The truth behind grocery store juice.

By Elloise-Beth Schmidt


Companies who create bottled fruit juices are legally required to make a distinction between a fruit drink and a fruit juice. Bottled products named with blend, drink or beverage usually contain ten percent juice or less. These are flavored sugar water. Juice and cider products must contain 100% actual orange juice.

Just about all of the juice you find at your local grocery store has been pasteurized. Pasteurization is a process designed to kill harmful pathogens and bacteria. This removes ninety percent of undesirable organisms and makes products safe for storage during transportation. The common methods of pasteurization involve apply heat to the juice.

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. Jorda asserts that babies who drink nothing but pasteurized milk are at risk for scurvy which is a lack of vitamin C. 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. She also states that a portion of vitamins A, D and E are lost. Water soluble elements like vitamin C have a bigger loss than nutrients that are fat soluble.

Vitamin loss during pasteurization is a source of argument. Some say very little vitamins are lost, while others claim significant loss. One thing that is certain is that manufactures do add vitamin C into commercial products to compensate. Ascorbic acid will be listed on the ingredients. Ascorbic acid is another name for vitamin C. Synthetic nutrients are added to replenish what was eliminated. The company does this so they can make claims that there is a daily supply of vitamin C in an eight ounce serving.

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. Coke has since bought them. In addition, the US FDA requires that manufacturers label pasteurized products. You can determine which products the FDA considers safe by looking for this label.

Oxygen in the atmosphere will react with vitamin C. The vitamin is an antioxidant. In other words it oxides easily. 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. Free radicals such as oxygen can cause damage to tissues by binding to them. Exposing free radicals to antioxidants cause a reaction neutralizing both molecules and rendering them inert. The oxygen present in the atmosphere will trigger a reaction.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment