A JUICY STORY (Stop drinking your calories! It's all sugar water)

Did you know that most of the vitamins in commercial juices are destroyed during pasteurization and factory processing? So the “100%” vitamin C is usually synthetic vitamin C added to the processed juice. There are tons of other real nutrient dense sources of vitamin C including: peppers, broccoli, kale and other dark greens, oranges, strawberries, herbs, kiwi, guava and papaya. If you eat the whole fruit you are getting fiber to help with slowing the sugar into the system. If you eat vegetables you are getting even less sugar with your vitamins. Think local and fresh!

Think about it.  When we walk into a quality grocery store, where do we find the fresh produce? In the chillier part of the store and the frozen fruit and veggies, are in the frozen food section. So why then do we find "wholesome" fruits and veggies juices in an non- refrigerated aisle that then can be stored for months at room temperature in some cupboard somewhere? The goal is to keep the fresh produce– fresher… longer with cold.


The answer to that dilemma, in juice, is pasteurization. Even-though, they may be derived from the same original source, a lot happens to bottled juice after it is squeezed out of it’s fruit or vegetable and before it is poured out of the bottle and into your glass. Most bottled juice has been heated and pasteurised which means it's heated to a high temperature for a short period of time. Pasteurization destroys bacteria, molds, and unwanted micro-organisms, that might be lurking in the juice. Pasteurization also prolongs shelf-life, making it a much more cost-efficient product. But what happens to those lovely raw vitamins, minerals and enzymes? Gone baby. All gone.

Fruit and vegetables juices, that are freshly pressed, are quite possibly one of the most hydrating, nourishing and healing drinks you can consume but you'll note I said freshly pressed. Alissa Hamilton, author of Squeezed: What You Don’t Know About Orange Juice, states: “In the process of pasteurizing, juice is heated and stripped of oxygen, a process called deaeration, so it doesn’t oxidize. Then it’s put in huge storage tanks where it can be kept for upwards of a year. It gets stripped of flavor-providing chemicals, which are volatile. When it’s ready for packaging, companies such as Tropicana hire flavor companies such as Firmenich to engineer flavor packs to make it taste fresh. People think not-from-concentrate is a fresher product, but it also sits in storage for quite a long time…”

So if heating something can destroy the bad, you better believe that it is going to destroy the good too. What does that leave us with then?  juice that can sit eternally on a shelf and has been rendered about as  nutritionally dense as a "natural" gummy worm. Maybe that's a bit too harsh. Perhaps were left with a minuscule amount of nutrients, but only because most juice manufactures acknowledge this travesty, and attempt to “fortify” their juice with “vitamins”. Hey! On the bright side, 100% juice products are, at least, not chemical ridden, and full of additives, like regular and diet soda.

In other words– we are left with sugar. Lots and lots of sugar.

 “Nearly every canned or bottled commercial juice, on the other hand, are actually worse than soda, because a glass of juice is loaded with fructose, and a lot of the antioxidants are lost,” writes Dr Mercola.




Fructose, the kind of sugar that is found naturally in fruit and vegetables, is fine in moderation when consumed R-A-W. This is because the live enzymes and nutrients that chaperon the sugar, offer the body much needed nourishment, and help the body to break down and assimilate itself, all the while, nourishing the body. All in all, we should try an be happy quenching our thirst with water. It’s just that other beverages are always available, and people are most likely to reach for the sugary options. Why not spend the money on nutrient dense whole foods that will fill you up and not mess with your blood sugar? If you feel it will be too difficult to wean yourself or children off of juice, slowly start watering it down with more water and less juice. Eventually you can make the switch. Remember, our body is made up of mostly water, not juice or soda.