Kim Kardashian’s Kimade. Photo by Emily Heil/The Washington Post
Kim Kardashian is a busy woman. Her longtime show’s title suggests just how difficult it is to “keep up” with her lifestyle – after all, it takes serious stamina to power through the hours-long glam sessions, sisterly feuds, parenting, legal studies and mogul meetings that make up the Kim-iverse.
So while some saw her new energy drink, a strawberry lemonade-flavored collaboration with burgeoning “wellness” brand Alani Nu dubbed Kimade, as another cash grab by a woman who has endorsed a diverse portfolio of products, including cryptocurrency and waist trainers, I can at least see that it’s on-brand.
I decided to taste this new concoction, and my experiment turned into a journey that forced me to consider all the ways in which my life – and those of probably 99.9 percent of the other consumers of the beverage – is exactly nothing like Kim Kardashian’s.
To start, I tracked down the product at a Sam’s Club, to which I drove a dusty Subaru past soybean fields, chicken houses and an Applebee’s. I located the tower of Kimade 12-packs next to a massive stack of microwaveable Velveeta mac and cheese cups, and I hauled a couple of them to the register as the smell of hot dogs wafted around me. Would Kim, I wondered, even clock that scent as emanating from beef franks? I imagine the air around her perpetually smelling like orchids and money.
The drink’s packaging feels very Kardashian: It comes in a slim can done up in monochromatic pinks. And while the reality star’s home is famously decorated in a sleek, pristine, white-on-white scheme, the bubble gum hue is very of-the-moment (we’re all living in a Barbie world, in case you hadn’t gotten the text alerts). It looked totally out of place on my dinged-up butcher block countertop, next to the ancient brown stoneware bowl with a chipped lip that I use to wrangle onions and garlic and ripening fruit. I imagined my French press looking at the pastel-packaged interloper with suspicion.
I, personally, was wary of the drink’s ingredients. A 12-ounce can contains 200 milligrams of caffeine, twice that of Red Bull. (A comparable amount of black coffee has about 140 milligrams.) It’s about the same amount as the wildly popular Prime energy drink by influencers/boxers Logan Paul and KSI, which is drawing controversy for marketing to kids. Other stimulants in the Kardashian brew include taurine, l-carnitine and guarana seed extract. Sucralose gives it its sweetness and keeps the calorie count at 10 per can.
The morning I sampled it, I realized I could actually use a boost. I was a little groggy, not from staying out late at some glam industry event, a la Kim, but from watching one too many episodes of “Shetland” on the sofa with my husband the previous evening. I considered trying to get into character, wondering whether I should attempt to channel some modicum of Kim-esque vibes before downing this pink elixir, and immediately discarded the notion. It seemed exhausting, not to mention impractical: The promotional photo for Kimade features Kardashian posing, wearing a white one-piece bathing suit and matching heels (where does one wear this, other than the swimwear competition in a beauty pageant?), on a weightlifting bench surrounded by dumbbells and bottles of the beverage. I mean, where would I even find a diamond ankle bracelet?
I stuck with my cotton sundress and sandals and got to work.
The scent hit as soon as I popped the top – and it suggested that indistinct fruit-punch flavor that called to mind childhood pitchers of Kool-Aid. On the palate, there’s more of the promised lemon notes. The drink delivered tartness (hello, citric acid!), but it wasn’t overly puckery. Perhaps this wasn’t as bad as I had feared?
Pink lemonade is a notoriously slippery concoction, with an origin story involving a disgruntled former circus clown who peddled acidic water dyed with the wash-water from a pair of red tights. Kimade strikes a balance of lemon and a generic “pink” flavor, though as it warmed, I got more strawberry-adjacency and less citrus, so by the time I took my last sip, I felt like I was slurping liquefied candy.
The high level of fizziness – pleasantly sharp needles of carbonation – helped offset that mouth-coating faux-sugar sensation, but it just wasn’t enough. Perhaps aficionados of energy drinks might work Kimade into their rotation, but I’m not adding it to my lineup anytime soon. The energy boost that followed, though, was welcome, and I felt clearheaded and brisk as I went about my day. (More than one can, I suspected, might leave me jittery, and would certainly put me at the FDA’s recommended limit for daily caffeine intake.)
Which got me thinking about whether I really need to jack myself up to achieve Kardashian levels of effort. I’m not perpetually on-camera, thank goodness, and my to-do list includes not a single meeting with a momager.
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