Store Bought Juices Vs Fresh Juices
You will notice at the supermarket that there are many kinds and many brands of fruits juices available and maybe even a few vegetable juices. These juices are well marketed with claims of being 100% juice, added vitamin D, added vitamin C, no added sugar or preservatives. These commercial juices do not deliver anywhere near the same level of health benefits for a healthy family as fresh homemade juices. So let’s take a look at the differences between them.
Juice Drinks
Juice drinks are the packaged juices that you see on the shelf at the store and not in the refrigerated section. These are bad news! The actual amount of juice in them is very small and is generally around 5%. The other 95% is water, added sugar in various forms, additives, flavorings, colorings and preservatives. These juices contain very little nutrition and deliver very little benefits for our health. They tend to have titles like “fruit cocktail”, “fruit blend”, or “fruit punch”. They are effectively flavored sugar-water.
Chilled Juice – Short-Life and Long-Life
Chilled juices are the juices that you will see in the refrigerated area of the supermarket. These juices are pasteurized. Long-life juices are heavily pasteurized so that they have an extended shelf life of two to six months. Short-life juices are subjected to less heavy pasteurization and can last for two to six weeks provided they stay chilled. Either way, chilled juices are available in two main types – ‘from concentrate’ and ‘not from concentrate’. Not from concentrate is the lesser evil of the two because concentrated juice is heated and dryed (killing over 90% of the nutrition in the process) into a concentrated form which is basically concentrated sugar as most of the other nutrition is lost. This concentrated juice is then reconstituted into the juice we buy at the store. Not great!
Fresh Squeezed Juice
The bottom line is that healthy juice goes off and doesn’t last longer than 3 days maximum, and often less. And this is exactly what you get with fresh homemade juice – a drink that goes off! These juices are not pasteurized or processed at all, just pure fruit and vegetable juice that is concentrated in nutrients and not concentrated in sugar with added harmful chemicals. Fresh juices are liquid nutrition loaded with health benefits. They help protect us from cancer, heart disease and arthritis, boost our immune system, provide a proper PH balance in the body and a lot more! Commercial juices at the store are not even a close second, not remotely. For some healthy fruit and vegetable juicer recipes visit juice recipe.
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