Fizzy Lizzy Fizzy Lizzy www.fizzylizzy.com 212-966-6621 I met up ...

I met up with Elizabeth Marlin, the owner and namesake of Fizzy Lizzy sparkling juices, at Columbus Bakery on the Upper West Side. On any given day, this cafe receives and discharges streams of young mommies and their kids?the very consumers who have recently been questioning the health implications of fruit juice, and how much of it their children should be drinking.

Snapple's anointed presence in the city's schools and the rise of childhood obesity and diabetes have placed sugar-rich juice under sustained scrutiny. It turns out that most fruit juices have calorie counts to rival Coke's, and few nectars apart from orange and grapefruit have the nutritional value to redeem themselves. In the ultimate validation of these concerns, this month Tropicana will launch a Lite 'n Healthy juice, sweetened with Splenda and weighing in at with 1/3 fewer calories and less sugar than regular Tropicana. Minute Maid is hot on its heels to match the effort.

Though Fizzy Lizzy has been accessible for the last three years as a healthy soda for all, at this juncture in popular health, Marlin recognizes the potential in marketing her product as a healthy soda for kids. The drink seems to have been ahead of the curve, priding itself as an all-natural and low-calorie alternative to conventional sodas?no added sugar, no corn syrup, an average of 65 percent juice, the rest seltzer water?since day one. Compared to Orangina, Fizzy Lizzy's orange spritzer has 61 percent juice to Orangina's 12 percent, 120 calories to their 135 and 27 grams of sugar to their 32. These numbers are consistent with much of Fizzy Lizzy's competition, such as the like-named Izze and NectarFizz.

Marlin, a youthful and slightly manic 42-year-old with shoulder-length brown hair, can recite beverage factoids in her sleep.

"Nantucket Nectars' NectarFizz has 10% juice," she begins, "Knudsen Spritzers have 70%, but they kind of mislead consumer because it's mostly white grape juice which is essentially liquid sugar, whereas our 65% juice is the flavor that you actually see on the label... I don't see anyone reaching into the fridge and getting white grape juice and mixing it with seltzer."

Fizzy Lizzy comes in 12-ounce orange, grapefruit, cranberry, grape, lemon and pineapple flavors, and is available at more than 100 venues in New York City, including Dean & Deluca, Garden of Eden, Gourmet Garage and Fresh Direct.

If you don't recognize the bottle, last spring Fizzy Lizzy changed its look from a spare, Martha-Stewart-for-Kmart feel to a poppy label from which Marlin's likeness smiles coyly from a fizzing bubble. "My designer?he was with Ben & Jerry's before?told me, 'Liz, I've been doing this for 15 years. People will appreciate the fact that there is a real live person behind this.'"

My feral 21-year-old male houseguest, helping himself to some cranberry Fizzy Lizzy in the fridge, certainly did. "I like her face on the bottlecap," he noted, the health appeal apparently lost on him. "Is she as hot in person?"

[gabi@nypress.com](mailto:gabi@nypress.com)