Kansas City Food Blog

​Occasionally you have to wonder what soft-drink executives are thinking. According to the Times Online, Coca-Cola is test marketing a carbonated milk beverage, Vio, in New York City.

The four main ingredients are skim milk, sparkling water, fruit and cane sugar. For now, there are four flavors: peach, mango, berry citrus and tropical colada. It doesn't need to be refrigerated and the taste is apparently "like a birthday party for a polar bear."

A review for BevNET.com offered the following assessment of the drink, which apparently shares some similarities with lassi, a yogurt-based drink. 

"What starts out not seeming not so sweet, turns almost overwhelming almost half way through the bottle."

It seems like we're messing with milk more now than ever. The milk bag has caught on in the United Kingdom and Canada. Wal-Mart decided last year to stop carrying milk with artificial growth hormones based on consumer demand. Earlier this year in China, debate raged over the addition of osteoblast milk protein (OMP) to dairy products.

Grocery Eats attempted to supercharge several drinks -- Gatorade, Snapple, Hawaiian Punch, a Starbucks Frapuccino and milk -- with a blast from a CO2 cannister. The results were decidely mixed, although this line about carbonated milk is disturbing:
 
"Have you ever burped up foam?"
 
Now that the facts are out of the way, the question is why? Has anyone every thought, my morning cereal would be better if it wasn't just my Rice Krispies that crackled? Perhaps this is one product we should be glad isn't being test-marketed in Kansas.

[Image via Guardian UK]