Have You Heard of SodaStream?

Today I wanted to take a moment to talk about a great product we just began carrying in our store called SodaStream.  Many of us in the store bought these as soon as they came into the store (and we all love them) while we have also been getting rave reviews from our customers.   SodaStream in short, is a soda maker you can use in your home.  These little devices are incredibly capable and can perform so many tasks that I wanted to do a quick little write up about them.

With SodaStream, making carbonated water and soft drinks is simple.  These great soda makers can turn tap water into sparkling water in under 30 seconds, with no clean-up.  But that is just the tip of the iceberg with these devices, they offer a large variety of flavoring syrups so you and your family can make all of your favorite drinks.  Additionally, SodaStream products are designed with reusable plastic bottles so it greatly reduces the amount of waste that comes with regular soft drinks and sparkling water.  Since we aspire to create beautiful living spaces here at The Picket Fence we love the fact that they come in  a variety of colors and silhouettes, so you’ll be able to find a soda maker to match any decor.

These are also a great way to save a some money, the SodaStream website says that if you were to use SodaStream to make the same volume of liquid that you would find in a regular soda can, it will cost you 25 cents.  And just because you are making your drinks at home doesn’t mean you missing the flavors you can find at the store.  SodaStream has a variety of flavors you can choose from to make your drinks.  They offer over 30 to choose from, including favorites such as Cola, Lemon-Lime, Orange and Root Beer, mixers, like Ginger Ale and Tonic in both regular and diet or you can try their fruit creations, including Orange Mango, Diet Pink Grapefruit or Cranberry-Raspberry.  You can even experiment with mixing flavors to see what you can come up with (I quickly learned that I am not the next soda genius and now stick mostly to the regular flavors )

The benefits of these great little machines don’t stop there, another great factor (one of the most important for me) is the health factor.  In an average cola soda:

• Pepsi has 100 calories, 27g carbs, 27g sugar, 25mg sodium, and 25mg caffeine.
• Coca-Cola has 100 calories, 27g carbs, 27g sugar, 35mg sodium, 23mg caffeine.
• SodaStream cola has 34 calories, 9g carbs, 9g sugar, 2mg sodium, 15mg caffeine.

You can clearly see that if you drink any quantity of soda you are going to benefit greatly from the reduction in calories, carbs, sugars and sodium that comes with making your own soda.

I could go on all day about these wonderful little devices, but I’ll just leave you with a little tidbit about their eco-friendly aspects.  SodaStream soda makers are an “Active Green” product, meaning that consumers  are actively reducing their CO₂ footprint every time they make soda  or sparkling water at home instead of buying it from the store.  The more the system is used on a daily basis, the more CO₂footprint the user actively saves. (This differs from “Passive Green” products, which use green-friendly production processes, but their products are not inherently helping the consumers save on their daily footprint.)  SodaStream also saves on bottles and cans and helps reduce trash or the energy it takes to recycle.

The Picket Fence is very impressed with this product.  We have used it ourselves and we love the great soda and sparkling water that these little machines make!  We are working on getting these products on our website as I write and if you get a chance to use one of these soda makers we hope you enjoy it as much as we do.