What is concentrated juice?
You’ve probably seen labels your entire life that say “Concentrated juice” or “100% juice from concentrate.” This can easily be misconstrued with it’s all natural counterpart, 100% fruit juice.
To simplify; A concentrated juice consists of fruits that are washed then crushed or blended to a pulp, removed of its major fiber content, evaporated into a powder, then rehydrated (a lot like you might do with a water flavor pouch such as crystal light or kool aid) when it’s time to add nutrients to the “juice from concentrate” or “fruit juice cocktail” that gets bought at a store.
Concentrated juices were initially thought of as an affordable alternative for communities and nations who had little-to-no access to fresh fruit and could still provide the nutrients they were lacking. Also, concentrated juices were thought the more financially responsible option since shipping costs are cheaper for powders than liquid (weight difference). [1]
Since the original process destroyed the natural flavors, companies began to add preservatives, sweeteners, and flavors to compensate for the lack of whole fruit. [2]
Scientists CD Atkins (not to be confused with the creator of the Atkins diet, cardiologist Robert C. Atkins), Edwin Moore and Louis G. McDowell in the 1940s were commissioned by the government to create what would eventually become the process for frozen orange juice concentrate called the cutback process. [3]
During the cutback process they would evaporate the juice as before, but add a bit of fresh juice to the powder then freeze it to maintain Vitamin C levels so that it could be sent to the military to fight scurvy. [3]
100% juice comes from whole fruit and vegetables. More specifically “According to the US Code of Federal Regulations, “juices directly expressed from a fruit or vegetable (i.e., not concentrated and reconstituted) shall be considered to be 100% juice and shall be declared as ‘100% juice.’ [4]
However, look for the phrase “not from concentrate” since the Brix (Degrees Brix or °Bx is the sugar content of an aqueous solution. One degree Brix is 1 gram of sucrose per 100 grams of solution and represents the strength of the solution as percentage by mass) concentrations in concentrated juices can be manipulated to the desired results. [5]
Although concentrated juice has over 100% of your daily value nutrients, it’s always recommended that you squeeze your own fruits and vegetables and purchase 100% juice when possible, since the excessive amounts of concentrated daily vitamins, metals, fungi, pesticides and sweeteners can send your body out of sync and cause other issues such as a behavioral issues, a lowered IQ, and skyrocketing blood glucose levels which leads to diabetes, disrupted metabolism in young adults and heart disease to name a few of the potential ailments. [6]
For the people you may have heard say they don’t like juice, they can get their daily nutrients from more places such as whole fruit, vegetables and many of the vitamins and supplements we sell here at Wellgenic Health.
Cited Sources
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4352186/
[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128022306000126
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/08/business/c-d-atkins-86-inventor-of-orange-juice-process.html
[4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4352186/figure/fig1/?report=objectonly
[5] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brix
[6] https://www.livestrong.com/article/531526-health-risks-for-juice-from-concentrate/