverages in my life but I recommend them.  I recommend them over nearly any type of martini.  Does an alcoholic drink really deserve to be on a snack hunting website?  Well, perhaps it doesn’t fit perfectly snug in here next to the Nutter Butters and the pita chips, but I’ll make an exception.  A mojito is a rum based drink with spearmint leaves crushed inside.  It’s very refreshing and I think one could definitely create fun variations from it.

Here’s a link about the mojito from everyone’s favorite accuracy challenged site wikipedia. (I love that site along with it’s imperfections.

Here’s how to make a mojito from the food network, and here’s a wikibook on making a mojito.