Virgil's Micro Brewed Diet Root Beer

Continuing along the lines of my last blog, here is another drink review. A bit of a background first. I'm always on the search for good tasting, low to no calorie drinks that are healthy for you and don't contain artificial chemical sweeteners like most diet sodas do. Personally, I'd much rather eat my calories than drink them! It's proved to be quite a task to actually find drinks like this with very low to no calories. In the past, I'd found plenty of drinks with calories in the 60 to 100 range, but if you drink 4 of these a day, that would be 240 to 400 calories in drinks alone. While better than drinking tons of juice, that's still too much for me!

I usually shop for groceries at places along the lines of Whole Foods. Up until quite recently, I hadn't found any diet sodas that were super low in calories. Until I discovered Virgil's Micro Brewed Diet Root Beer. This stuff only has 6 calories per 12 oz bottle. And it tastes really great too. It contains no artificial sweeteners at all and instead relies on the plant based stevia and xylitol for sweetness. For those who are unfamiliar, xylitol is a naturally occurring substance that is found in some fruits, vegetables, and other plants. It has the benefits of being good for your teeth and some studies have shown that it aids in the prevention of cavities. Stevia is an herb that has been used in certain parts of the world for hundreds of years. It is completely calorie free.

Because of the use of these two products in the Diet Root Beer, the drink is considered to be a dietary supplement. On the label, it has "supplement facts" instead of "nutrition info". The label also has an illustration of a guy who looks quite a bit like Jesus in a plaid shirt, serving up the root beer to some kids sitting at a table. I guess that must be Virgil though. But he sure does look like Jesus to me.

This diet root beer has a really great flavor to it and has just the right amount of carbonation. Not too much and not too little. It leaves a bit of an aftertaste of xylitol, which doesn't bother me, as I enjoy the flavor. However, some people may not like this. Overall, I think this is a wonderful product and I hope this starts a trend of more super low calorie natural diet sodas being created. Virgil's brand also has diet cream soda and diet black cherry soda available as well, although I have not tried them.