Inside Seaberry: The Sustainable Story of Our Newest Hydration Multiplier

Superfruit flavor, superior hydration: are you ready to meet Seaberry Hydration Multiplier?

The latest addition to our innovative flavor line up has 3x the electrolytes of traditional sports drinks, hydrates 2x faster than water alone, and includes 5 essential vitamins—incredible benefits, just like our other 11 delicious Hydration Multiplier flavors.

But perhaps the familiarity stops there.

In order to tell the remarkable story of seaberry—what it tastes like, how it’s steeped in rich mythology, why it’s been to space (!), its sustainable superpowers, and how it’s connected to the Liquid I.V. team—we have to first travel back to 2019.

##Real Flavor. Rich History. Remarkable Hydration.

In May 2019, the Liquid I.V. team travelled to Nepal to donate Hydration Multiplier serving sticks, assist a medical camp, and present a lesson on hydration to local schoolchildren.

While there, they tasted wild seaberries for the first time and it was love at first bite.

Seaberry isn’t a briny berry found underwater but in fact a bright orange fruit native to the foothills of the Himalaya and Siberia. The flavor is complex and tropical, with notes of rich orange, passionfruit, and pineapple.

Shortly after the trip, the inspired team launched a limited time offering of Seaberry Hydration Multiplier. Customers fell in love with its bright and tangy flavor, and left hundreds of 5-star reviews. But what inspired us most about capturing the essence of seaberry and bringing it back for good (!) was working with the communities growing it and highlighting the sustainable harvesting practices associated with the plant.

##The Sustainable Shrub: Seaberry 101

The seaberry shrub is beloved by farmers because it’s a tool to help with anti-desertification. It’s cold and drought resistant—and in the Tibetan Plateau where the average elevation is almost 15,000 feet, the harshness of climate does not deter seaberries from flourishing. Their growth also helps to nourish the soil, which allows other plants to grow and diversifies what can grow, which is key to land health.

Beyond soil and land health, seaberries are a sustainable and healthy stream of revenue for farmers, who locally dub seaberries “The Gold Lucky Tree.” With the short harvesting period in typically fallow winter, it does not disturb their other planting schedules and works to alleviate poverty amongst this line of work.

Finally, seaberry doesn’t need to be replanted every year. During the harvesting period, farmers will clip seaberry branches because the fruit is fragile. This harvesting process ensures that every part of the fruit is useable. From there, the branches dotted with orange fruit head straight to a manufacturing facility to be freeze dried within 48 hours, which helps to preserve their nutrients.

##The Fruits of Inspiration

And seaberries are filled with all sorts of nutrients. They are one of the only known plant sources of a fatty acid called Omega 7, which is typically found in fish oil. Seaberry’s Latin name— Hippophae rhamnoides L.—also references its potential nutrient benefits. It means “shiny horse” as ancient Greeks fed seaberries to their horses which provided them glossy manes. It is mythologized that seaberries were even a favorite food of Pegasus, the winged horse of the Gods.

The power of the seaberry spans myth and the cosmos, too: some of the first commercially harvested seaberries in Russia were use in The Great Space Race. In preparation to leave Earth’s atmosphere, Yuri Gagarin, the first cosmonaut in space, was given an extraordinarily large dose of seaberries as the Russians believed it could “counter intense cosmic radiation found in space.”

##A 360-Sustainability Experience

Not only is the seaberry fruit sustainably harvested, but another sustainable aspect of our Seaberry Hydration Multiplier is the new 100%-in-store recyclable packaging. We’re excited to announce that this innovation means that the flexible pouch can be dropped off with other flexible packaging at various outlets and stores (find a participating location near you) to be recycled. This exciting update is a step forward to accomplish our bigger packaging sustainability goals. Look for out for recycling instructions on the label.

“Seaberry is another strong example that we [at Liquid I.V.] do not select flavors arbitrarily. Every flavor tells a story and should take a customer on a sensorial journey,” Sean Lavin, VP of Impact, says. “There is joy in sharing the broadest palate of flavors and aromas while delivering benefits, which excites and stimulates us for every new launch or product reveal. Seaberry is here to do all of that.”

####Inspired? Curious? Ready to taste it for yourself? Shop Seaberry Hydration Multiplier now.