Is This Cup The End Of Soda As We Know It?

If there's anything Americans love more than apple pie and making fun of Donald Trump, it's soda. Unfortunately, our love affair with the drink's sweet, carbonated deliciousness comes with mass amounts of sugar — but that's where products like the Right Cup come in. As tempting as it is to shovel down leftover Halloween candy like there's no tomorrow, sugar is actually pretty terrible for the human body. It can increase your risk of heart disease, rot your teeth, and perhaps worst of all, it's incredibly addicting.

As a result, a thriving industry has sprung up around sugar substitutes; these days, hundreds of products market themselves as alternatives to sugary drinks like soda. However, any nutritionist will tell you that nothing is healthier than water: It's hydrating, calorie-free, and the human body kind of needs it to function. The only problem? Nobody especially enjoys drinking plain, boring water if they can help it — hence America's obsession with soda even though we know it's slowly killing us, or at least causing way too many trips to the dentist.

But what if you could trick yourself into thinking you're drinking something flavored? That's the idea behind the Right Cup, a "fruit-flavored cup" that uses fragrances to hack our perception of taste, so to speak. Although you'd think that taste largely comes from, well, taste buds, research has shown that up to 80 percent of taste actually comes from our sense of smell, and the Right Cup is designed to take advantage of that fact. The cup uses fruity scents to make you think you're drinking something flavored, even when you're just drinking pure water.

"After being diagnosed with diabetes at the age of 30, my doctor told me to stay away from sugary drinks and only drink water,” CEO and co-founder Isaac Lavi said in a press release. “I knew it was the right thing to do, but I hated the taste of water and missed my favorite drinks."

The cup comes in four flavors: Lemon lime, orange, mixed berry, and apple, although the company is currently taking suggestions for future flavors on its Indiegogo page. Launched last week, the campaign has already raised more than $70,000. Who knew people could get so excited about drinking water?

If you're interested, head over to the Right Cup Indiegogo page.

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