smile booster / product review

I decided it was time to write about something appropriate for our “etc” category, which up to now has received no posts.

I periodically stop at Mitsuwa for my favorite corn-popped snacky treats that I can’t remember the name of, or sushi, which is super-cheap and surprisingly not bad for something pre-made in a store. Sometimes I peruse the drinks and candies for anything interesting, and on one particular visit, this caught my eye:

I took my three tiny bottles home and stuck them in the fridge, in the hopes that I could share them with Mary during a visit. My impatience got the best of me though, and I made Mr. Furious drink them with me. We each had a bottle; they tasted like a less sweet version of Cactus Cooler and had a weird medicinal aftertaste. If I had been smiling when I tried it, there certainly wouldn’t have been any boosting going on. Smile Booster has a flavor that only a truly healthy and vitamin-rich beverage can have. However, inspection of the nutritional information revealed this:

No nutritional value whatsoever! Who would drink something so sucky if there weren’t any vitamins to be had? I took a closer look at the bottle, which has the exact same artwork as the plastic packaging, but also with a treadmill in the background. I started Googling the ingredients, and after the soda types of things was L-carnitine. What does Wikipedia have to say about it? “Although L-carnitine has been marketed as a weight-loss supplement, there is no scientific evidence to date to show that it improves weight loss.”

Thus completed the sad realization that I had consumed a small, unpleasant beverage and had no vitamins or weight loss to show for it.