When I was at the International Home and Housewares show in Chicago, there were acres of products on display. Being a blogger, I had my eye out for swag, but there was really only one item that I thought would make me a hero in the eyes of my kids if I could score it — The SodaStream.
The SodaStream is an at-home carbonation machine that allows you to make all kinds of sodas, mixers and sparkling waters. The operation of the machine makes using a Flip (RIP) look like brain surgery. Fill the plastic bottles with tap water, attach them to the machine, press the button three times, and add flavorings. My nine-year-old mastered the operation of the machine in minutes.
The initial kit comes with a full cylinder of CO2, good for charging about 60 bottles of soda before being exchanged at a retail outlet or via the mail, and a sampler of syrup flavors ($99). The box that arrived at DadLabs also contained a whole bunch of syrup flavors. Favorites were root beer, ginger ale, diet pink grapefruit and cranberry-raspberry.
And I mean Favorites. My kids flipped for the thing. They brought their friends around to watch them brew up a batch. My son took two bottles of his own special mix to school with him for a pizza party. Kids were showing up in my kitchen from far and wide to pay homage.
So the SodaStream was a hit, but something was bugging me like an untended cavity. I started to feel like Julia Sweeney in her hilarious essay on how her daughter’s innocent questions about the birds and the bees somehow led right to a demo of internet porn. I felt self-suckered.
My kids didn’t drink soda at home before the SodaStream arrived. Sure, as a treat at the occasional restaurant meal, but we simply did not buy any kind of pop (other than truckloads of Diet Coke for my wife — off limits to kids). It’s not that my kids get nothing put pure spring water and organic milk from local cows. Those little cellophane sleeves off the juice pouch straws blow into drifts in our yard. But no soda.
Suddenly, they are going through liters of the stuff. At my behest.
And to make matters worse, the SodaStream arrived in our house just a couple of weeks before Gary Taubes’ devastating essay “Is Sugar Toxic?” landed on my doorstep in the NY Times Magazine. All parents must read it. Because sugar might just give your kids cancer.
And one of Taubes’ first targets is the cane sugar/corn syrup debate which has parents’ undivided attention, and is one of SodaStreams claimed benefits — no awful corn syrup like traditional sodas. Hooey, says Taubes. Both sugars are digested in exactly the same (unhealthy) way by the body. Both equally capable of setting off the cycle of liver fat, insulin tolerance/metabolic syndrome, obesity, diabetes, heart disease and maybe even cancer (I already told you to read the article, so do it). Making the distinction is specious. Hell, corn syrup was invented because cane sugar was supposed to be so bad…
The SodaStream also makes a green claim — that the machine will cut down waste by eliminating soda cans and bottles, and making the whole operation in-house and trash-free. If your family is drinking lots of bottled and canned products, and you buy this machine, you will generate less waste. True. Is the overall result “green,” well, that seems complicated to me. Were you recycling your cans and bottles? Does the manufacture of the machine have a lesser or greater impact than the cans and bottles it displaces?
But here’s where the fizzing really starts. When I told the kids that I was taking the SodaStream back to the office, you would have thought I tossed the family guinea pig in the Cuisinart. Ear-splitting howls of protest.
The thing is just plain fun, simple for kids to operate, they love the taste of the drinks and so do their friends. So, what to do? Pull the plug the whole operation? Leave the thing out and hope they get bored with it? Toss just the sugar syrups and leave the diet formulas (sweetened with Splenda vs Aspertame — wonder what Taubes would make of that claimed benefit)?
How to balance the flood of medical information with the simple pleasures of childhood that you want to afford your kids?
And this, to me, is parenting in 2011 in a nutshell.
Ok, here’s the thing, Clay. You don’t have to use their syrups. Remember that root beer you made? You could mix that up in a pitcher with a lesser amount of sugar, maybe use a simple syrup for better blending, put it in one of their bottles and charge the heck out of it. You could do it with milk, or lemonade, hell, even wine. The order they do things sounds easy, but you can easily reverse it so you don’t need their concentrates. Give it a shot at the office. Maybe with some cold coffee and cream! Fizzy Iced Chai, anyone? Once you experiment with iced tea, grape juice, and SunnyD, you’ll either love it again or hate it forever. I’m guessing the former. Just don’t tell them I said so. I want them to send one to me. It would help me tremendously with my beer.
Even the regular flavors use sucralose, ex: SodaStream Cola – 35 calories/8oz. That’s 52 calories per 12oz. Compare that to a can of Pepsi which is 150 calories.
I agree – not the sort of thing I want in my house, but it could have been a LOT worse!
The “green” claims are truly laughable, especially the dramatic video on their website (everyone go check it out! it’s on their front page!!).
@Ben and Max
Agreed, the thing is much preferable to industrial soda on lots of levels, and there is probably a place for SodaStream in our house minus the sweetened syrups. As long as it doesn’t bring any net sugar added to their diet, then I’m in.
The thing is so fun to use, so appealing to kids, that I wish the company had lightened up on the heath and environmental claims.