From Hydration to Intoxication: The Disturbing Evolution of Crystal Light

Kraft Heinz’s decision to launch Crystal Light Vodka is the latest in a long-running industry strategy: blurring the lines between established everyday non-alcohol beverages and alcohol to make alcohol use feel routine. This move follows similar crossovers, from SunnyD Vodka Seltzer to Mountain Dew Hard, all of which take well-known non-alcoholic brands and inject them with alcohol to expand market reach.

Crystal Light has long been marketed as a low-calorie, sugar-free drink for health-conscious consumers. By slapping the same branding on an alcoholic product, Kraft Heinz ensures it inherits that same “better-for-you” image – despite the fact that no amount of alcohol is actually healthy. This is classic health-washing, a deceptive marketing technique that downplays alcohol’s risks by emphasizing low-calorie or sugar-free formulations, making it seem like just another lifestyle choice rather than a substance linked to cancer, liver disease, and addiction.

A brand like Crystal Light is already associated with hydration and wellness, so adding alcohol into the mix makes alcohol consumption feel even more casual and normalized. This is the same playbook the industry has been using for years, working to ensure alcohol becomes a seamless part of more and more moments—from hydration to happy hour. This is not innovation; it’s calculated normalization.

Promotion, or any marketing strategies, is Big Alcohol’s activity to drive alcohol availability and acceptability, to perpetuate the alcohol norm, and to place alcohol at the center of people’s thoughts and preferences, communities’ practices, and societies’ customs. The focus of this DUBIOUS FIVE strategy is the people and their beliefs about alcohol products, the public and their attitudes about and behavior around alcohol products, and the consumers and how much, how often they buy and consume alcohol brands.

Source:
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/food/2025/03/10/crystal-light-alcohol-hard-seltzer/82235098007/
https://news.kraftheinzcompany.com/press-releases-details/2025/Crystal-Light-Answers-Decades-Long-Call-from-Fans-with-First-of-Its-Kind-Vodka-Refreshers/default.aspx

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