The truth behind prepackaged juice.

By Elloise-Beth Schmidt


The first thing you must be aware of regarding commercial products if the difference between juice and drink. Items like blends and drinks may not contain much actual fruit juice. Instead they are mostly water with flavoring. Products named with juice or cider must be made of real fruit juice.

Nearly all of the bottled or store bought juices are pasteurized. Pasteurization is a process designed to kill harmful pathogens and bacteria. Only ten percent or less of microorganisms survive it making the foodstuffs safe for human consumption. Regular pasteurization and flash pasteurization both use high temperature to remove the harmful.

The bad news is many beneficial nutrients and vitamins are also eliminated. Mr Jorda in General Bacteriology 12th edition states that vitamin C is weakened during pasteurization. It further states that children who drink only pasteurized milk may lack vitamin C and be at risk. Lori Lopinski makes the claim that fifty percent of the vitamin C is milk is destroyed in her article Milk: It Does a Body Good. Furthermore, additional vitamins like A, D and E are removed as well. Water soluble elements like vitamin C have a bigger loss than nutrients that are fat soluble.

The subject of vitamin loss during pasteurization is hotly debated. Some say very little vitamins are lost, while others claim significant loss. However, it is easy to check in the company behind your brand of juice is adding vitamin C. The ingredients will include ascorbic acid. This is vitamin C. It is added back to replace the natural vitamin C that is lost. The product must do this in order to claim there is a full amount of vitamin C.

Not all juices are put through the pasteurization process. Odwalla juice was not pasteurized until an incident on October 7, 1996. Certain juices made by that company caused an E coli outbreak due to bad apples. All of their products have been pasteurized since this incident. In addition, Coca Cola now owns them. In addition, the US FDA requires that manufacturers label pasteurized products. This is done to inform the public which juices are deemed safe for consumption.

Oxygen in the atmosphere will react with vitamin C. Vitamin C is one of many antioxidants. It is named that because it retards the process of oxidation. Oxidation is a term used when substances react with oxygen to form stable compounds. The term anti-oxidant means that the oxygen will bind with it rather than other substances, preventing their oxidation. Oxygen is a free radical and can potentially damage cells in the body. Antioxidants protect tissues by binding with the free radicals first and forming harmless inert compounds. So ascorbic acid will react with air.




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