I get that it says “flavored juice drink” now, but I was tired and the text is pretty small.
“Fruit snacks” are so much worse. It’s just candy, and inferior in taste and texture to anything made with actual fruit.
Cheap fruit drinks have been this way for the last half century, probably longer.
There’s not going to be a major health difference between chugging this shit and fruit juice in terms of how much sugar you’re taking in, your body doesn’t really care where the sugar comes from, it acts the same inside you. An 8 ounce glass of Welche’s Corn Syrup versus an 8 ounce glass of fresh squeezed orange juice are both going to be basically 8 ounces of candy. The orange juice just has more vitamin C and maybe some pulp to slow down the sugar spike in your blood if that’s an issue for you.
“Real” fruit juices might have added vitamins or even some amount of fiber, but fruit juice in generally not a healthy drink. It’s an alternative to other things like soda or alcohol but you don’t reach for a fruit juice bottle for daily hydration. Drink more water, then whatever sweet treats you want on occasion.
A fresh piece of fruit is a bit healthier because it has all those vitamins and minerals and fiber which is good for you, and the fiber content slows down the rapid sugar digestion. But again, it’s all carbohydrate calories, that’s the area you should be focused on more than if something is “natural.”
My problem is mostly that HFCS tastes like ass. I was expecting it to be a blend of apple juice, pear juice, and a hint of passion fruit.
The health aspect is more about always keeping an easy to access non-beer thing in my fridge.
What’s crazy to me is how the alternatives are often the same price.
Buying Jelly (for peanut butter and jelly), 95% of the garbage out there uses HFCS. Then you have a few all natural ones with 3 ingredients and there’s no difference in pricing. But apparently people aren’t paying attention.
YMMV it seems like the “natural” product is 2x the price of the “store brand.”
I’ve heard great things about flavored sparkling water as a beer-alternative, unsweetened or lightly sweetened. I can’t recommend quitting drinking enough. It gets harder and harder to break the habit and makes you have a great big ol’ belly that won’t go away easily. (Fruit juice and other carbs will do the same thing. Sugar belly sucks.)
Wine was my poison for many years, does the same thing. I now just drink a lot of water at night.
It’s an alternative to other things like soda or alcohol
More like “something to add to alcohol”. That’s just about the only time I drink juice. Sugary drinks just aren’t it for me.
There’s no alcohol. Just orange juice.
Like, the mixer?
Yeah, people drink it.
“family farmer owned”
Just means you get corn juice in addition to all those fruit juices.
we have “100% juice” here which can only have fruit concentrate (or puree depending on the fruit) and water. that’s the only kind that i buy. i still have no idea why you would add sugar to fruit.
This shit isn’t even labeled as juice. All it says is “passion fruit.” I guarantee it looks like Kool Aid. This is gas station shit.
If in the USA, look for “100%[fruit] juice” in easily readable font.
And also check if they add High Fructose corn syrup. If they do, don’t bother.
As far as I know, 100% fruit juice doesn’t add sweeteners.
The sweeteners are the sweeter juice that they add. Usually concentrated apple juice.
That way they can continue to label it 100% juice and no sweeteners added and put on the nutrition label 0g added sugar, but still add a bunch of sweetness and sugar when formulating the product.
Aye, USA famously have terrible consumer rights so they can get away with shite like this
EU and UK (for now) have stuff like the Square Bananas act and the False Advertising act where this would be classified as illegally lying to the consumers and get the product taken off of shelves.
We even for USA imports have this policy that they must have their ingredients list covered by a more accurate sticker
Was wondering about those stickers. The packaging itself doesn’t have the actual ingredients?
It does, but sometimes shortened in a way that EU law don’t allow, like instead of “flavouring A, flavouring B, preservative 1” just “natural flavourings and preservatives”
The “100%” on the front is very tricksy and wouldn’t fly in the EU.
It was deliberately put there to trick people into thinking 100% fruit content, but it’s actually whatever they could find in there that had anything to do with 100%.
Here, there’s always the fruit content up front, wether it’s 1%, 10%, 50% or 100%
Huh? It very clearly states it’s the vitamin c content. “Vitamin C” takes up more space than 100%.
The only scenario where that’s confusing is if you’re illiterate.
The only scenario where that’s confusing is if you’re illiterate.
Have you met the average consumer?
That is true, but it doesn’t mean the psychology in the design isn’t preying on people being stupid
America is pretty “pro-corporations fucking over people”.
Look for 100% juice.
While you’re at it, look for “zero sugar” products. They use sucralose, which is 600 times sweeter (gram for gram) than sugar, so they use way less of it. No aftertaste either, though it doesn’t have that “sugary” flavour, so it does taste differently. After a while I just think it’s better.
Yeah, I stopped buying anything Welch’s for just this reason. Actually I’m not sure I ever started. When I bought juice, I always looked for some that had juice. Now that juice has entered a new phase of enshittication, it’s just not worth it, even for special occasions
shit says copywright 2023… how old is that juice?
That’s just for the packaging and branding
Buy fruit…
In many areas, that’s simply not possible.
Frozen juice concentrate?
Unless you’re looking for Apple or grape juice specifically, this is what you get. I’ve long decided to avoid juices as a result. If I want a sugar water packet, I just pack a honeycrisp apple, orange, Asian pear, plum, or a slightly overripe bartlett pear.
Apple and grape are the same
8oz of Welch grape juice has 35g sugar. 20oz of classic coke has 65g sugar. Adjusted for volume, that’s 26g/8oz. Somehow fucking coke has less sugar. Apple is ironically the same as coke at 53g per 16oz
Grape juice and apple juice naturally have that much sugar, even if there’s none added.
I have an apple tree at home and I’ve tried to make apple juice. It’s absulte rancid if you don’t add tons of sugar. Clearly there’s better kinds of apples for this, but those are also more expensive. So for the stakeholder’s sake, lets add some sugar to the cheap apples and make more profit.
They are, however, made of the fruit they’re named after with little sugar added. That 8oz is about half a pound, and half a pound of grapes is calorically comparable. I’d guess that the apple/juice situation is similar but it’s harder to ascertain because of variation.
We’ve cultivated tree candy, and I can’t see it any other way.
Curiously, where I am, apple juice is so easy to come by that other juices are diluted with apple juice.
this is why i switched to buying vegetable juice when i want juice
Maybe true in USA, not true here
What’s not true there?
That 100% juices other than grape and apple are hard to find.
It’s only true in the U.S. if you live in a food desert or somewhere rural with a single walmart. Which admittedly is a problem here.
But if you live anywhere with healthier stores like Sprouts and Whole Foods, you will find plenty of juice.
Even my regular local regular supermarket carries various juices.
Ah yeah makes sense, I think a difference between here and USA is we have no such thing as a food desert
There’s always options
Disagree, I was able to find the local grocery store’s store branded 100% fruit juice in cranberry, apple, grape, and pomegranate. It’s just a regular grocery store too.
They even had the welch’s 100% juice varieties.
Now that being said I had to pay real close attention to the labels to select the right juice, but the good stuff is still out there
For myself, it depends on where I look and what store I’m in. Sometimes the international section can get me soursop juice. Locally owned stores have a better chance of variety.
Part of this I believe can be attributed to labelling rules. Only the concentrate portion can be called juice.
When it is made from concentrate the reconstituting water is the main ingredient. What’s shitty is that water gets more and more sugar/HFCS mixed in so less concentrate is used. Getting it down to 10% or less like that: it’s just flavoring the corn.
Passion fruit is tasty. I’d like to try it in a beverage (not this beverage)
Pure passion fruit juice would probably cost you 10-20$ per liter and it would be waaay too concentrated.
it would be waaay too concentrated
100% is 100%. But yeah, you probably wouldn’t like the taste.
Yes. Who drinks a cup of 100% lemon juice?
Me.
A few times when I got smaller bottles of 100% lemon juice I just ended up drinking it as-is. But I’ll also eat lemons if they are easy to peel.I also like to take sips of lemon juice now and then, but a whole glass? Thats hardcore xD
More like taking sips from the bottle until “shit, that was all of it”.
I wish my teeth would be able to handle that. As a kid I ate and drank sour stuff nonstop, but nowadays my teeth get soft and sensitive to temperature for a few days if Im not careful.
You can cut strong juice with other juice instead of with water and HFCS. Mixing passion fruit and orange juice at a level where it still mostly tastes of passion fruit makes something nice and not so expensive that it has to be sold at a different price to other orange juice.
Apple and pear juice are common for cutting an otherwise overpowering (or expensive) juice.
If you’re Ocean Spray, you might use “with 2 other juices”. Yes, it actually uses those words on the package.
Yes definitely, but from OPs context it seemed like they wanted a juice ready to drink.
Pre-mixed 100% juice drinks are readily available (depending on where you live). You don’t have to buy several juices and mix them yourself if you’re thirsty when walking past a shop as long as the shop stocks them.
