Why 100% Real Juice Is A Lie

Some people might find it shocking, yet advertising is deceiving us. Well, sort of. Despite the fact that many drinks make the claim to be 100% juice, some may not be.

That's due to the fact that 100% juice doesn't always signify what you might assume it does. What does it mean, then, and why are marketers permitted to use that strategy?

A beverage's label can be challenging to read. What, for instance, is sodium benzoate? One thing that is very obvious is that this is 100 percent actual juice, but as is generally the case when making assumptions, we can be mistaken. Juices are not created equal, as you can see. Today, there are 100 drinks that are categorized as cocktails and juices from concentrate. Therefore, it's a bit simple to be misled. However, if you go back a few years, it wasn't always that tough to tell if anything was genuine juice or not.

Juices were freshly squeezed at home before the advent of modern refrigeration, but today's definition of juice is a little more nuanced. The FDA has a comprehensive procedure for it. Juice is described as the aqueous liquid expressed or extracted from a fruit or a group of fruits. 100 lemon juices would be produced from a batch of lemon juice. It might be fortified with vitamin D or calcium, for example, but nothing that alters the fruit juice's natural composition. Consequently, anything containing additives, preservatives, or additional colors does not come under this heading.

Now that you have your juice, who or what decides whether it is 100 percent juice? The brick system. This is a tool the FDA uses to determine how much sugar is in a beverage.

The brick system calculates the amount of sugar dissolved in water needed to make orange juice, to put it simply. For instance, according to the FDA, orange juice needs a brix level of 11.8 degrees to be considered 100 percent juice. For comparison, grape juice has a brix of 16, pineapple juice has a brix of 12.8, and cranberry juice has a brix of 7.5. This will genuinely reveal how sweet it will be. The sweeter the liquid solution, regardless of density or alcohol, the higher the brix value.

Why then do we use this procedure?

That can be attributed to the introduction of orange drinks and aids.

Because of how common these beverages were, Sunkist petitioned for a new definition of what constitutes juice in 1964. The proposal included specifications for citrus fruit-based beverages. There was a worry that people might confuse orange juice with, say, orange aid, or an orange drink that didn't actually include oranges, as opposed to orange juice that could no longer be marketed as juice or orange drink brands.

Even after the juice firms prevailed in the naming battles, they continued to employ a few original strategies that were only marginally dishonest. Fruit juice that is prepared entirely of liquid fruit is referred to as 100% juice. However, just because the label claims 100 percent apple juice doesn't imply you always consume apples.

Companies dilute their drinks with less expensive juices, usually white grape, apple, or pear juice, to make high-end goods more affordable. Consider the following container of grapefruit juice: despite having the label "100 juice," reading the ingredients will reveal grape juice concentrate and apple juice concentrate. The final item is still regarded as 100 fruit juice. It's possible that the juice you believed you were drinking didn't come from the fruit.

Flip that bottle over and look at the ingredient list to determine exactly what you're consuming. There's a good probability you'll discover more ingredients than the front label suggested.