"Fruit" Drinks

[EinBebop]

A few months back I decided to try trading in my sodas for fruit drinks. I found I really enjoyed cherry apple juice, as well as the V8 Splash brands. Then, this weekend, I happened to notice on the back of my cherry apple juice, right on top of the UPC code, a line that read "30% fruit juice". What? :confused:And I looked on the back of my V8 Splash, and found that it was only 10% fruit juice!! (Could've been the other way around)

I took a trip down to the grocery store; except for a couple of brands (Hundred Acre Wood/Disney, and Minute Maid (not the Minute Maid Coolers)), all of the blended fruit drinks were 30% fruit juice or less, and even some of the non-blended ones.

I post this for a couple of reasons:

1) To make aware those who were deceived as I was. I feel a little guilty about doing this though. I wish I could take the blue pill and continue to live in my blissful ignorance

2) To ask those who know about these types of things: Are these fruit drinks really "healthier" in any sense? I mean, is it really worth the cost versus making myself a 25-cent pitcher of Kool-Aid?

[Psilon]

A few months back I decided to try trading in my sodas for fruit drinks. I found I really enjoyed cherry apple juice, as well as the V8 Splash brands. Then, this weekend, I happened to notice on the back of my cherry apple juice, right on top of the UPC code, a line that read "30% fruit juice". What? :confused:And I looked on the back of my V8 Splash, and found that it was only 10% fruit juice!! (Could've been the other way around)

I took a trip down to the grocery store; except for a couple of brands (Hundred Acre Wood/Disney, and Minute Maid (not the Minute Maid Coolers)), all of the blended fruit drinks were 30% fruit juice or less, and even some of the non-blended ones.

I post this for a couple of reasons:

1) To make aware those who were deceived as I was. I feel a little guilty about doing this though. I wish I could take the blue pill and continue to live in my blissful ignorance

2) To ask those who know about these types of things: Are these fruit drinks really "healthier" in any sense? I mean, is it really worth the cost versus making myself a 25-cent pitcher of Kool-Aid?

Drink water.
Eat fruits.

[Spastic Minnow]

I got a fruit drink awhile ago, I think it was called "Sparkle." Anyways, it has a little gimmick like the V8 splash drinks of having subtle swirling colors in it when it's shaken. I wonder how this is done and look at the ingredients and find that MILK is an ingredient! That swirling color is milk that can't quite mix right with the juice (and water and preservatives).

[EinBebop]

Drink water.
Eat fruits.That's crazy talk.

[turbomog007]

It is funny that "juice" contains some times as low as 1% fruit juice and that is why I don't call anything Juice just drink unless it is fresh squeezed

[Good Ol' Batmanuel!]

My favorite real fruit juice is the 100% pure Florida tangerine juice found here (http://www.nobletangerines.com/products.html). It's outstanding!

[Rune]

I've been caught out with stuff like this in the past too, very few 'juices' contain very much of the real stuff, I belive there are laws/legislation that demand that for something to be labelled 'juice' it has to be a certain % of fruit (at least in the UK) stuff like Sunny D is often called fruit juice but compare it with the real stuff and see what's in it. Stuff like Snapple you can see is diluted even though the taste might be strong.

Its the same with the 'add water' to drinks, if they are labelled say orange squash they have to have a certain amount of what was presumably once oranges in it, if they fall below that then they are simply 'orange drink' and on the whole they are pretty disgusting and full of tartrazine.

Really good juice ie freshly squeezed and with the luxury of bits in it is just that here, a luxury, the chillers are full of watered down rubbish but unless you looked at the small print you probably wouldn't even know what you were drinking percentagewise.