Sunday, July 7, 2013

Middling, Poor For The Price, POM Mango Fails To Impress.


The Good: Tastes all right.
The Bad: Expensive, Not nearly as healthy as other premium bottled juice products, Nothing superlative nutritionally.
The Basics: POM Mango 100% Juice Blend is a healthy, trendy fruit juice that is not worth picking up.


Summer is here and as such, my reviews of beverages are making the shift from hot drinks to cool bottled beverages. I am always pleased when my reviews of bottled drinks land with readers and when I saw that POM had released some new drinks to the market, I thought I could be useful in providing readers with something of a summer drinking guide. To that end, I picked up the POM Mango 100% Juice Blend.

Despite how cute the bottle was and my predilection toward mango juice, I found the POM Mango thoroughly unimpressive both by taste and nutrition. And, given the expense, I found it impossible to recommend.

Basics

POM is a fruit drink brand, trading on the properties of pomegranates (which I view as one of the worst culinary fads of the last decade). This is a fruit juice that is surprisingly light on nutrients. POM Mango comes in a 12 fl. oz. plastic bottle that is curvy, smooth and squat that takes up an odd amount of space by volume. The #1 recyclable bottle is filled with the opaque rich purple liquid, which looks much like wine or grape juice. POM juice products is a comparatively new, trendy brand and the Mango 100% Juice Blend is my first experience with the brand. Right off the bat, it felt pretty expensive at more than $2.50/bottle!

The 12 fl. oz. bottle gives consumers a full serving.

Ease Of Preparation

POM Mango 100% Juice Blend is a liquid in the 12 fl. oz. bottle and is a ready-to-drink beverage. So, preparation is as easy as opening a plastic bottle. Mango has a plastic cap that easily twists off and can be put back on in order to reseal it. It is important to note that this is supposed to be refrigerated, so quality of the beverage will degrade if it is left out at room temperature before or after the bottle is open. This has a pretty standard security seal ring around the lower half of the cap and informs the consumer as to whether the product has been opened by cracking off when the top is twisted.

Taste

The Mango POM smells like mango and a generic berry, like raspberries. The aroma is strangely neutral, with an overall fruity scent that is more vague than specific to the major fruits that are in this beverage.

The flavor is very sweet, mostly mango and raspberry. The berry flavor dominates the initial taste in the mouth with a sweetness that tastes more like raspberries than mangos. The aftertaste is slightly sour that tastes very distinctly like mangos and it is delightful.

The sour mango aftertaste remains in the mouth for another two or three minutes and it is not unpleasant or overwhelming.

Nutrition

As a healthy fruit juice, POM Mango 100% Juice Drink is designed to fill in some of the nutritional gaps one might have in their diet, but this beverage falls woefully short of that. Nutritionally, POM Mango is a fair option for those who are dieting or are trying to improve their health. Mango is primarily composed of pomegranate and mango juices from concentrate, mango puree from concentrate and pear juice from concentrate. It contains nothing bad, which might be why it expires so quickly. It is Vegan compliant, gluten-free, and soy-free, but not certified organic.

One serving of Mango has 210 calories and no fat. While there are 51 grams of carbohydrates, the beverage has no cholesterol, and only a single gram of protein! There is a negligible 10 mg (less than 1% RDA) of sodium in each serving. Outside the 640mg Potassium, the only nutrients this drink has are 2% RDA of Calcium and Iron.

Storage/Clean-up

POM Mango Superjuice Drink comes in a plastic bottle and it keeps for only a few weeks. The bottle I bought at the beginning of July had an expiration date of September 19, 2013 (I consumed the one I bought well before that!).

This drink is a fruit product and an opaque purple. If this gets on clothes, it will absolutely stain them, especially light clothes. Consult a care guide for your clothes, though I suspect light clothes would need bleach to get this out. Still, the drink wipes off surfaces easily with a cloth, assuming they are impermeable.

Overall

POM Mango 100% Juice Blend is not incredibly nutritious or flavorful, but it is expensive, making it easy to pass by.

For other healthy beverages, please check out my reviews of:
Bolthouse Farms Strawberry + Yogurt + Granola Smoothie
Dole 100% Juice Orange Peach Mango
O.N.E. Active Cranberry Grapefruit Coconut Water

4/10

For other food reviews, please visit my index page for a complete listing by clicking here!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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