Healthy fruit drinks secretly filled with sugar

Not all sugar is bad for you. Some are naturally present in everyday foods: lactose and galactose for example, are organic to milk. However, the sugars that are present in most fruit juices and concentrates were added in a factory and are bad for you. Now, I can easily go the route of all of the potential damaging effects added sugar will do to your health, etc (did you know that cancer cells thrive in sugar?) but, I won’t. Sugars that are added to our food simply undermines our overall well being.

The added sugar from four ounces of a generic cranberry juice cocktail (four ounces is half the suggested serving (see “Nutrition Facts” image at right) kept me wide awake until 3 a.m. It is however, important to note that I don’t usually consume fluids with my meals so I drank the “natural juice cocktail” afterwards. Today, I feel, well, “unfruitful” and whatever claims the front of this juice label has made (“a very low sodium food”) have been weakened by an unproductive night’s rest, a direct contributer to a person’s overall well being. So, how is it that a glass, half full of supposedly healthy juice can affect my sleep? Let’s see what’s in it:

Ingredients are typically listed according to the most prevalent. In this instance, filtered water is first. Look at what’s listed immediately following, “high fructose corn syrup.” This additive is bad as it is processed and ultimately fake, but what we may not know is that high fructose corn syrup is used as a *substitute for sugar.* Therefore, the sugar mentioned on the nutrition facts label, is puzzling as it doesn’t say if it is “natural sugar” or a combination. Is it even really only 40 grams per serving or a mysterious amount more?

The facts label boasts at the top, that this product contains a supposedly whopping 25% juice. Presumably, “natural” juice as the front of the label claims, but according to the ingredients, the only natural thing listed are “flavors” which appear at the end of the list – right before the alarming fumaric acid (according to Wiki, “fumaric is used in candy to add sourness”). Even the sourness, natural to cranberries, isn’t natural in this natural, fruit drink.

Cranberries, by their nature are sour. Do you see 100% cranberry juice for sale? Even if you do, it probably is repulsive. Hence the sugar. But then what good is it, consuming something supposedly so beneficial, but in order to gain any benefit we must sacrifice something else? This to me is like using a coupon to buy something you normally wouldn’t.

Although cranberries contain some vitamin C and fiber, the health benefits derived from consuming them in the conventional juice drink variety are dubious.