Does What Says On The Tin?

Rainy Sunday afternoons…perfect for getting comfy and pottering around the house or in my case cracking on with some work while I await my delivery of groceries.  Having used a variety of online grocery delivery companies I’ve settled upon Ocado as my retailer of choice, basically because I think they provide great customer service, great products (Waitrose food, John Lewis products) and contrary to popular belief, they are not much more expensive than some of the others.  They price match Tesco on most of the popular food items and bizarrely sometimes under-cut their own suppliers.  Case in point, a few weeks ago I ordered a small John Lewis frying pan and paid £11.50, it arrived and I noticed from the packaging that John Lewis actually sell it for £12… Hey, that 50p almost paid for a tub of Creme Fraiche!  There is a downside of course, every delivery (except Sunday’s) comes with a free copy of that Murdoch rag, The Times.

ocado-smsAnyway, I was sad before my delivery arrived as Ocado had already sent me a SMS alert to remind me of my delivery slot and to inform me that the 2 egg custard tarts I had ordered were unavailable.  Bummer! I was looking forward to settling down to watch a movie while I gorged on them with a cup of tea…C’est la vie!

When my order arrived, I saw from my receipt that I had been given a free sample of Glaceau Vitamin Water.  I’ve seen this in stores before and I think I once saw them giving bottles away around Covent Garden during the Summer (or at least what passed for Summer this year!)  I have to be honest, I see items like this and I think Who buys this shit? Vitamin water indeed! But it’s free and it’s here so why not try it?

What's inside Glaceau Vitamin WaterMy main impression was that it tasted like a rather weak fruit cordial, according to the label it was XXX – Triple Berry flavour, those berries being Acai, Blueberry and Pomegranate but I couldn’t make any of them out but as I have no idea what Acai tastes like, I’ll assume that’s what I tasted, after all it’s listed first so that must be the main fruit flavour, right? Wrong!  I checked the ingredients which have to, by law, list the ingredients in order of greatest quantity to least quantity.  As you can see from the photo, after Spring water, fructose and sugar the next most prominent ingredient is fruit extracts of which none of the berries are first, instead it’s apple!  When did apple become a berry?!  More amusing was the revelation, to me, that carrots are not only orange, you can get purple and black ones!  I thought they were just unique to Tesco’s home delivery service ;)

Someone in marketing got paid for this...I then turned the bottle round to read the blurb. That’s where I discovered that Glaceau is made by the trusty Coca-Cola Company.  Well, it’s either them or Pepsi I guess.  The blurb of course was a typical adman’s great idea at using humour to try and justify the premium on what is basically some weak cordial with a few vitamins thrown in.  What did puzzle me is that for a product  sold in the UK they used the US English spelling Center when we Brits say Centre although the did spell flavour with a u.  What’s that all about? and why did no one tell me that 30 was the new 20? and just what exactly am I supposed to take from that anyway?

Poor Glaceau aka Coca-Cola.  If Ocado had delivered my custard tarts I’d be sitting watching a movie instead of blogging about their over-priced apple juice masquerading as berry juice. However please don’t let my cynicism stop you from shelling out £1.20 for a bottle.  Me? I’m off to the corner shop to buy some biscuits!

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