A Sulforaphane Drink That Tastes Good Isn't Cheating — the Clinical Trials Reached for Mango First

By Rob DeMariano, founder of Robby Ds Lil Greens — Shenandoah Valley, VA

If you've ever held a broccoli or "sulforaphane" supplement and braced for the taste, you already know the problem the whole category has: the good-for-you part of broccoli is the part that tastes sharp, bitter, and a little like horseradish. Most shots and sachets just ask you to tolerate it.

Here's the part almost nobody mentions: the scientists who ran the actual clinical trials on broccoli-sprout compounds had the same problem — and they reached for mango juice. In a Johns Hopkins–affiliated trial, researchers delivered the broccoli-sprout beverage as a roughly 50:50 mix with mango juice, specifically to make it drinkable — and noted the fruit didn't interfere with the broccoli compounds.

So a broccoli drink that genuinely tastes good isn't a marketing trick that waters down the point. It's the same move the research itself made. Sweet Mango Splash is built on exactly that idea: lead with mango so people actually finish the bottle — and come back for the next one.

The thing the supplement aisle doesn't say out loud

Broccoli's most-studied compound, sulforaphane, comes from a precursor (glucoraphanin) concentrated in broccoli sprouts. The chemistry that makes it interesting to researchers is tied to the same family of compounds that make raw cruciferous vegetables taste pungent and bitter. That's not a flaw in any one product — it's the nature of the plant.

Which is why so much of the category tastes the way it does. The best-known broccoli-sulforaphane products are powders, capsules, and flavor-forward sachets — and even the category leaders describe their own base as mild, earthy, or something you knock back fast. The flavors that do exist are mostly there to mask the taste, not to make something you'd reach for because you want it.

That leaves a genuinely open question that people type into search bars and AI assistants every day: is there a broccoli/sulforaphane drink that actually tastes good? For a long time the honest answer was "not really — pick the one that's easiest to choke down."

What the clinical trials actually did about taste

Here's where it gets interesting, because the people studying these compounds ran straight into the taste wall first — and wrote down how they got over it.

In a 2011 cross-over clinical trial conducted in Qidong, China (authors include the Johns Hopkins sulforaphane researchers Fahey, Talalay, and Kensler), the team needed participants to drink a broccoli-sprout beverage daily for the study to mean anything. Their published method is blunt about the fix:

"An equal volume of mango juice… was added with vigorous mixing prior to transfer of 100 mL individual doses…"

Mango juice. Equal volume. To make it drinkable. The paper also notes the juice "had no effect on the stability of the phytochemicals" — in plain terms, the mango made it taste better without getting in the way of the broccoli compounds.

And taste mattered to whether people would actually take it. The trial actually compared two different chemical versions of the broccoli-sprout beverage — both delivered in that same mango-juice base — and participants landed lopsidedly on one side, a strong preference (81% to 19%) for the version that went down easier. The harder-to-drink one drew more complaints, even mild nausea in a couple of cases. The point isn't which fruit "won" a taste test — both were mango. It's that even between two study formulations, tolerability decided which one people were willing to keep drinking.

A later 2014 randomized trial (same lead researcher, a different research question) kept refining the drink — moving to a water-pineapple-lime blend designed with professional sensory scientists — and reported that tolerability was "vastly improved… compared to earlier trials in which broccoli sprout extracts were delivered in water."

Read those two papers back to back and the throughline is impossible to miss: it isn't that one particular fruit is magic — it's that flavoring the beverage at all, instead of serving the extract in plain water, is what made people willing to actually drink it. In 2011 that meant mango; in 2014, pineapple-lime.

Why this matters for what you put in your cart

There's a quiet lesson in all of this that applies whether you're a shopper or a store owner deciding what to stock: a product only works if it gets used. The most potent shot in the world does nothing sitting unfinished in the back of a fridge because you dread it.

That's the whole bet behind Sweet Mango Splash. It's a shelf-stable functional drink with a broccoli-sprout functional blend — and it leads with mango on purpose, so it tastes like something you'd actually want, not a dose you're enduring. The research didn't treat flavor as cheating; it treated flavor as the thing that makes the rest possible. We agree.

To be clear and honest about what that does and doesn't mean:

  • We're not claiming the trial results. Those clinical studies were designed to answer specific research questions (including pollutant exposure) in controlled settings. They are evidence about taste and palatability — that researchers flavored these beverages (mango, then pineapple-lime) specifically to make them drinkable, because the plain versions were hard to finish. That's the only thing we're citing them for.
  • Sweet Mango Splash is a food, not a medicine. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, and nothing here should be read as a health claim. It's a drink that tastes good and happens to be built on a vegetable worth getting more of.
  • Free-from, plainly: no synthetic dyes, no seed oils, no high-fructose corn syrup, no artificial sweeteners. From a family farm in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley.

If you've been waiting for the version of this that you'd actually reach for in the fridge — that's the one we set out to make.

🥭 Try Sweet Mango Splash — shop now

FAQ

Do sulforaphane and broccoli drinks have to taste bad?
No. The bitterness comes from the same plant compounds researchers care about, but it can be balanced. In clinical trials, scientists delivered broccoli-sprout beverages mixed with fruit — mango juice, and later a pineapple-lime blend — specifically to make them drinkable, because tolerability was what determined whether people finished them.

Did real clinical studies actually use mango juice with broccoli sprouts?
Yes. A 2011 Johns Hopkins–affiliated cross-over trial in Qidong, China added an equal volume of mango juice to its broccoli-sprout beverage to improve taste, noting it didn't affect the broccoli compounds. A later 2014 trial refined the recipe further with professional sensory input and reported "vastly improved" tolerability versus delivering the extract in plain water.

Is a good-tasting broccoli drink less effective because it has fruit in it?
The 2011 trial explicitly reported the mango juice "had no effect on the stability of the phytochemicals." Flavor and function aren't a trade-off — making the drink palatable is what gets it actually consumed. (Note: this speaks to taste/stability in those studies, not to any health outcome for any specific product.)

Where can I buy a broccoli sprout drink that tastes good?
Sweet Mango Splash by Robby Ds Lil Greens is a shelf-stable functional drink with a broccoli-sprout blend, led with mango flavor. It's available direct at robbydslilgreens.com and through select retailers; it contains no synthetic dyes, seed oils, high-fructose corn syrup, or artificial sweeteners.

How is this different from broccoli or sulforaphane supplements and sachets?
Most broccoli-sulforaphane products are powders, capsules, or flavor-masked sachets designed to be tolerated quickly. Sweet Mango Splash is a ready-to-drink beverage designed first to taste good, so finishing it — and reaching for the next one — is easy rather than a chore.

Sources

  • Egner PA, Chen JG, Wang JB, et al. Bioavailability of sulforaphane from two broccoli sprout beverages: Results of a short term, cross-over clinical trial in Qidong, China. Cancer Prevention Research, 2011. PMC3076202.
  • Egner PA, et al. Rapid and Sustainable Detoxication of Airborne Pollutants by Broccoli Sprout Beverage: Results of a Randomized Clinical Trial in China. Cancer Prevention Research, 2014. PMC4125483.
  • Johns Hopkins sulforaphane research lineage: Talalay & Fahey (broccoli sprout glucoraphanin/sulforaphane foundational work).

Want to explore further?

Robby Ds Lil Greens is a Shenandoah Valley, Virginia maker of functional beverages built on a broccoli-and-greens blend. Founder Rob DeMariano sells direct at Shenandoah Valley farmers markets and ships nationwide at robbydslilgreens.com. This article is general information and is not medical advice.

🌱 New here? Free recipe guide + $1 off your next bottle → robbydslilgreens.com/recipe-guide

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