Everly: Active Drink Mixes That Support a Really Good Cause
I’ve always loved Tom’s One for One movement. You buy something; you give something. It’s awesome, and it feels like a more engaged and conscious way to shop. So when a few boxes of Everly drink mixes arrived at FBE HQ — drink mixes that are all-natural and give back to people in need — you better believe we wanted to try them. After all, why not hydrate and do some good at the same time?
Free of calories, unnatural dyes and other icky stuff, the Everly drink mixes help flavor your water to make it tastier, healthier and ready for you to drink no matter where you go. And for each box of Everly purchased, they provide a packet of a life-saving oral rehydration salts to a child who is sick with waterborne disease.
With fruit, tea and seed extracts, these are filled with electrolytes and other vitamins and come in low-waste hole-punched packets that you can easily clip onto your water bottle and backpack. Think of it as a healthier take on Crystal Light that’s ready to go anywhere.
Each of these drink mixes have slightly different ingredient lists and nutritionals, but there are a few constants: zero calories, sweetened with stevia and erythritol, and natural food color dyes are used (hooray for fruit juice for color!).
Each drink mix does something a little different, too. Pomegranate + Maqui Berry boosts antioxidants, Green Tea + Passion Fruit is for concentration, and Peach + Mango is for energy (with guarana). You’re supposed to pour these directly into a water bottle, but my water bottle is purple, which wouldn’t make for very telling photos of how these look, right? So, instead, I opted to pour and stir these into glasses at home. It worked out really well!
I tried Peach + Mango first and really liked the flavor. Again, there’s a slight stevia aftertaste, but the dominant peach flavor is really nice and sweet, and the little bit of mango flavor in there complements it well.
Next I tried the Green Tea + Passion Fruit. Man, I was not a big fan of this flavor. I’m not a huge passion fruit person to begin with — so there’s that — but I just didn’t get the green tea in it and it just seemed sweet without a whole lot of flavor. Two sips and I was done. (Second sip was just to make sure.)
The only bonus to this flavor, which I found pretty funny, was that after a while it kind of looks like a light beer. (You could fool all your friends. Just look at the images below … see? Beer!)
The final one I tried was the Pomegranate + Maqui Berry. While the others were a powder that was easily added and absorbed into the water, this one was more solid and more of a challenge to mix in. (I had to crumble it in my hands before stirring in.)
But thankfully the extra step was worth it because this was my favorite flavor by far! With such a bright and pretty color, these were just the right mix of berry and sweet without being too sweet (and they seemed to have less of a stevia aftertaste than the two other flavors). Almost like a more exotic cranberry juice. I loved it.
You can find these in some Whole Foods on the East Coast or online. They go for about $14 for three six-pack boxes. While I don’t see myself drinking these too often, I like the idea of having a few of the Pomegranate + Maqui Berry packets around for when I want to hydrate but don’t feel like water (or am out being active and could use some extra vitamins and minerals). And the whole giving back thing? Well, that just fills me with warm fuzzies.
Do you like supporting products that support a good cause, too? —Jenn