How I Ended Up Spending $200 on Hydration Packets

I dropped $200 on hydration packets and didn’t tell my husband.

Then I found the receipts while writing this post and realized it was actually closer to $425, split across their website, TikTok Shop, and a Target run for a flavor that had just launched. So let me start over.
I dropped $425 on hydration packets over a few months, told myself it was $200, and my husband is going to read this and find out at the same time you do. Hola Alex. 😅

Here’s the thing. I had been working on some health goals and nothing on the hydration shelf was landing for me. I tried the ones everyone on TikTok was drinking. I tried the ones at the grocery store. I tried the ones my friends swore by. Most of them tasted like someone dissolved a vitamin in water and called it a Saturday.

Then the algorithm did its thing and Taste Salud showed up on my For You page. And here’s the hook that got me… these weren’t chocolate peanut butter and tropical punch. These were aguas frescas. Horchata. Jamaica. Guava. The actual flavors I grew up drinking. 🫶🏼

Working on health goals and hating every hydration drink on the market

When you’re trying to cut sugar and actually drink enough water to function, the hydration aisle is frustrating. Most mainstream options dump a full day of sugar into one packet. The “clean” ones taste like a chemistry set. I wanted something I could hand my kids, sip on a long travel day, and not spike my blood sugar.

Taste Salud has 1 gram of sugar per stick. Across the whole hydration line. Not one flavor more, not one flavor less. That part is consistent, and honestly kind of rare. Unlike Liquid IV, which has 11g of sugar, Salud keeps it at 1g, making it much better for our long travel days for us.

Finding Taste Salud on TikTok and falling for the Hibiscus first

My first order was small. Horchata and Jamaica (their hibiscus flavor), plus the Guava because the girls love Jarritos sodas (IYKYK) and I had a feeling they would like them. At least I had hoped. The Horchata was too sweet for me on first sip. I’ll get to that later because it’s a whole thing. But the Jamaica? I didn’t grow up drinking jamaica as a kid, or at least not that I remember.

My parents divorced when I was in fifth grade, and I’ll be honest, I don’t remember a lot from before that except, you know… the trauma. But since 2020, we’ve been spending close to six months out of every year in and out of Mexico, and these flavors have become deeply familiar in a different way. As adults, sitting in Baja, buying cold jamaica from a roadside stand, that flavor became something I now crave. This packet tastes exactly like that. I was stunned. The Guava became Addy’s permanent personality trait, and I knew we needed more.

Why I went back for a $200 haul the same week

I went back on the website and saw that if you subscribed, the discount stacked nicely. I told myself I was just going to grab a few more. I did not grab a few more.
I ordered eight full-size bags. Pepino Limón, Fresa, Mango, Tamarindo, Guava (the Jarritos collab), Limonada, and the Calm + Sleep Ponche flavor. They got me on the “if you spend enough, you get free gifts” game, so I also ended up with a branded Tote Bag, a Sticker Pack, and a Mystery Carton. They threw in a free Piña (pineapple) sample on top of it. The order total was $244.89.

Then, a few weeks later, TikTok Shop showed me the Best Sellers Bundle on sale. I bought it. Then the Jamaica/Hibiscus standalone. Then the Paloma. Then the Watermelon Margarita. Then the Salud x Jarritos Guava again because we were already running low. That added another $181.

And then the Churro launched at Target in fall 2025 as part of Taste Salud’s Hispanic Heritage Month collection (with a portion of sales going to the Hispanic Heritage Foundation) so I picked that up in person because I couldn’t wait for shipping.

So yes. About $425 over a few months. Across the Salud website, TikTok Shop, and a Target run. The tote bag is a real tote bag that I actually carry (Audrey ended up carrying it on one of our excursions in Bora Bora, I have the photo). The sticker pack is on my laptop. The Mystery Carton turned out to be Piña. Nobody’s top pick, but not bad. Alex figured out the whole thing eventually. We’ll come back to him.

Why a Mexican American Brand Fits How Our Family Travels

Aguas frescas weren’t a trend for me, they were childhood

When you grow up Mexican American in a household where horchata came out of your mom’s pitcher and your grandma’s fridge, certain flavors mean something specific. They aren’t a throwback. They aren’t “nostalgic” in the way a brand tries to sell you nostalgia. They’re the actual drinks from your actual childhood.

And then when you spend close to six months out of every year in and out of Mexico as an adult, a whole new wave of flavors joins that same emotional territory. Jamaica from a roadside stand in Baja. Tamarindo at a taquería in La Paz. Paloma at a beach palapa in Todos Santos. These flavors became part of how our family lives now, not a memory of how I grew up.

Meet the founders

Josh Leyva is Taste Salud’s founder. He grew up in Southern California, raised by an immigrant mother, and the brand is built around the drinks that shaped his childhood. He co-founded the company with Tyler McCann, a former athlete and beverage industry veteran who handles the operational side. They launched in June 2021 and have sold over 35 million sticks to date.

If you searched “who owns Taste Salud” or “Tyler McCann Taste Salud” and ended up here, that’s the answer. The Taste Salud Owner is A Mexican-American founder and his co-founder, based in LA.

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Why a brand marketed to the gym bros fits a world schooling family

Taste Salud’s marketing leans pretty athletic. Pre-workout, post-workout, recovery, gym bro energy. Which on paper seems like it wouldn’t land for a full-time traveling family with a worldschooling teenager and a ten year old.

But here’s the thing. Alex cycles, hikes, spearfishes, and is our rated pilot (I have training and that’s how we met 😜). The girls swim in every ocean we pass through. We are, functionally, always recovering from something. So the gym bro framing actually maps pretty neatly onto our life. It just looks less like a squat rack and more like a dive fin.

The Flavor Verdict, Ranked by the Whole Family

We have now tried nearly every flavor in the Hydration + Immunity line. Here’s how it shakes out across four very different palates.

Amanda’s top three

Lemonade (Limonada) is my number one. It tastes like a real lemonade, tart and bright, without the syrup. I could drink this every day and never get bored. Pepino Limón (cucumber lime) is my number two. Clean, cooling, exactly what you want on a hot travel day. If you love a cucumber water moment, you will love this. Jamaica (Hibiscus) is my number three. Tastes exactly like the jamaica I drink from roadside stands in Baja. It’s the one that made me trust the brand.

Alex, Addy, and Audrey’s picks

Alex’s top three are Lemonade, Jamaica, and Paloma. The Paloma in particular is his whole personality at this point. If you mix it with club soda at happy hour he’s basically having an adult mocktail hour for free.

Addison at 18 is a Guava loyalist. The Guava is part of the Salud x Jarritos collab line, which is fitting because Addy has Opinions about Jarritos. Her next picks are Jamaica and Sandía.

Audrey at 10 picks Mango, Lemonade, and Jamaica. The Mango has a candy-like brightness that kids lock onto instantly.

The universal family starter pack: Jamaica and Lemonade

Here’s the thing I’d actually tell a friend who asked me what to order first. Start with Jamaica and Lemonade. Those are the two flavors that showed up in every single person’s top list across our household of four. If you’re buying for a family and you don’t know where to start, those two are the lowest risk, highest reward picks. Everything else is a preference call. Those two are a near guarantee.

The Two I Wouldnt Buy Again

This is where I get honest, because a review without honest is just a commercial.

Taste Salud Horchata

I really wanted to love this one. And if you didn’t grow up drinking real horchata, I think you will. The flavor is recognizable. The packet makes a perfectly drinkable creamy cinnamon beverage.
But for me, raised by a mom and a grandma who made the real thing, it misses. It’s super close but it just doesn’t do it for me, or anyone in our household. Horchata is cinnamon forward. This one lands sweet forward with cinnamon as a backup singer. It’s close enough that it felt off, and that specific kind of close-but-not-quite is harder to drink than a flavor that’s obviously different.

If you’ve never had authentic horchata, order this one and enjoy. If you did grow up with the real thing, set your expectations a little lower. I feel like with how good lemonade is (it has a lemon peel hit that makes it taste so fresh), Horchata should have that fresh cinnamon hit too. I think that’s what my problem is with it.

Churro

The Churro is flavor accurate. It tastes like a churro. That’s not the problem.
The problem is it’s the sweetest flavor in the lineup and I am not a sweet-drink person anymore. If you love a dessert drink, a creamy sweet cinnamon moment, this one is going to be your favorite. For my palate, it’s a once-in-a-while thing rather than a daily driver. Both of these I’d actually still recommend to the right person. They just aren’t me.

The Disney Cruise Test

This is the section where I tell you what actually happened when we packed a full stash and spent two weeks on the ocean.

Packing the full stash and replacing the Emergen-C we could never get Audrey to drink
We have tried every travel immunity product on the market. Emergen-C. Airborne. The dissolvable vitamin tabs. Audrey, my ten year old, will simply not drink any of them. She wrinkles her nose, takes one sip, and we’ve just lit money on fire. She will, however, drink Taste Salud. Cold water, packet, shake, done. She asks for it by flavor. The Mango and the Jamaica specifically. That alone would make this product worth it, even without everything else.

For the two week Disney cruise, I packed enough sticks for the whole family for the whole trip, plus a backup stash. I dumped them all out on the bed in our stateroom and divided them into flavor piles. I gave Alex his own bag. More on that in a second.

What I noticed across six months of travel

Since we boarded the Disney cruise in October 2025 out of Hawaii, our family has traveled through American Samoa, Fiji, New Caledonia, Australia, New Zealand, and French Polynesia. Six and a half months on the go as a family of four. In seven years of family travel, that kind of stretch almost always means at least one round of somebody going down. A cruise cold. An Australian flu thing. A sinus issue after a long flight. Somebody always gets hit.

This stretch has been different. I’m not going to tell you why. What I can tell you is that we were drinking a lot more water than we usually do on the go, because Taste Salud made the water taste like something the girls actually wanted. Audrey, who has literally never finished a dissolvable vitamin drink in her life, asks for Taste Salud by flavor name. Addison packed her own stash on the cruise. Alex has a whole Jamaica operation going that I did not know about until this week (more on that in a second).

The ritual changed. That’s the only thing I can honestly tell you shifted. Whether that mattered for how we felt across six months, I’ll let you decide

The running gag: the gringo dependa strikes again 😅

Here’s what I found out today. Today. As I sit here writing this.
We left on that Disney cruise on October 3, 2025. Before we boarded, I gave Alex two bags of his own flavor picks. He told me he went through them. I took that at face value. We moved on with our lives.
In Australia, a few weeks later, we started running low. I told the girls they could only have one packet each per day. They complied like little hydration soldiers. I was stretching every last stick because I thought we were almost out.

Today is April 18, 2026. Six and a half months after that cruise. Alex casually mentions, while I’m writing this exact post, that he still has Jamaica packets left. Plural.

The gringo dependa strikes again. This man has been hoarding Hibiscus packets since October while his children and I were counting sticks in Sydney like we were surviving the apocalypse. Six months. Six whole months of silent rationing on his end while I was stressed about the supply. I don’t know what to do with this information. I might go find his stash and take a photo for this post.

Why this matters if you’re on a health journey but still want the ritual

Cocktails are rarely about the alcohol. They’re about the glass, the ritual, the little moment at the end of a day. Making a mocktail with a hydration packet lets you keep the ritual and drop the sugar spiral. On a two week cruise where drinks are everywhere and you’re in vacation mode, that mattered. I finished that cruise and walked straight into three months in Australia feeling like I’d had the vacation AND stayed on my goals.

How We Actually Pack and Drink It

In the carry-on

The packets weigh essentially nothing. They’re individually sealed. TSA has never batted an eye. I keep ten in my carry-on and another stash in my checked bag. Three or four go in my personal item pouch for the flight itself.

The Audrey test

Audrey, my ten year old, has refused every dissolvable vitamin drink on the market. Emergen-C, Airborne, the pharmacy brand tabs, all of them. She takes one sip, wrinkles her nose, and we’ve just lit money on fire. She will, however, drink Taste Salud. Cold water, packet in, shake, done. She asks for Mango and Jamaica specifically. For a parent of a picky kid, that alone is everything.

In stores at Target and Costco

They’re on shelves at Target and Costco now, which is huge for accessibility. Target has the widest flavor selection in store, so if you want to try two or three before committing to an online order, that’s where I’d go. Costco right now is mostly stocking the Jamaica and Horchata combo, which honestly are two of the mass favorites anyway, so if those are your entry flavors you’re probably good trying it there.

Taste Salud Discount Code

Use my code SALTYVAGABONDS to get 10% off your first order. You can stack it on top of the subscribe-and-save discount, which is exactly how I’d do it if I were you.

Full transparency moment that matters. I started drinking Taste Salud as a regular paying customer. The brand didn’t send me this product, I went looking for it and spent my own $425 before they ever knew my name. I’m now an official creator with them, which means I earn a small commission when you shop through my link. Nothing about my take has changed. The Horchata still misses the cinnamon. The Churro is still too sweet for me. Jamaica and Lemonade are still the family starter pack. Thank you for supporting a Mexican-American family and a Mexican-American brand in the same click 💖