Squirt

I like to save things. Especially if they're odd. Sometimes I save good things, and sometimes not.

When I went to New York for my MRI, I bought some Squirt. The empty bottle had been hanging around our kitchen for over two weeks now and Suz didn't like that. She wanted me to get rid of it. I had to agree with her, as the empty bottle of Squirt wasn't odd or special enough to save despite a number of totally wacky and unusual things.

I don't know what Squirt is. It has to be one of the most bizarre drinks I've ever drank. It's an unusual citrus flavour, and it's only half-carbonated, if that's even possible. I suppose I could've purchased a bad bottle, because it tasted like it was half-flat.

But not only is the juice weird, the label is way messed up too. There are warnings about not pointing the bottle towards people's faces, and a bold declaration that it contains less than 1% fruit juice.

The list of ingredients is also surprising. It contains much of the tasty stuff that other bottled beverages have, like the ever-popular preservative Sodium Benzoate, as well as some non-tasty stuff like Brominated Vegetable Oil.

It also contains something I have never heard of: Ester of Wood Rosin. I learned from Answerbag.com that it is used as a natural stabilizer for flavouring oils in fruit-flavoured beverages. Since my Squirt was citrus flavoured, it seemed appropriate that wood rosin was an ingredient. I don't know what's so unstable about it, but I assume it's the flavouring oils even though no "flavouring oils" are listed in the ingredients. Unless you count the super-gross Brominated Vegetable Oil.

Anyway, I told Suz I had no objections to recycling the empty bottle of Squirt. Now our kitchen is less cluttered - and less weird.