Bai is a popular fruit-flavored drink that comes in exotic colors and flavors like "Brasilia Blueberry" and "Zambia Bing Cherry." The brand describes its product line as "Antioxidant Infusion Drinks" with no artificial sweeteners.
But is Bai actually good for you? Does the brand use any questionable additive ingredients? How is Bai sweetened if it has barely any sugar? And why was the company sued in 2018 over one of its ingredients?
In this article we'll answer all of these questions and more, as we analyze the ingredients in Bai to give our take on whether or not the drink is good for you.
We'll also feature unsponsored customer reviews, and explain why Bai was sued in 2018.
Key takeaways:
- Significantly improved ingredients but still two we consider unhealthy
- Plastic packaging is another negative from a health perspective
- We do not consider Bai to be good for you
Ingredient Analysis
The ingredients in the Kula Watermelon flavor of Bai are shown below:
Watermelon juice was shown to improve cognitive function in a 2021 clinical trial, but this drink is only 1% juice.
Vegetable juice concentrate is a much healthier colorant than artificial colors, as we documented in our article on is BodyArmor good for you.
Unfortunately, Bai also contains several ingredients that we consider unhealthy.
Citric acid is clinically shown to cause whole-body inflammation in some individuals.
Natural flavors is a broad, categorical descriptor that can include preservatives according to a medical review published in the Food and Chemical Toxicology journal.
Bai has significantly improved the formulation of this drink since our initial publication of this article, removing erythritol.
Erythritol is a sweetener that's clinically shown to be associated with greater risk of stroke, according to a 2023 medical review, which also documented that this sweetener increases blood clotting.
Overall, we do not consider Bai to be good for you given the two ingredients discussed above.
Does the Packaging Make it Worse?
Bai is packaged in plastic, which we consider to be suboptimal from a health perspective.
Plastic leaches chemicals that can be harmful to human health, according to a 2021 medical study.
Plastics are also harmful to the environment.
We consider drinking filtered water out of glass or any non-plastic material like metal cans to be a superior health and environmental choice to drinking from plastic bottles like Bai.
Even for consumers who need to stop in a gas station or convenience store for a drink, there are now many glass bottle and metal bottle options available.
Why Was Bai Sued?
In 2018, Bai Brands was sued in a class-action lawsuit over allegations of false advertising.
The company uses malic acid in some of their formulations, and thus the company was allegedly false advertising by suggesting all of the ingredients were natural, according to the plaintiff.
As documented by ClassAction.org, the plaintiffs alleged that malic acid is produced at petrochemical plants and may have "highly toxic" chemical precursors or byproducts.
This case was dismissed in 2020 according to Bloomberg Law.
We don't consider this to be a consumer safety issue. Our concerns about Bai's formulation relate to the ingredients cited in the Ingredient Analysis section like erythritol, not malic acid.
Our Clean Flavored Water Pick
Pique Daily Radiance is our top water flavor enhancing packet.
This product comes in convenient stick packs that can be mixed into water, and is naturally flavored with nutritious, whole food ingredients like organic elderberry juice concentrate (which is clinically shown to support the immune system) and organic lemon juice concentrate.
Most importantly, Pique's flavor enhancer is entirely free of citric acid, preservatives, artificial sweeteners and flavoring additives.
There are no ingredients in this formulation that we consider to be unhealthy.
