@Symbeline with “juice drinks” you can be getting just about anything except real juice. In the U.S. only products that are labeled 100% juice are actually 100% juice. Other “juice drinks” or “juice cocktails” usually have sugar, or high fructose corn syrup, artificial colors and flavors, which a lot of times, especially with red colored drinks, comes from ground up red beetles. Since red beetles is not considered a vegetarian item, I’m always on the lookout for words like carmine, chochineal or the dreaded mystery other natural ingredients which could be anything from bugs to gelatin to other un-named animal products, oil or glycerin.
A fine example of a “juice drink” which isn’t juice at all is Kool Aid Orange soda, like Crush or Fanta are others.
Watch out for the word “cocktail” too, because you will know for certain that you are not getting 100% juice. Here’s the ingredients for Ocean Spray Cranberry Cocktail. Cocktail fruit drinks either have sugar or high fructose corn syrup added to them, and often they will also have preservatives and dyes.
Although products labeled as 100% juice are indeed that, there are often more than one kind of juice in a product. That is because some fruits like cranberries, cherries and raspberries are simply too tart to be able to drink by themselves, so ususally pear juice or white grape juice might be added to temper the tartness.
Here’s another label that you might see that can confuse people if they don’t read the actual ingredients list on the side of the bottle. 100% Vitamin C. That means it delivers your 100% daily intake of vitamin C, but it does not mean that the product is also 100% juice. So read the ingredients labels folks : )
Anyone up for a cocktail to go along with that grilled cheese sammy?