You don’t often find the words ‘healthy’ and ‘cola’ in the same sentence, but Pascal Du Bois, the founder of ROBOT Organic Honey Cola Kombucha, assured me that his new soft drink is a truly healthy cola.
The new cola has taken Du Bois and his team over two years to develop, which will soon be available in selected stores across London, but here at Hand Crafted Drinks Magazine, we were keen to find out why he wanted to develop what might be considered the holy grail of drinks: a healthy cola.
ROBOT Cola is the first product to be launched by Net Zero Foods — Du Bois’s company committed to reducing the impact of food production on the environment and to creating genuinely healthy alternatives to their mass produced counterparts.
For Du Bois, who was becoming concerned that with the volumes of soft drinks consumed (on average 100 litres per person per year in the UK), combined with the availability of ultra-processed foods (available at supermarkets and from fast food outlets), there are all the right ingredients for what many in the healthcare sector are calling an obesity epidemic.
Obesity is costing the NHS around £8bn a year, which goes on the treatment of chronic conditions associated with being heavily overweight, including type two diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, heart attacks and strokes.
Successive governments have tried to curb rising levels of obesity across the UK, but despite the introduction of the Soft Drinks Industry Levy* in 2018 (more commonly known as the Sugar Tax), rates of obesity in on the increase.
So, how is Du Bois’s ROBOT Organic Honey Cola Kombucha different from the mainstream colas and how will help fight obesity?
One of the key ingredients for creating the new cola is an ancient health drink — kombucha (a Chinese remedy made from tea dating back around 3,000 years), as Du Bois explains:
“Kombucha is an essential gut health probiotic and in recent years we have seen a massive increase in autoimmune deficiency illnesses, caused by allergies and poor gut health.
“The industrialised farming system, ultra-processed foods, pesticides and chemicals are at the heart of the causes of poor gut health, and so probiotics and fermented foods are very important to help restore some form of equilibrium in the gut.”
The cola essences that deliver that familiar cola taste, are derived from the kola nut and blended with various organic ingredients, including orange, lemon, cinnamon and nutmeg.
Organic honey provides all the sweetness — there are no added sugars or artificial sweeteners; this results in ROBOT being less sweet than the mainstream colas, but it allows the complex cola flavours to come to the fore.
More importantly for Du Bois, using honey to deliver a natural sweetness, manages to remain below the legal limit of 5% of sugars per can.
With the UK bee population in decline, the use of honey drives demand for what should be seen as a super food – it is one of the purest and most beneficial ingredients on the planet, which is full of antioxidants, omega 3s, vitamins and minerals that you don’t get with refined, processed sugar.
So, ROBOT Cola, made using kombucha, honey and cola extracts — with almost 90% less sugar that the mainstream colas — sounds like it ticks many boxes, especially for an increasing numbers of parents who are concerned that their children are drinking too many sugary soft drinks.
There are no artificial ingredients, no refined sugars or artificial sweeteners and all the ingredients are actually beneficial for health.
Whilst there are demonstrable health benefits of switching to ROBOT Cola, the most important element is the taste, flavour profile and overall experience.
Having sampled ROBOT Cola in the office, we were all very impressed with what Du Bois and his team have produced.
From the ‘snap’ of the ring pull, which releases that familiar cola aroma, to the last drop, you get an authentic cola experience without any chemical after-tastes (that you can get from the low and zero calorie colas) and you also don’t get the sense that you have just consumed something that is sweet to the point of being sickly, as with many mainstream colas.
It is less fizzy compared to the mass-produced colas, but again this allows the true flavours to come through. The natural effervescence of the cola comes from the fermentation process of the tea, not from added CO2.
The company has also been certified as being organic by the UK Soil Association, and also by the EU organic certification body, which demonstrates that all their ingredients have been grown without the use of chemical pesticides or genetically modified organisms.
Whilst there are other kombucha colas on the market, there is no similar product available at the moment, which only uses organic honey for the sweetness.
ROBOT Cola is in our opinion a ‘world first’ and now sets the bar for healthy, sustainable, authentic colas, and one that we wouldn’t hesitate to recommend.
For more information visit ROBOT’s website
*There was no levy on soft drinks containing less than 5g of sugar per 100ml; 18p was added to every litre of soft drinks containing between 5g and 8g of sugar per 100ml and 24p per litre was levied on soft drinks containing more than 8g of sugar per 100ml.