Reviewing Taiwan’s Energy Drink Market
I don’t drink coffee so on the days where my body just refuses to function I’d grown accustom to relying on energy drinks, or more lately bubble milk tea.
When I moved to Taiwan and saw the energy drink market here I remember being a little bit scared. I didn’t recognise the brands and had no idea what was in any of them. The energy drink industry in Taiwan is explicitly aimed at the local market and as such all the information about them is only available in Chinese.
I also kind of imagined that food and drink regulation in Taiwan is pretty non existent so there’s a good chance I’d be wiping a couple of years off my life with every bottle I drank.
These facts alone were enough to keep me from sampling Taiwan’s energy drinks for a good many months.
Then one m0rning over Chinese New Year I found myself in a remote area devoid of a tea shop. Once I’d gotten over the shock of finding the only place in Taiwan without a tea shop within arms distance reality kicked in and I realised I was in trouble.
My only choice at this point was to succumb to the sweet calling whisper of the energy drink. I stumbled into the nearest 7-11 and eyed up my options in the fridge. The bottles all looked the same so I just grabbed one at random.
As images of permanent erectile dysfunction, growing an extra limb, getting pregnant or losing all my hair flashed through my mind I stood outside in the sun and slammed the drink down.
Figuring I was already in over my head and that I might as well make the most of it, over the next week I set out to review any energy drink I could find.
Note: I’ve included a photo of each drinks nutritional information section on the label. Apart from the obvious Vitamin B stuff I can’t read Chinese so I have no idea what it says.
Any translation (especially of anything dangerous) is appreciated!
1. ‘Come Best’
I’m not exactly sure of the name of Come Best. Come Best is the only English on the bottle but after tracking down the drink company’s website it seems to be made by Grape King and they call it ‘Camber mega-rich beverages’.
Grape King market Come Best as having ‘classic grape wang refreshing beverage technology’. This sort of makes sense. When I saw the name Come Best I kind of wondered if after drinking it I’d be wandering around with a hard on for a week.
Turns out Come Best didn’t give me a raging hard on, but if anyone knows what ‘grape wang’ is I’m all ears.
Ingredients wise Grape King is kind of vague. They state the drink contains:
- 200mg of eight kind of vitamins
- 2000mg of seven kinds of amino acids
- 200mg of five kinds of minerals
Taste wise I guess with the company name being Grape King it’s supposed to taste like grape but really it’s more like cough syrup. People who whinge about cherry cola or Dr. Pepper tasting like cough syrup really need to try Asian energy drinks. Medicine flavour to the max.
Energy wise it didn’t really seem to do anything. I mean I didn’t fall asleep but damnit if I’m going to be chugging 2000mg of seven kinds of amino acids I want to at least feel something.
I’d probably give Come Best a miss. Well, unless you’ve got an addiction to the taste of cough syrup.
Size: 160ml
Cost: $20 TWD (70c AUD)
2. White Horse
This drink I kind of have no idea what it’s called other then the picture of a white horse that features on the bottle. If you can translate it leave a comment below.
The Ranting Jamaican seems to think it’s called “White Horse – Horse Strength something” which kind of makes sense as the horse symbol features under the white horse and then again in yellow underneath.
There’s no English on the bottle so I’ve literally got no idea about the product. Taste wise it was almost identical to Come Best, the bottles even look the same. Very syrupy and very sweet.
I found it also didn’t really do anything to my energy levels.
Size: 150ml
Cost: $20 TWD (70c AUD).
3. Paolyta Bull Wild
Paolyta the drink company seems to have been around 80 something years and are well known in Taiwan. I see posters for their drinks everywhere, most prominently on the side of Betel nut booths.
Paolyta Bull Wild was a lot mellower tasting then White Horse or Come Best but still lacking in the energy department. Paolyta claims Bull Wild has in it taurine, vitamin C, inositol, amino acids, β-carotene, Vitamin B “and so on”.
Your guess is as good as mine as to what “and so on” contains.
Of that list I had no idea what inositol and β-carotene was so I decided to look them up;
Inositol is a supplement that is part of the Vitamin B family. In high doses inositol has shown promising results in patients suffering from bulimia, panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, agoraphobia, and unipolar and bipolar depression.
Apparently people suffering from depression have a lack of inositol so I guess drinking Bull Wild might help. Although there’s probably healthier ways to ingest it.
β-carotene (beta carotene) is an anti-oxidant and worryingly has been linked to cancer. At a rate of 30mg a day it’s been shown to increase the rate of lung and prostate cancer in smokers and people who have been exposed to asbestos.
I don’t fall into either of these categories but it still worries me a bit. I can’t read the ingredients list on the bottle but I assume the amount of β-carotene in Bull Wild is less then 30mg.
Energy wise I felt it was the equivalent to a Red Bull or V. Keeps you awake for a bit but unless you’re sensitive to caffeine it doesn’t really have any staying power.
Size: 160ml
Cost: $20 TWD (70c AUD)
4. Paolyta Bull Wild 2
Instead of coming up with something creative (y’know, like all of the 5 seconds it must have taken to come up with ‘Bull Wild’), Paolyta simply decided to call their larger energy drink offering, ‘Bull Wild 2′.
Bull Wild 2 has easily the best flavour out of the energy drinks I found in 7-11. It’s like a fruity taste which was a nice change from cough syrup. Noticeable differences between Bull Wild and Bull Wild 2 are that 2 comes in a larger bottle (200ml) and contains more “bovine sulfonic acid”.
I couldn’t find any information about bovine sulfonic acid but apparently Taurine is a sulfonic acid so I’m assuming this is what Paolyta mean.
In any case Bull Wild 2 was hands down the best energy drink out of the bunch. I downed one of these on a Saturday night and was still going at 4-5 in the morning. That was after starting work at 9am the previous day.
Normally no matter what I do I crash out at around 2-3am but Bull Wild 2 put a stop to that.
I am a bit worried about the ingredients but I figure every so often (read: weekends) isn’t going to kill me. Well not anytime soon though. I’m one of those people who doesn’t get weird heartbeats or chest pains from energy drinks so be careful if you’re prone to those symptoms. Bull Wild 2 is definitely a lot stronger then any energy drink I had back in Australia.
At just $5 TWD (17c AUD) more then the other energy drink offerings Bull Wild 2 is a steal.
Size: 200ml
Cost: $25 TWD (86c AUD)
Although it hasn’t happened since I imagine security is still probably pretty lax and it could easily happen again. Something that, although highly unlikely, is going to sit in the back of my mind everytime I down a bottle of Bull Wild 2!
The thing I most love about energy drinks in Taiwan is the price. Forget about the $2-$5 AUD garbage prices we pay back home, here everything comes in at under a dollar a bottle.
One thing I do miss though is the fizziness. Whilst the energy supplement is definitely better, the syrup texture of the drinks leaves a lot to be desired. Even with Bull Wild 2′s fruit taste you still feel like you’re drinking medicine as opposed to harmless fizzy sugar drink.
One other drink which I tried to find was something I’d heard about called Whisbi (also spelt Whisby). This energy drink contains alcohol and is apparently horrible to taste, but is the rolls royce of energy drinks.
So far I haven’t seen it in any fridges so I’m thinking it might be kept with the non-refrigerated alcohol drinks. When I do eventually wind up finding a bottle if it’s good enough I’ll give it a post all on it’s own.
I also know there’s some other energy drinks around too so if I find enough of them I’ll do a part 2 writeup.
OzSoapbox – putting my health on the line so you don’t have to!
January 24th, 2012 at
[...] C taste Jan.24, 2012 in food As a connoisseur of energy drinks, Taiwan is pretty good to me. There’s a whole bunch of them here and they’re pretty [...]