(Post theme: bad idea right? by Olivia Rodrigo)

Last time: Aroha Coe’s Cloudy Lemonade, this time Love Muscle Pineapple Sparkling Protein Water.

330ml can, spotted in New World - I’ve never seen it before, and I am very clearly not the target audience for a sparkling protein water. I went in fully expecting to hate it, which is a bad-idea-right? sort of pick.

It was, surprisingly, good. Distinct pineapple taste - not in a juice-y way, more of a clean, lightly-sweet, fizzy-pineapple way - and it doesn’t have any of the chalky, vaguely-medicinal aftertaste I was bracing myself for. The protein-water angle is mostly invisible, which I think is the point.

The catch is that it’s clearly aiming to be a reasonably-healthy drink, and “reasonably healthy” here translates to “not sweet enough” for me. I prefer my soft drinks closer to the dessert end of the spectrum, and this lands well short of that.

Not for me, but a much better not-for-me than I was expecting. And maybe I would go back, and I’m curious what the other flavours are like. 5.5/10.