Day five, the cold I got smacked with is still hanging around. The sore throat and bad cough is starting to get old.

A brief check on WebMD confirms that I am, in fact, dying. Onto a more accurate website, Mayo Clinic says that staying hydrated is a key to feeling better and vitamin C can’t hurt.

Enter VitaminWater Essential Orange-Orange. The “nutrient enhanced water beverage” is exactly what it says on the label. Though saying your drink is a “nutrient enhanced water beverage” feels along similar lines of Velveeta calling their product a “processed cheese product.”

But at least the VitaminWater offers some form of nutritional value.

And the biggest thing it has to offer is 150 percent of the daily value of vitamin C. For dealing with a cold, that is the biggest reason for its choice today.

Add onto that 100 percent of the daily value of both vitamin B6 and B12 eliminates the feel of drinking something that would make you feel worse.

Avoiding feeling worse is another feature when tasting the drink. Comparatively, it harkens back to the good old days of Hi-C orange drink at McDonald’s. When you are feeling sick, the nostalgia trip is a pretty nice addition.

And running off that, remember when VitaminWater was everywhere, back eight or nine years ago when it was still thought of as a healthy drink and schools pushed it more than pops?

Just a reminder that VitaminWater is still not considered a healthful drink by any means. Drinks containing 32 grams of sugar per serving rarely constitute that moniker.

This comes back to the “nutrient enhanced water beverage.” This likely came as a result of a false advertising lawsuit. In 2014, Coca-Cola was sued for $1.2 million for misleading consumers about VitaminWater being a healthful drink.

The lawsuit was settled, and Coca-Cola agreed to make changes to their labeling. “Added sugars” was supposed to be added in two places on the label. I could not find them, just the word “sweeteners.”

But this column obviously doesn’t care about the sugar content, and, honestly, the sugar kick is nice every once in a while.

The VitaminWater can draw plenty of comparisons to Gatorade. Straight up, the former offers a softer flavor than Gatorade. With a sore throat, this is a very nice feature of the VitaminWater. For the record, the orange Gatorade ranks toward the bottom of my rankings. And when I say orange, I am referring to color.

The real question is, does it help with the symptoms of a cold? Now, either I was on the breaking point of getting over the cold, or it actually helped.

It soothed a sore throat nicely. It also provided a half decent feeling after drinking the whole bottle for a small while.

On a normal day, the VitaminWater Essential pairs really well with a Chocolate Chip Pop-Tart for the “I woke up late for my 8 a.m. and now I am hungry” breakfast.

But be warned: avoid the VitaminWater Zero Rise Orange. The Rise Orange flavor, note the one orange, is terrible. The Zero line of VitaminWater has zero calories and zero sugar. A lack of sugar is a deal breaker. It doesn’t taste very good as a result and kind of is against the point if you want a small sugar rush.