Mountain Dew KICK START Energy Drinks

Man, was I tired when I got up today. 

Is there anything in the fridge that will wake me up?

Ohhhh snap! Mountain Dew Kick Start!

This'll do it! I'll be doing backflips out my window to dubstep in no time!

Like the classy gentleman I am, I poured some in the most badass pint glass of all time. 

And what's this? A second can? The King will take care of this one. 

TIME TO WAKE UP!

Eh... It's alright. Irwin, do you want some?

Ouch. DISSED. Irwin decided to ignore it and go back to sleep. 

I think I agree with him. 

my basketball pillowcase rules

Mountain Dew Kick Start is Mountain Dew's attempt to make the perfect mix of a juice and soda into some weird, less sugary version of an energy drink. But this, unlike me, is made for the morning. It's got enough crispness that it's sort of soda, and small enough amounts so that it's sort of juice. They call it a "sparkling juice beverage," and that's pretty accurate I guess. It does contain a whopping 5% juice (amidst lots of chemicals) too, so it counts as juice. 

After some research and some math, based solely on the nutrition facts, this is technically better for you than mountain dew. A 16 ounce can of mountain dew and these are drastically different. 

Calories- Dew: 226 / Kick Start: 80

Sodium- Dew: 140 / Kick Start: 170

Carbs- Dew: 61 / Kick Start: 20

Sugar- Dew: 61 / Kick Start: 19

Caffeine- Dew: 72mg / Kick Start: 92mg

SO, if you're a really weird person who pays attention to nutrition facts when drinking Mountain Dew products, this is way better for you (other than sodium) AND has more caffeine, as well as fruit juice and vitamins C and B6, and Niacin, which I'm choosing to believe is good for me. 

Of course, you can easily get into the debate of high fructose corn syrup and sugar vs. artificial sweeteners- the old diabetes vs. cancer debate, and this may technically lose out. But then again, I have no idea what the hell any of the chemicals in Mountain Dew are either. Maybe a scientist can help. 

But who cares, this is FATGUYFOODBLOG. All that matters is the following: Were they good? 

Sort of. The orange citrus one tasted pretty much exactly like a less sweet, sort of soda-bubbly Sunny D. It had a weird artificial sweetener aftertaste though, kind of like the weird flavor in Sobe's Life Water (stevia and erythritol). It doesn't show either of those on the cans though, so it's something else. I'm not a big fan of Sunny D (is anyone, really?) so this one got poured down the sink. I'll give it a C- though, since it wasn't horrible- just not for me and the aftertaste ruined it.

The Fruit Punch was much better- tasting like Mountain Dew's own Code Red, if it was watered down with Hawaiian Punch. The aftertaste was there too, but it didn't seem as prominent. I think the fruit punch flavor was just much better tasting than the citrus. I drank most of this one while eating other stuff, and it was solid. I'll give it a B.

The question remains though, did this supercharge me and make me want to bust through the day doing a billion things with high energy? 

Actually, yea, it did. I like to pretend that caffeine doesn't have much effect on me- I am not a coffee drinker and if anything, will have a soda a few hours after I wake up. But I definitely noticed I had a lot more energy today, and I think I'm gonna have to attribute that to the KICK START I got when I woke up. I mean, jeez, look at how scientific I got in my above ramblings... that's gotta say something. 

WOUND. UP.

These aren't incredible, but for the very small target audience of non-coffee drinkers who don't drink energy drinks and either don't drink soda in the morning or want to avoid soda for health reasons, but still want a super sweet soda-like beverage made by Mountain Dew, this stuff is PERFECT for you. 

-review by Mike