Before I moved to Japan, friends and family kept saying “oh wow, you’ll be so healthy and fit from all the wonderful fresh food there!” and so I expected most meals to be all about fresh fruit, vegetables and fish. It could be that way, but for the most part it’s not. There’s a lot of heavily preprocessed food, so unless you buy supermarket sushi, the easiest way to eat healthily here is to cook meals at home.

That’s all well and good, but even then not everyone goes for the raw vegies and fish, and end up frying something or microwaving something frozen and so they’re still not eating that well.

Enter Coca-cola Plus, which has no calories and a bunch of added fiber to help the country’s collective colons moving as they should be. There’s also other fibre-added drinks available (including one that features a cabbage on its label), but they’ll have their own posts.

It tastes pretty much like Diet Coke, which is what it is, but the mouth-feel texture is subtly different. It’s not like there’s lumps of Metamucil floating about in there, but there’s definitely something.

I felt kinda awkward picking this up off the shelf – it’s basically saying “I think I’m fat AND I’m all bunged up, but I’m so irresponsible about my body’s health that I’m going to put it in the hands of a caffinated drink.”

Mind you, in this country, that thinking probably makes perfect sense.

Cost: 140Y

Availability: It suddenly appeared out of nowhere, but it kinda looks like its here to stay, but who knows? It could be gone tomorrow.

Tags: drink, health, Japan, soft drink