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i hate [name of overpriced fizzy sugar drink deleted]!

By | November 22, 2009

overpriced fizzy sugar drink? what is it that dr leigh hates? is it pepsi? red bull? hard cider? is she against all sweet and fizzy things?

nope – guess again. i hate the overpriced fizzy sugar drink that pretends to be medicine.

i just can’t help it – i hate “emergen-c.” i hope they don’t sue me for saying this, but it just kills me when people who have NO MONEY for birth control or heart medicine, still drop their hard-earned cash on emergen-c.

i hate its imitators and distant cousins, too.

don’t get me wrong! i pester people to take particular vitamins, and support use of medicinal herbs, and send people to an accupuncturist, and so on, when i think it’s appropriate. i’m a vegetarian. but really, above all, i’m a cheapskate, and the wild popularity of expensive junk like emergen-c just gets under my flinty skin.

what is emergen-c? it’s an individually packaged “fizzy” “energy drink” that is widely rumored to treat colds and flu. taken as directed (2 packets a day), it is roughly equivalent to a chewable vitamin c supplement plus one-half of a flintstones chewable vitamin per day (most of the vitamins in a packet of emergen-c are 25% the recommended daily amounts).

it contains a little extra vitamin b12 and b6 – and so what?! there’s no evidence that extra does anything for you. they certainly don’t give you “energy” – only the 6 grams of sugar in each packet would do that (about the same amount you’d get from half a cup of fruit loops or a fun-sized snicker bar).

also note: when you take higher dosages of water-soluble vitamins (like vitamin c and b vitamins) than you can absorb, you just get very expensive pee.

emergen-c, low online price, $9 for 36 packets, an 18-day supply if taken as directed by the manufacturer: fifty cents a day.
generic children’s chewable, one and a half cents per day, PLUS generic chewable vitamin c, twelve cents per day. (multi: $3/100, 200 days’ worth; vit c: $6/100, 50 days’ worth.)

total cost for 18-day supply of chewables: less than $2.50 – about a quarter of the cost of emergen-c.
(fun-sized snicker bars not included – chewable vitamins have plenty of sugar by themselves! the whole price tag is maybe half as much, not to mention lower-calorie, if you simply buy ones you swallow.)

stories like this just bug me:
“And so I began the regimen: One Emergen-C at 5 am. Another once I woke up (again) at 8. Another when I got to work, two more after lunch. In all, I think I must have had six or seven packets of that goodness yesterday… Those, plus the 11 hours of sleep I got last night, are what I’m crediting with my slow return to health today.”
i would propose that the sleep, indeed, and the extra “six or seven” glasses of water, as well as the simple passage of time, had more to do with any “slow return to health.”

note: if you take emergen-c at that dosage – for, say, 6 days, the length of your average bad cold or mild flu – the cost for emergen-c would be more like $1.50/day – twice the cost of, for example, a whole month’s worth of birth control pills, blood pressure medicine, glaucoma drops, antidepressants, or any of the other meds* somebody might “postpone” getting, even while they’re shelling out for emergen-c.
*(at discount-store prices, $4/month.)

should i even get into the amount of paper products necessitated by these individually packaged powders? (if it were necessary to obtain special nutrients by means of excessive gimmicky packaging, i’d be the first to defend it; it’s not.)
or the obvious scam value of adding insignificant amounts of overprocessed herbal ingredients? (tiny amount by actual weight – GIANT AMOUNTS by size of lettering on each packet.) people, if you want to benefit from hibiscus flower, make some dang tea! use real flowers! 1/10 of one gram of hibiscus “extract” in emergen-c? please!

and yes, my science-based medicine friends, i am aware there’s no evidence that high doses of vitamin c do a blessed thing for viral infections!

i tell ya.

call me old fashioned, but if you’re going to blow $9 when you’re feeling crummy, why not just do it this way?

Consider the Flu Shot, a drink on the menu at Drop Off Service, a bar on Avenue A in Manhattan. It’s a mixture of garlic-infused honey, jalapeño-infused tequila, orange-lemon-ginger purée and a few drops of liquid echinacea…
The Throat Coat [has] honey-and-pepper-infused vodka and B&B, a French liqueur… combined in a snifter with a spoonful of honey.

…[A] Chinatown bar, Apotheke, specializes in pharmaceutically themed cocktails, has been busy formulating new drinks for the current flu season. One involves yellow Chartreuse, thyme, lavender and a stick of cinnamon “for the throat”; another involves warm rum, hibiscus and rosehips.
At the Harrison, on Greenwich Street, the beverage director, Adam Petronzio, has been prescribing a drink called the Western Smash… Lemon balm, which infuses a syrup that Mr. Petronzio mixes with whiskey and mint, is the medicinal ingredient.

~

Boston’s Tamo bar just launched the Baby Tylenoltini – a blend of Absolut Pears, ginger, lemon, honey, Grenadine and pink lemonade made to taste like the childhood curative…
San Diego’s Odysea bar serves up the Siren, a sizzling hot combination of Fortaleza Tequila, Gabriel Boudier Crème de Cassis, red jalapeños, lime and ginger beer…
The Oliver Lounge at the Sports Club/LA-Beverly Hills has concocted a low-carb martini with soy vodka, fresh wheatgrass (which has, like, six tons of vitamin C per ounce) and ginger reductions.

~

also:
Cold-Eeze and Brandy: Cold-Eeze lozenges, honey, honey-pepper vodka, Benedictine and brandy
The Pomegranate Emergen-C Martini: pomegranate Emergen-C [speak of the devil...], pomegranate-infused vodka, pomegranate liqueur, lime, pomegranate seeds
Ricola Whiskey Soda: Ricola cough drops, Benedictine and brandy, soda, Fernet, orange wedge

~

Over at Casita in Shoreditch Will Foster was pouring his Swine Flu Shot: 1/2 shot Arette blanco tequila, 1/2 shot Pink grapefruit juice (pink for pigs!), Tabasco to taste (one drop thoroughly permeates an entire shot, so proceed judiciously), Tiny dash agave syrup, Squeeze lime wedge. Shake and strain.

~

this one really sounds bland, by comparison:
Flu Cocktail: Stir (without ice): 2 oz rye, 1/4 oz ginger brandy, 1/4 oz rock candy syrup, 1 pinch Jamaica Ginger, 1/2 oz fresh lemon juice

…until you really get down to brass tacks:
You know, every year my late father looks more and more intelligent. When he used to get a cold, he’d take a shot of blackberry brandy, sometimes two or three! Did it cure or slow down the cold? No. But after two or three shots of blackberry brandy… you pretty much didn’t care.

as a physician, i can’t formally endorse that approach – other than to say it would be a lot cheaper than, and probably as effective as, emergen-c.

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