Fruit is one of those foods that after consumption I automatically feel great! You relatively don’t have to eat much to see benefits. Healthier skin, eyes, and heart are just some of the wonderful benefits of fruit. Cancer prevention abilities are what many fruits are promoted to have.

Drinking fruit juice that is freshly squeezed or from the bottle is equally nutritious, right? Well not quite. Fruit juice has been around as long as fruit, duh! Everyone has seen the labels on juice containers and bottles saying “100% fruit juice”. Little do most people know that the claim “100% fruit juice” is just that, a claim!

Through loop holes, many companies have realized that they can place 100% fruit juice on their product without facing any legal issues. A number of 100% fruit juice products are blends or fruit flavor drinks. With blends and fruit flavor drinks, you will find that only 5 to 15% of that product is fruit!

Drinks that come from concentrated fruits will usually have water somewhere in the ingredient decreasing the percentage of fruit, hence the amount of fruit juice in the product. If you check carefully in the ingredients, you will realize that the nutritional content with the highest amount are usually listed first and descend respectively. So, if you have water at the top of the list of the ingredients than you are definitely getting some watered down fruit juice.

Many fruit juice products will also market their product as having “great source of vitamin c, b, and e” yet are not even close to having a 100% fruit juice product. Lastly, the best way to tell if fruit juice is 100% fruit juice is by looking at the ingredients or by pouring the juice yourself.

One big hint: the longer the list the greater chance it will be nothing other than synthetically made juice that will leave little bang for the buck!

-Phil