Tested: Steaz Organic Green Tea Soda

With ordinary sugar-filled, calcium-sucking sodas finally losing some of their appeal, numerous manufacturers are stepping up with some sort of “natural” or “organic” soda, which is somehow supposed to be a healthier alternative to typical sodas.

I usually avoid these, but one did catch my eye – Steaz organic green tea soda. What interested me is that this soda contains green tea! I figured it would be something like a green tea with extra flavor and some carbonation.

Perhaps a “sparkling green tea” if you will. (Actually, even though my bottles say “green tea soda” on the label, the Steaz website seems to have an updated slogan, which is in fact “sparking green tea.” That sounds much healthier than “soda,” but the ingredients are still the same.)

So let’s start off by seeing if this is actually healthier than soda…

Steaz Ingredients and Nutrition Facts

At first I was impressed with the ingredients, because the list was nice and short…

RASPBERRY INGREDIENTS: Sparkling filtered water, organic evaporated cane juice, natural raspberry flavor, citric acid, fruit juice for color, sodium citrate, organic Ceylon green tea and ascorbic acid (Vitamin C).

It’s basically water, organic sugar, green tea, and flavoring. So far, so good.

But once I saw just how much sugar was in one bottle, I cringed! Steaz have 23g sugar per 8oz serving, which comes out to about 35g of sugar per 12oz bottle! The sugar isn’t so bad, but that is quite a bit of sugar for one bottle!

To put that in perspective, an entire 16 oz bottle of Honest Tea has just 20g sugar!

At least there is no high fructose corn syrup!

Back to the ingredients list, Ceylon green tea is the second to last ingredient. That’s a little disconcerting, but according to Steaz, the amount of tea in each bottle is equivalent to one cup of tea. (It appears towards the end of the ingredients because by weight, the green tea powder used in the drink is minimal.)

So we have fairly healthy ingredients, but a little too much sugar.

Steaz Taste Test

Steaz is available in quite a few flavors, although I chose these three: key lime, orange, and raspberry.

Three should be plenty for me. I mean, I don’t drink soda. I don’t even like it. So this is from the perspective of someone who drinks water, green tea, and sports drinks…

Orange – This reminds me of regular orange soda, although there is much less carbonation (i.e. it’s smoother and easier to drink.) The flavor is pretty close to regular orange soda, although slightly less powerful. I couldn’t recognize the taste of green tea in there, although I could tell there was something different.

In the end it was alright, and I’d prefer it over regular orange soda (thanks mainly to the lack of carbonation.)

Raspberry – No surprises here, this one tastes like a raspberry soda. It’s pretty good, and I thought the flavor was much more authentic than the orange soda Steaz.

You know those bottles of sparkling juice? Sparking grape juice, apple juice, peach juice, pear juice, etc… Well, if they had a sparkling raspberry juice, it would taste like this. It’s pretty good, definitely sweet.

I’m not sure that I noticed the green tea in this one, either. It was really just like “sparkling raspberry.” It’s tasty, although easily forgotten.

Key Lime – Now this is the taste I was waiting for! This is what I’d expect to drink when I hear “sparkling green tea.” The flavor is light and mild and reminds me of cream soda, actually. But with a hint of key lime, of course.

It’s hard to describe. Imagine mixing a glass of green tea with a glass of sparkling water, and then adding a hint of lime flavor. And then dumping in some sugar.

This was definitely refreshing, and if I was to recommend a Steaz, it would be Key Lime.

Steaz is definitely more “soda” than it is “green tea.” I’m not sure why I bothered getting this; I guess I just wanted to see if there was a healthier soda option for anyone who does drink soda on a regular basis.

My final verdict is…

Even though this stuff tastes alright and does contain healthy green tea and natural cane sugar, there is still so much sugar that I can’t recommend this stuff. It’s OK for drinking on occasion to help ween yourself off soda, but that’s a lot of sugar in one bottle. (And one bottle of this will go down real fast.)

I wouldn’t want to consume that much sugar in one shot unless it was during a bike ride, and in that case, I’ll be getting my sugar from a drink such as Powerbar Endurance. If I want a casual drink, I’ll stick with brewing my own green tea.

If you’re weening yourself off soda, you could try this, although I’d still recommend Honest Tea or Honest Ade instead.

Official website: www.Steaz.com