Juice
2008/9 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Drink
Juice is a liquid naturally contained in vegetable or fruit tissue. For example, orange juice is the liquid extract of the fruit of the orange tree. Juice may be supplied in concentrate form, requiring the user to add water to reconstitute the liquid back to its 'original state' (Generally, concentrates have a noticeably different taste than their comparable "fresh-squeezed" versions.) Juice should not be confused with a squash, which is usually an artificial juice to be diluted with water. Common methods for preservation and processing of fruit juices include evaporation and spray drying.
Juice normally has a pretty defined level of purity; this is -100% in some countries. In Bulgaria and New Zealand (and possibly others), juice denotes a sweetened fruit extract, whereas nectar denotes a pure fruit or vegetable extract; these terms are reversed in other countries, Norway and Spain among them.
Popular juices include apple, orange, lemon, cranberry, grapefruit, pineapple, tomato, blackcurrant, grape, and pomegranate. It has become increasingly popular to combine a variety of fruits into single juice drinks. One of the most popular examples is Carrot, Orange and Ginger. Prepackaged single fruit juices have lost market share to prepackaged fruit juice combinations. A number of new companies have had considerable success supplying prepackaged fruit juice combinations on the basis of this transition. "Innocent" and "P&J" are UK examples; "Nudie" is an Australian example. Over the same period, Juice bars have become commonplace across most of the western world and offer similar juices. Most of these juice bars offer freshly made fruit juices and claim that that confers greater health benefit. The rationale for this claim is that once the fruit has been juiced, its antioxidants start to react with oxygen free radicals and so lose their health benefit. Juice is also commonly found in many cooking recipies around the world. The most popoular are lime and lemon juice which help to add a slightly more sour or bitter taste to dishes.
In the UK, the term "fruit juice" can only legally be used to describe a product which is 100% fruit juice, as required by the Fruit Juices and Fruit Nectars (England) Regulations and The Fruit Juices & Fruit Nectars (Scotland) Regulations 2003 However, the term "juice drink" can be used to describe any drink which includes juice, even if the juice content is 1% of the overall volume.
Fruit juice consumption overall in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and the USA has increased in recent years , probably due to public perception of juices as a healthy natural nutrient source and increased public interest in health issues.
However, fruit juice labels have been considered to be misleading, with juice companies actively hiding the actual content. "No added sugar" is commonly placed on labels, however the juice product is made from "reconstituted concentrates". It is difficult for the consumer to know the contents of the concentrates . Probably as a result, juice has also been seen as responsible for overweight children .