Saturday, April 20, 2013
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This isn't a particularly important topic, but since I know the solution, I thought I would post it here.
Mold can grow in bottles and pitchers of Crystal Light. The mold will grow on the sides of the bottles (meaning on the inside, not the outside), both above and below the level of the liquid. I was surprised the first time I saw this, since there is no food in Crystal Light for mold to feed on. Actually, there is. The artificial sweeteners that the manufacturer uses may be calorie-free to humans, but mold can consume them. (Nutrasweet is made from proteins, and Splenda is made from modified sugar molecules.)
The mold, I found, is very persistent. I am using juice bottles; and since the openings of the bottles are very small, it is impossible to get into the bottles to scrub them out. Knowing that vinegar kills mold, I swished vinegar around the bottles; but it didn't remove the mold, no matter how hard I swished and shook. I ended up having to discard the bottles that already had mold in them. (I discarded them in the recycling bin, of course -- always recycle!)
I read on the internet that some people are swishing bleach around their bottles. They report that the mold is then gone. However, I suspect that the bleach is just bleaching the mold and not actually removing it, so I don't recommend using bleach. Also, bleach isn't a natural substance.
Vinegar is the solution, but you have to use the vinegar as a preventative measure, not after the mold has already grown. In other words, you have to use the vinegar right from the beginning when you start using a fresh bottle.
After finishing a bottle or pitcher of Crystal Light, immediately rinse out the bottle with water. Then put a couple ounces of vinegar in it and swish the vinegar around. If you want to refill the bottle with Crystal Light right away, then rinse out the vinegar with water and refill the bottle. But if you don't want to refill the bottle right away, then store the bottle with a few ounces of vinegar in the bottom. The point is, you always have to use vinegar in the bottle between refills of Crystal Light. Doing so will prevent the development of mold.
By the way, Crystal Light should always be kept in the refrigerator (after being mixed with water). It is more perishable than soda is.
Mold can grow in bottles and pitchers of Crystal Light. The mold will grow on the sides of the bottles (meaning on the inside, not the outside), both above and below the level of the liquid. I was surprised the first time I saw this, since there is no food in Crystal Light for mold to feed on. Actually, there is. The artificial sweeteners that the manufacturer uses may be calorie-free to humans, but mold can consume them. (Nutrasweet is made from proteins, and Splenda is made from modified sugar molecules.)
The mold, I found, is very persistent. I am using juice bottles; and since the openings of the bottles are very small, it is impossible to get into the bottles to scrub them out. Knowing that vinegar kills mold, I swished vinegar around the bottles; but it didn't remove the mold, no matter how hard I swished and shook. I ended up having to discard the bottles that already had mold in them. (I discarded them in the recycling bin, of course -- always recycle!)
I read on the internet that some people are swishing bleach around their bottles. They report that the mold is then gone. However, I suspect that the bleach is just bleaching the mold and not actually removing it, so I don't recommend using bleach. Also, bleach isn't a natural substance.
Vinegar is the solution, but you have to use the vinegar as a preventative measure, not after the mold has already grown. In other words, you have to use the vinegar right from the beginning when you start using a fresh bottle.
After finishing a bottle or pitcher of Crystal Light, immediately rinse out the bottle with water. Then put a couple ounces of vinegar in it and swish the vinegar around. If you want to refill the bottle with Crystal Light right away, then rinse out the vinegar with water and refill the bottle. But if you don't want to refill the bottle right away, then store the bottle with a few ounces of vinegar in the bottom. The point is, you always have to use vinegar in the bottle between refills of Crystal Light. Doing so will prevent the development of mold.
By the way, Crystal Light should always be kept in the refrigerator (after being mixed with water). It is more perishable than soda is.
(I have updated this article below.)
More Uses for Vinegar
Vinegar is a wonderful substance, and it has all of these uses (mostly for the feet):
-- soaking your feet in it frequently will cure and prevent athlete's foot (5-10 minutes of soaking is enough)
-- soaking your feet in it every night for a week or two will cure ingrown toenails (fungus is an overlooked cause of ingrown toenails)
-- soaking your feet in it periodically will cure and prevent the fissures that people with uncontrolled blood sugar (i.e., people with diabetes) get in their heels
-- soaking your feet in it may cure fungal-infected nails, but that isn't certain (it hasn't worked for me, but I didn't stick with it for very long -- you have to soak your feet in the vinegar every day for months)
-- soaking your feet in it will soften callouses and hardened skin to the point where you can simply scrape it off with your fingernails
-- cheese can be kept at room temperature if you keep it in a cheese-keeper with vinegar and salt; cheese kept at room temperature is vastly more delicious than cheese kept in the refrigerator
I'm sure there are other uses for vinegar that I can't think of right now. I'll update this article as I think of them.
More Uses for Vinegar
Vinegar is a wonderful substance, and it has all of these uses (mostly for the feet):
-- soaking your feet in it frequently will cure and prevent athlete's foot (5-10 minutes of soaking is enough)
-- soaking your feet in it every night for a week or two will cure ingrown toenails (fungus is an overlooked cause of ingrown toenails)
-- soaking your feet in it periodically will cure and prevent the fissures that people with uncontrolled blood sugar (i.e., people with diabetes) get in their heels
-- soaking your feet in it may cure fungal-infected nails, but that isn't certain (it hasn't worked for me, but I didn't stick with it for very long -- you have to soak your feet in the vinegar every day for months)
-- soaking your feet in it will soften callouses and hardened skin to the point where you can simply scrape it off with your fingernails
-- cheese can be kept at room temperature if you keep it in a cheese-keeper with vinegar and salt; cheese kept at room temperature is vastly more delicious than cheese kept in the refrigerator
I'm sure there are other uses for vinegar that I can't think of right now. I'll update this article as I think of them.
Update in March, 2022
For reasons I don't understand, this is the most popular article on my blog. I figured that I should chime in again about the mold problem.
I'm back to using Crystal Light (sometimes) because I can't stand to drink the same thing every day -- and for some reason I can't stand to drink just water. I stopped rinsing the bottle out with vinegar, but only because I was forgetting to do it. I discovered that if I pour a little liquid dishwashing machine detergent in the bottle and let it soak (with water), the mold seems to disappear. But if the dishwashing machine detergent contains bleach (which I think it does), it may only be bleaching the mold. Having reminded myself of my own advice now, I will try using vinegar again. One thing I can tell you is that vinegar kills mold; so if you use vinegar and you can still see the mold, chances are the mold is dead and won't harm you. In any event, I don't think this kind of mold is harmful to humans anyway.
Since I am writing about drinks, I want to relay the fact that I started drinking kombucha (fermented sweetened tea) in mid-2021, and by the beginning of 2022, the severest of my heart-palpitations had stopped. Now I have only mild palpitations which don't cause me to limit my activities. My palpitations were a serious problem. They began in 2009. My heart would be like a jackhammer, hammering fast and hard for hours. They could last anywhere from a few hours to more than a day. Taking the prescription medication propranolol would cause an episode to become milder, but it didn't fix the problem. But the kombucha seems to have fixed it.
How, you may wonder, could kombucha do that? Well, our intestines are filled with trillions of bacteria, some good for us and some not good for us. Eating a healthful diet (mostly vegetables) will ensure that the bacterial varieties remain healthful. It would seem, however, that the kind of diet I had been eating (lots of meat and sweets and not enough vegetables or fiber) had been promoting a poor selection of bacteria in my gut.
So how do good bacteria help you? Well, bacteria secrete all kinds of interesting compounds, and it would seem that some of those compounds (though we haven't identified them yet) are vital for our health. Certainly, one of the bacteria in kombucha is secreting SOMETHING which is helping my heart. I haven't told my doctor about this yet, but I will soon. I'll be curious to see what she thinks.
The truth is, I see this cessation of my palpitation problem as almost a miracle. I had been expecting to eventually have an operation (called a cardiac ablation) to fix the problem.
19 comments:
I hope it works for you. For reasons I don't fully understand, the mold has stopped growing in my bottles of Crystal Light, so I've stopped using the vinegar. Perhaps the manufacturer found a solution to the problem.
To spammers: For reasons I don't understand, this article attracts a lot of spam comments. Don't even think about posting your spam message here, as it will be deleted before it appears.
I know this post is from 2014 but I just read it because I also had the issue with mold growing in the container I use for Crystal Light Fruit Punch. At first I thought is was just un-disolved fruit punch powder, but it was definitely mold. I will try the vinegar trick. Thanks so much for writing this.
Julie A.
I think that the manufacturer may be getting a handle on the problem. I haven't had any mold in my juice bottles for more than a year, and I have stopped using the vinegar. The bottles I use are old Snapple juice bottles. There may be a small chance that the mold came from the Snapple juice, but I don't think so. I'm not the only person who has complained about mold in Crystal Light on the internet.
What if you drink it?
This post has been very helpful. I have noticed mold in my bottles as well. It forms just like you described. It takes a lot of scrubbing with fine brushes to get the mold cleared. I'll try vinegar as well.
First I thought it's the residue from my drink. So, I'm pretty sure I drank some unintentionally. Do you know how bad is it for our health? I think I should just quit drinking it all together, but plain water doesn't taste good anymore... haha.
I have no idea whether drinking mold will harm you in any way. Probably not.
I've stopped drinking Crystal Light altogether because the flavors just taste too artificial (and some of them are downright strange-tasting). I am drinking filtered water now. Sometimes I drink diet soda, and sometimes iced coffee.
Drinking the mold will give you the same symptoms as food poisoning. You will wind up with horrific diarrhea.
Unknown, that probably isn't true. Some molds are dangerous and/or deadly, but those seem to be the ones that we inhale, such as black mold and anthrax. Drinking some mold spores probably isn't going to hurt anyone much. Besides, I suspect that the manufacturer of Crystal Light has gotten this problem under control. (This is a very old article.)
No, I'm still getting the problem with Peach Tea. In August 2021.
Posting on the old article to say I still have the problem with Crystal Light and mold. Almost every water bottle gets mold in it after using Crystal Light and if I don't immediately wash it. I will try the vinegar method. I used to think it was the Crystal Light residue, but nope its definitely mold. However, I haven't gotten sick from it (knock on wood)
Yep. Still having mold issues with Crystal Light Raspberry Iced Tea.
Last night I had this happen to me for the first time...mold all over the pitcher. The bottom, the sides and even on the lid. Clumps of mold poured out when I poured myself a glass..GROSS!!! Thinking I am done with drinking crystal light. Mine was the sweet tea.
I've never seen a mold problem THAT bad. Perhaps you are not refrigerating Crystal Light after making it. Once made, it is most definitely perishable.
Thank you for your article. It explains a lot. I leave hard plastic cups in my bedroom, office, and den. I have one in each location so I don't have to wander all over the house looking for my cup. I use the cups for a few days, then trade them all out for clean ones. I have noticed if I live any Crystal Light in any of the cups, within a day there is mold at the bottom of the cup. I thought it might be an interaction with plastic, or that it may even be eating away at the plastic, since crystal light is acidic. And it might be eating away at the plastic, I am not sure, so I rinse my cup out before putting more crystal light in. Anyway, I did not know for sure that it was mold in the cups. Now I know and will wash a bit more frequently. Any experience with putting a bit of vinegar in the dishwasher? Does the hot water destroy it's helpfulness. Thanks.
Just found this decades old comment after finding patches of mold growing in the 2 quart pitcher I always make my Crystal Lite Lemonade in (and yes, it was in my refrigerator the entire time)! I typically put it in the dishwasher once a week, but otherwise, as soon as it's empty, I usually make another 2 quarts and back into the fridge it goes. (Yeah - I'm kind of an addict ;-) ). Maybe I should just buy a new pitcher and start fresh trying the vinegar.
It is June of 2024 and the mold problem has NOT been fixed. And customer service has never heard of this problem. As Homer Simpson would say “DOP”. So we carry on with mold.
October, 2024, and black, speckly mold suddenly appeared in three different bottles that I water-rinse and refill with individual bottle packets of Pink Lemonade every single day and have for months. Curiously, a fourth bottle has yet to grow any mold -- but I've been using a different box of packets for that one... Perhaps the box I used with moldy three contained contaminated contents? (Alas, I already threw it out so I don't know the batch info to report to the company.)
11/7/24 - Been using Raspberry ice tea crystal light for a few months and have black mold inside 2 separate containers as I thought it was just a container issue. It’s not. Will try the vinegar. Drank CL lemonade for years in THE container that now grows mold and never had a problem. Never. So grossed out.
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