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Vitamin water Updated: 05 Mar 2009

Not all they seem

There are a number of concerns about vitamin waters.

For starters, these products make borderline health claims and other vague beneficial claims without any evidence to back them up.

Charlie's Defence Vitamin Water claims to "support the immune system". Glaceau Vitamin Water focus is supposed to help you do just that - keep focused. The Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code prohibits almost all health claims (the only exception is folate, which is known to reduce foetal neural-tube defects).

Then there are the ingredients. Check the labels and you'll see these drinks are little more than water and sugar disguised as a vitamin supplement.

Each bottle contains 6 to 8 teaspoons of sugar (see the table below) - that's up to half the daily recommended dietary intake of sugar for an average-sized woman (for men it's one-quarter to one-third of their recommended dietary intake).

And despite having exotic fruit "flavours" like pomegranate, dragonfruit and mangosteen, these drinks don't contain significant quantities of fruit juice. Some contain less than 1 percent juice; most contain no juice. We think their labels should stop misleading consumers about the fruit content - they should state that they're "fruit-flavoured" drinks.