Nestea Ice

[Toliver]

Nestea Ice

It's a very...interesting...web site on the new product.

I thought about posting this in the Soda Pop section but figured it should go here.

There's supposed to be an ingredient in it that creates a cooling sensation in your mouth.

Anyone see this product in their area?

[Fred Jauss]

I recently purchased this in a small grocery store near my home. I went in with the sole intention of picking up some stamps, but the 20 oz bottle of this caught my eye in the refrigerated case. To me, regular canned iced tea always has that "powdered ice tea mix" taste to it.

I tried the lime flavored version. Being on a lime-flavored soda kick as of late with the introduction of Coke with Lime and Pepsi with lime, I had moderate hopes... The lime flavoring was decent and a change from the standard lemon flavor that is notmally added to the Lipton Brisk and Nestea iced teas.

However...

The cooling sensation of whatever-it-is that they add to it was utterly disgusting. I guess it was like drinking iced tea while sucking on one of those red and white peppermint starlight mints.

Needless to say, I will not be purchasing this again....

[Toliver]

Thanks for taking one for the team, Fred.

I was curious as to what the "cooling sensation" would be and you were very precise in the description of the effect.

Still, I'll give it a try when and if it appears in this area.

[eje]

There's been quite a bit of research done in my department at UCSF regarding the effects of menthol (and capsaicin). Unfortunately, I am a computer guy, so don't necessarily understand it well enough to be an expert.

What the labs have found is that menthol binds to a receptor in your nervous system which normally detects a cooling temperature shift.

You put a ice cube on your tongue, the receptor detects that change in temperature and sends the message to your brain that the temperature has changed downwards.

Menthol skips the actual temperature shift and simply causes the message of cooling to be sent to your brain.

I suspect this beverage contains some chemical analog of menthol that doesn't have a mint flavor.

Just not sure if this is "better living through biochemistry" or not.

-Erik

Nature 416, 52-58 (7 March 2002) | doi: 10.1038/nature719

Identification of a cold receptor reveals a general role for TRP channels in thermosensation

David D. McKemy, Werner M. Neuhausser, and David Julius