What is Young Scent and drinking vinegar?
Recently, I was given drinks from the brand, Young Scent, to try out. Young Scent creates fruit vinegar drinks (also known as drinking vinegar), which is a fermented beverage made from fruit and brown rice vinegar that acts as a prebiotic food. These drinks claim to assist in digestion, help in weight loss, balance pH levels, improve energy, along with many other health benefits. Essentially the same, if not more, benefits than the ACV cleanse, but in a tastier way!
The ACV (apple cider vinegar) cleanse has grown rapidly popular with celebrities such as Katy Perry and Miranda Kerr boasting its health benefits for detoxing, curbing appetite, skincare and even boosting immunity! I personally have tried this fad cleanse and added it to my water in the morning along with some lemon, but even then the taste was too pungent for me. I definitely did not continue drinking it long enough to see any of the "magical" effects, so I was really excited to see if Young Scent's vinegar drink could help me overcome the taste barrier of vinegar.
When I first learned about Young Scent, my first thought was that it would be similar to Kombucha (both fermented, both prebiotic) and I was super excited because I LOVE Kombucha and was more than a little excited to possibly find a new, healthy, fermented drink. However, Young Scent does differentiate between the two, saying that Kombucha is fermented from tea, while fruit vinegar is fermented fruit wine, which undergoes a different process with less acidity in order to preserve many of the nutritive substances of the fruit wine.
The drinks come in these really cute glass bottles, only 50 calories per bottle in the flavors Apple, Passionfruit, Mulberry and Lime.
Taste Testing
I tried the Apple flavor first. When I opened the bottle, I was hit with a subtle, but still pretty apparent vinegar smell, which made me a little nervous. It definitely was not as strong a smell as opening a bottle of vinegar, but the smell was still there. I took my first sip and I was both happy and disappointed with the outcome. The vinegar taste was very mild, as in, I did not cringe at the taste and could drink it fairly easily. However, I think I was still expecting somewhat of a Kombucha/juice taste, which was defintiely not there for me. The apple flavor also wasn’t very apparent.
I think my favorite was the Passionfruit flavor. I couldn’t necessarily taste the passionfruit, but it hid the vinegar taste fairly well. The lime flavor was also pretty good. The vinegar taste wasn’t super strong and it felt more refreshing than the other ones. I don’t know exactly what Mulberry is supposed to taste like, but the drink tasted very similar to the apple (mainly vinegar).
Recommendation
If you’ve been wanting to get into the vinegar cleanse trend, but don’t want to deal with the taste of natural vinegar, then you should definitely try these out! I think that the milder taste is very manageable for those who have never had vinegar before and the flavors are most likely more apparent to those who are accustomed to the vinegar taste. I only tried the drinks themselves, but the Young Scent website also contains recipes for cocktails (for those 21 and over of course), mocktails, and various recipes to use the vinegar drink that sound delicious!