Juice – the wonders of marketing schemes.

For the most part, juice is a waste of money. Yes, even “all natural, no sugar added, 100% juice” juices.  Juice is a highly-processed form of fruit that essentially leads to nothing more than sugar water – heck, the natural vitamin C of the fruit usually isn’t even there! That “100% of your Vitamin C needs” is mostly just added back in after all the processing! (That’s the “ascorbic acid” on the ingredient list.)

So, if you are squuuuueeeezing out all the liquid from the fruit, what do you get? Water, sugar.

The bigger question: what are you NOT getting? Fiber, phytochemicals, enzymes, and the other aspects of the “whole package” that the fruit was supposed to come with.

Most juices will contain 28 grams of sugar per serving, and if you get one of those lovely 20-ounce bottles, check the label – they usually are not 1 serving, but 2.5 servings, so you’re getting 70 grams of sugar and about 275 calories in the whole bottle.

How much sugar is 28 grams?

That’s almost the same as what you’ll find in most soda. Check out this video! (Thanks to Marshall Brain, who also brought us the books on How Things Work.)

There are 7 teaspoons in 8 ounces of sugar… or over 2 full tablespoons!

On a side note regarding colas: 

Did you ever wonder WHY they add so much sugar to pop?   They do it to cover the salty taste with all its sodium!

Which begs the question, why do they have so much sodium? To make you feel thirsty and therefore want more cool, “refreshing” soda!   How fantastically cyclical.