Culture Pop Strawberry & Rhubarb

I haven't seen Culture Pop on the shelves around where I live, but I discovered them on a recent trip through the South. Culture Pop is another brand of probiotic sodas made in the recent trend of companies attempting to make healthier soft drinks. They claim to use organic fruit juices and organic spices to create their flavors. Their website states that they use natural fruit juices as their sweeteners rather than artificial sweeteners or real sugar. The probiotic ingredient is listed as DE111 Bacillus Subtilis.

This can of strawberry and rhubarb lists just 45 calories and includes ingredients like white grape juice, strawberry, rhubarb, and orange juices as well as sea salt, and cardamom. It smells quite nice, very strawberry scented, similar in smell to much more sugary strawberry sodas. I find it has a very mixed flavor changing rapidly while sipping. The flavor(s) disappear so rapidly I didn't even have time to place them, though I noted it was bitter when first hitting the tongue. On the next sip I held in my mouth longer to try to pick up some of the flavoring. Still bitter tasting, but without any sort of added sweeteners that should be expected. I can also pick up citric acidity followed by a quick flash of unsweetened rhubarb. Most of these prebiotic and probiotic sodas are undrinkable. While this one is bitter, because the flavor is so short lived its much kinder to the taste buds than other "gut healthy" sodas so makes for a nice option in the realm of "healthy" soft drinks.