Why Americans are OBSESSED with Sparkling Water

nobody gave a f about sparkling water when I was a kid but today the drink aisle has been taken over and restaurants have this stuff on tap people are watering their plants with it so what the hell is going on with sparkling water [Music] today's episode is brought to you by surf shark okay so this is it our family sparkling water of choice bubbly is the thing that our family seems to drink a lot of and so I wanted to figure out why so our modern obsession with sparkling water started in about 2015. pop or soda sales in the U.S plummeted in fact they had already been falling for at least a decade at that point as people were becoming more health conscious trying to avoid sugars and artificial ingredients not sure why I'm British but what I find amazing about this story is just how fast the trend exploded like back in those days we didn't even know the names for the various styles of bubbly beverages but today water with bubbles in it has its own vocabulary there's carbonated water there's mineral water sparkling water tonic water club soda seltzer bubbles Fizz spicy water spiky water and probably probably a whole bunch more but to get technical about it there are some real differences that I learned in the making of this video sparkling water Seltzer and tonic are all carbonated waters yes but if it's sparkly it means that it's naturally carbonated mineral water like mineral water that like came down a mountain and then like it interacted with like a naturally occurring like volcano or something to make it bubbly Seltzer is carbonated during manufacturing like if you bought one of those countertop fizzer things and tonic water is carbonated and sweetened so it's kind of not really in this category Perrier is sparkling Lacroix it's a Seltzer and the people who care about the difference are the same people who are telling you the champagne can only come from a certain part of France but we'll come back to that in a little bit later a quick pause in today's video 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no risk to try it out and you can try it out through the link down in the description below thank you to surfshark for sponsoring today's video so let's get back into it okay so the market for this stuff is worth over 30 billion Ding Dongs and is expected to almost double in the coming years and people are literally addicted to the stuff so what happened like any other hot ticket item Sparkling Water started as a luxury product for the wealthy Elite it goes way back to like the 1800s when carrier first started bottling mineral water that was naturally carbonated by volcanic gas this stuff was so bougie that it became a symbol of British French Imperial relations it was given a royal warrant on the bottle which is like this little lion design thing that says that the king with it you know what I'm saying not too long after that SodaStream started selling aerating liquid machines in iked you not 1903. again this was a big hit at Buckingham Palace and yes of course we have a whole video about sodastreams if you are interested in that over in the land of the free soda up as y'all like to call it was the drink of choice throughout the 20th century but by the time we hit the 1980s people were like oh my God I'm not healthy and they started switching from regular soda to diet soda and once again we have another video about Diet Coke if you want to watch that but lurking in the background for the first time ever busy water was becoming more available to the average Joe Lacroix hit the scene way before its time this family owned American company saw the bougie water Trend over in Europe and decided that they would do something different cheap carbonated water in a can soda water for the people now we will say that there are a few Brands selling this stuff in the early 2000s Clearly Canadian existed for our Canadian folks and there was of course club soda which is just regular carbonated water that has been in the consumer Market since the late 1800s but nobody's sporting swag for them I guess so they're doing something wrong so we've got Popham Decline and we've got sparkling water trending up but it's only on the shelves because of its supposed health benefits so it's spicy water better for you than pop yes it just is obviously it has the benefit of being sugar-free depending on the brand you might have more or less in terms of additives this is where Lacroix innocent branding sets it apart no sugars no artificial additives at all but this is becoming a bit of an industry Norm across the soda water scene now there is some concern that any kind of carbonated beverage is going to be slightly more acidic than flat water but not enough to erode your teeth enamel like some people have been worried about if you're curious about pH and water we've actually already made another video on that too and I'm realizing that we make a lot of videos about drinks probably because people like drinks and most of us don't need to buy quite as many drinks so it's relevant for the channel there are some downsides of course can't say that this thing's perfect it may cause bloating and gas which makes sense you're drinking bubbly water but on the plus side apparently it's supposed to have helped people with their constipation makes me wonder if it's just like the air bubbles like compressing the the space and the stomach and just pushing the stuff anyway now lastly it turns out that fizzy water might not be as good at helping you hydrate as regular water some studies show that the spiky Sensation turns off The Thirst receptors in your mouth so you'll stop drinking before you're fully hydrated so if like the oral fixation is is like you want to grab the can you wanna like oh you know like that sound you want that feeling and then the oh yeah I tell you what though folks that's bloody nice no it's good right like it's it just feels fancier than tap water and I see why people are into it it is so carbonated though I think bubbly is more carbonated than than some other brands so why Lacroix well Lacroix is a very interesting story and they're kind of like the example that we're going to use in this video because of how they were born into this scene at first Lacroix growth was pretty mad until something changed in the early 2000s that made it the champion of the carbon Aqua Market what the heck here's the deal I'm the best there is plain and simple I mean I wake up in the morning I kiss Excellence Lacroix doesn't publicize their net worth but by 2015 the company was estimated to be worth about 900 million dollars holding 30 of the Seltzer Market this is an increase of 200 percent compared to the previous five years so what changed you might ask first we've got to acknowledge that they were first that's a massive thing to be said just to be the first one to a cultural Trend Lacroix is not a Better Beverage than all of the comparable Brands but they have the heritage in the space the people associate with the category it's like people calling Kleenex Kleenex instead of facial tissues but they were among among the first to successfully introduce flavors to the sparkling water category they had the classics Berry orange cranberry raspberry pomplamoose grapefruit which is actually just grapefruit grapefruit but one of them is in French and a bunch of other ones too importantly they managed to do all of this while using all natural ingredients remaining sugar-free sweetener-free non-GMO vegetarian gluten-free kosher and all those other things the health nuts and Millennials love yes they really do advertise being gluten-free which I would have assumed was sort of clear because it's water but I guess you got to do what you got to do on the more bland side of the market Perrier and San Pellegrino still just tasted like water nowadays the flavors are just expected right like nobody in the right mind is going to slurp back a rock and a bubbly am I right can you buy unflavored spiky water I think you can and yeah that's what club soda is right now my personal favorite in this category not that you asked at all is spin drift oh my it's an American brand it's not here in Canada and I'm bummed about it it's been around since 2010 and claims to legit squeeze fruit juice into their Seltzer like I don't know if there's a rep over at Spindrift who wants to send a guy like a flat of this stuff because I would love that but one of my favorite reasons that Lacroix became an icon in the category is because of their design without even um thinking about it like you can imagine the can right early on they redesigned The Branding giving us this brightly colored retro squiggly thing that we all recognize today where other brands were trying to pull off like the Sleek Royal ass kissing label thing that was popular over in Europe Lacroix focused on something that Gen X and Millennials would relate to there's actually this great quote from the guy who does the marketing and design for like Gray Goose and Sephora and stuff he says the only compliment that I can make to Lacroix packaging is that it defies all the rules of design given that the logo is barely legible over that swirling hangover puke I just love it when a company does exactly what you're not supposed to do and crushes with it apparently Lacroix chose this design even though the executives hated it but the hangover puke did way better in consumer focus groups so here we are but you can kind of understand why it works right like the color blocking on store shelves makes the brand noticeable and easy to find the style is vintage looking like an 80s workout outfit on a can or something which gives it a certain nostalgic feeling and to go with this sort of anti-hype vibe Lacroix chose to ditch standard marketing practices like commercials instead focusing on online engagement and micro influencers giving it a sense of you know kind of Indie exclusive Community Focus Vibe but we're gonna zoom out for a little bit because of course Lacroix was not the only thing happening there have always been generic brands that will hop on a trend like this and release sort of like a you know Supermarket equivalent version of what ever is popular but many of the cans that we know today including bubbly weren't around yet Perrier released strawberry and watermelon flavors in 2017 and the same year Pepsi released bubbly and then acquired SodaStream in 2018. Coke didn't release aha or whatever it's called until 2020 but here is the twist in this story that I did not see coming at all today we see a lot of Seltzer and sparkling water companies adding sugar and more flavors back into their original offering so now we have Brands making Cola flavored water and cola Brands making sparkling water it's starting to feel like we're just stuck in this never-ending Loop and the thing is now stick with me here we might actually be in one as we know sparkling water has been around for quite a while now sparkling mineral water was associated with all these kinds of health benefits but as we've learned over time people hate drinking plain water so way back then they started mixing carbonated mineral water with wine to make it taste like something by 1830 they were adding flavored fruit syrups by 1865 Seltzer flavors included pineapple lemon Apple apricot grape Cherry raspberry Gooseberry and more then as The Story Goes someone stirred up Seltzer cocaine and the African Cola nut and that's how we got Coca-Cola so first we made seltzers with sugary fruit syrup so people would drink water then there was the cocaine Cola drink then there was Diet cocaine Cola drink hold the cocaine hold the syrup now here we are back to sparkling water flavored with fruit but it's 150 years later and we finally figured out how to do it without sugar has anybody thought about just drinking water have we gotten so far that that's just an impossible thing to think of anyways hopefully you enjoyed this story hopefully you are enjoying your bubbly water and as you hit that subscribe button I'm gonna chug the rest of this can right here oh my god oh Jesus ah oh God have you subscribed yet foreign thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Future Proof

Views: 326,452

Keywords: lacroix, la croix, lacroix water, water, sparkling water, sparkling water benefits, perrier, pellegrino, bubbly water, bubly, bubly water, hydration, hydrate, nutrition, health, wellness, product, product review, la croix limoncello, la croix boi, la croix chug tiktok, perrier water, pellegrino water, educational, explainer, educational videos, future proof, sustainable, sustainability, recycle, green, eco friendly

Id: 950h83XHDw8

Length: 13min 58sec (838 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 09 2023