Hey my munchy pals. That was weird. In the first dining debunked episode where I went to
Panera, a lot of you guys I mean a lot a lot requested that I do a video on
concentrates and juices so here it is. So juice concentrates, what are they? More
importantly what is juice? Alright so everybody thinks that juice is healthy and
it can be but it really depends on which one you're drinking. Now of course the
healthiest choice would be to make your own but today we're not going to talk
about that we're gonna talk about store-bought juices and smoothies. If you
are interested in learning how to make your own juice without a juicer I have a
video on that and I will link it in the Description box below.
So juice does provide some of the vitamins and minerals that are in fruit
but it does not provide the fiber which is one of the best things about fruits
and vegetables. It's going to help with digestion help keep you full longer
so we really want that fiber. So once you take all that fiber out you're pretty much
left with vitamins and minerals, water, and sugar. Lots of sugar. So it's pretty
much sugary water. So let's use an example here by talking about an orange. An
orange is 60 to 70 calories depending on the size and about four and
a half grams of fiber. One cup of orange juice is about a 110 to a
120 calories depending on the variety and it has a whopping half a gram
of fiber. It will also take two to four oranges to get one cup of orange juice
and that's for double the calories and less then you know what's the math here
a half out of four and a half grams of fiber its a bad ratio. So let's talk
about some of the store bought juices and smoothies before we get to concentrate.
Naked blue machine boosted 100% juice smoothie a blend of four juices with added
ingredients no added sugar, lots of health claims. In my opinion if you are
eating whole foods
relatively clean diet you should be able to get most of the nutrients you need
from your food you shouldn't need a boost in your juice. And really the same goes for
multi-vitamins it's very debatable and I don't want to get too far into it. Pretty much if
you're eating really nutritious foods you're going to be getting those vitamins anyway. Moving
on this juice is one serving in the entire container so this is an important
note. A lot of these juices in these types of bottles are two to two and a
half servings per bottle which means you have to double or multiply by 2.5
whatever the serving size is the nutrition to get the correct amounts. So this one actually
is 1. Ingredients: apple juice, banana puree, blueberry puree, blackberry puree,
so pretty much a lot of fruit and then the vitamins which are added into
it. One of these bottles is 320 calories 76 grams of carbs 55 of which are sugar.
Some of you might be thinking, "Alyssia, all of those ingredients were natural they're
all from fruits and vegetables there's no added sugar." That is true but we still
need to be aware of how much sugar we're consuming overall even if it is natural.
Let's get one thing clear here sugar is not evil, fruit is not bad and will not make you
fat. Your body uses sugar to survive and burns sugar to provide you with energy.
But if you you have filled your body up with more sugar than it actually needs your liver
can't handle it and end up getting stored as fat and it doesn't matter
where the sugar comes from it we have too much of it. So this is why I really
active people can eat way more calories and carbs and sugar than people who
aren't as active. They're burning off the fuel that they're taking in. So how much
is too much? Well it's going to be a little bit different for everyone but we can
use some common sense to figure it out. Let's take a look at this juice again. This contains
27 blueberries, 3 blackberries, 3 1/3 apples, and 1 banana.
Now would you ever sit down and eat 27 blueberries, 3 blackberries, 31/3 apples, and 1 banana at once?
Or would you sit down and give your kid all those things to eat at once? Probably not. This is
healthy which is a relative term then I hate in terms of ingredients because the
ingredients are pretty solid right. Healthy fruits but when we look at the
macros and we look at how much sugar is there you know we may not want to
consume this at least all at one time. It's not really one servings worth of juice.
320 calories is also quite a lot for one beverage and when you compare this to a
coca-cola, now this one's a little bit smaller, but this is 15.2 fluid ounces. If I took
15.2 fluid ounces of coca-cola it would be 50 grams of sugar. How much did we say this one was?
55. So this is still gonna have five more grams of sugar than a coke. Another
analogy, let's just look at plain table sugar. There are 4 grams of sugar in 1 teaspoon,
3 teaspoons in 1 tablespoon. So you have 12 grams of sugar in 1
tablespoon. That means you have over four tablespoons of sugar in this juice
bottle. Now of course it's not table sugar that sweetening this right
that is important to keep in mind but you know would you sit down and eat 4
tablespoons of sugar at once? You know or give that to your kid? Another juice I want
to point out is kids juices. So Motts for Tots and Honest Kids, great brands by the
way. They're advertising this as 40% less sugar and they're charging you a
butt load for it. When you look at the ingredients the number one is purified
water and then its apple juice concentrate. The point is there
diluting this with water. So they're literally pour half water, pour half juice,
bottle it up, and sell it to you for five bucks. 60 calories and 15 grams of sugar
in eight ounces. If you look at a regular serving of apple juice it's about double
that. Just do it yourself.
Save yourself some money, it won't be quite as processed. How about a thumbs up? So what about
juice concentrates? What is the deal? Well juice is mostly water and water is bulky and
heavy and expensive to ship. So most juices are concentrated by extracting or
evaporating with heat most of that water so you're left with the concentrated
form which is similar to what you'll find in the frozen food section at your
grocery store. Later on they will add water back to the concentrate to
re-hydrate it. So you can see that this process makes juice from concentrate a
little more processed. Concentrate is pretty much a fancy name for syrup. It
is from the fruit, yes, but it is so concentrated that you're getting way more
sugar than you need and again you're not getting any of the fiber and very few of
the vitamins and mineral. So let's take a look here Bolthouse Farms Berry Boost.
Now I am a huge Bolthouse Farms fan. I drink the carrot juice every single day. But you gotta know
what you're drinking. First ingredient in the berry boost apple puree from concentrate,
apple juice from concentrate, blackberry puree, banana puree, elderberry berry juice
from concentrate yeah pretty much it's all from concentrate. Here's an example as
well of a bottle that has two servings in it. So it's a 120
calories and 24 grams of sugar per serving
but that means it's 240 calories and 48 grams of sugar in the entire
bottle. So important to note from concentrate does not necessarily mean
that there is added sugar but because it is using the concentrated syrup to
sweeten you're getting much more sugar than you would otherwise. Also it is
processed. So if you're someone
who's trying to avoid processed foods you have to understand that this is
still a processed food. Now is it healthier "healthier" than some of the
other processed foods out there? Maybe so, but if you're trying to avoid processed
foods completely don't think you're getting away for drinking this. Just
because it says that there's this many servings of fruit or it's 100%
juice or whatever the claims are doesn't make it healthy. I've said this before
health claims are evil. Dun, Dun, Duuuuunn. We do not want to listen to claims they are
deceiving. These companies, the marketers they design these so that you want to buy
them, right, they want your money. If this bottle instead had in big letters on it
that there was 48 grams of sugar and that it was all from concentrate and that you
would have to eat more than seven cups of strawberries to get the amount of
sugar in this. Would you buy it? Probably not. Yeah so you're not gonna sit down on a normal
day and eat seven cups strawberries probably. So that's where I'm saying you gotta use
your common sense a little bit but they make it really hard when it's so hard to
decipher everything that's on this bottle. So if you buy a regular juice
at the store it will say something like 140 calories for 36
grams of sugar in 8 ounces. Ok. When you buy the concentrate at the store it's the
same calories 140, 36 grams of sugar but the serving size is 2
ounces concentrated 8 ounces recon. Recon means reconstituted. So once it has been
re-hydrated. When you go to like the Panera or something and you get a
smoothie and it's made with concentrate, they're not rehydrating the concentrate to
juice before they added to the smoothie they're just adding the concentrate.
They're just adding the frozen syrup and then of course there are adding a bunch
of other stuff too
and more sugar. A few others to take a look at we have organic blueberry
flavored juice blend from concentrate. And it has
the USDA organic seal, must be healthy. So I've said this before
organic does not always make it better.
Water is the first ingredient because it is from concentrate. So this is about 75%
water because they have had to reconstitute the concentrate. This is
followed by organic apple juice concentrate, organic blueberry
concentrate, concentrate, concentrate. Now at the bottom you'll see natural flavors.
Now it is important to remember that the concentrating process does not only
remove the water it also removes flavor. So many of the manufacturers actually
have to add back in these flavor packs which are pretty much chemicals that are
gonna make it teased natural again. Now some of the juices like this one will
say natural flavors. But some of them won't and they actually don't have to put
if they use those flavor packs because it's still ingredients that are coming from
the original fruit. Sneaky. Also juices using these flavor pack can be from
concentrate or not from concentrate or 100% juice. We don't really know. So the
last type of juice that I wanna hit on today, I could of course talk forever about the millions
of juices available but we gotta keep this video under control is vegetable juice.
Vegetable juice. V8 is 100% vegetable juice from concentrate and added ingredients. Really small
underneath there. They don't really want you to know it's from concentrate. Other health claimes 2 servings
of veggies. Now here's what I really want to point out I walk in a store, I go down the juice aisle, I'm looking for
my vegetable juice and I see it but then I look below and I see the exact same
juice and it is low sodium. So why is there a low-sodium version of this
vegetable juice? I probably wouldn't have thought to look at the sodium because I
think it's a vegetable juice why would there be that much sodium in it but now
that you have a low sodium version I am definitely gonna look. In the original V8
there is a whopping 640 milligrams of sodium in 8oz.
Now if you remember from Dining debunked Panera we talked a lot about sodium. You're
recommended to have 1,500 milligrams of sodium a day, debatable, but the point is
the recommended this is almost half that in one 8oz glass. Also that you can get two servings of
vegetables in. No thank you, but at least it's gluten-free. Also important to note
the first ingredient is reconstituted vegetable juice blend. So this stuff
is extremely process and again I'm not hating. I think tomato juice has it's place. It's
great to cook with. I like to cook my grains in it to give a lot of extra
flavor. But just drinking it to get your vegetables, they are better sources. Like
real vegetables. And V8 fusions. Fusing the fruits and vegetables so now
you really don't have to eat any fresh fruits or veggies could you got this. Not
only are there health claims there are also anti-health claims. So you've got the normal 100
calories and you know all your vitamin C but you've also got no artificial
sweeteners, no artificial flavors, and no high fructose corn syrup. Now usually if
someone is putting that there's no high fructose corn syrup there's sugar
in it still, it's just some other kind or regular sugar. Also watch out for the
words cocktail. Thirst quenching juice cocktail. That is a bad sign. So they
what us to think that this is a great substitute for fruits and vegetables but what is one
of the greatest things about fruits and vegetables? The fiber!
Yes, thank you for listening. 100 calories, 26 grams of carbs 25 of which are sugar and a
whopping 0 grams of fiber and yes sugar is an added ingredient. This is not
a nutritious juice it is sugary processed water and it should be consumed as a
treat if at all. Frankly if I'm going to have a treat I want something that's way better than this juice
but you know, your cheat meals are your own. Ultimately it is fine if you want to
pick up one of these juices or smoothies on occasion here or there but remember that
nothing is going to replace the nutritional value of your fruit and
vegetables and if you are going to pick up one of those juices whether it's in
the cold section and seems healthier or on the shelf make sure you read the
label, make sure you see if it's from concentrate, and always read the ingredient
list. And I am sorry that I couldn't get to every juice that's out there on the
market that would've taken forever so if I didn't get to your favorite juice
I'm so sorry but before you comment and say "Well what about my juices?" "Is my juice ok?" I
want you to stop and think about what you learned and think about how you can
apply to your lifestyle. So the point of these videos is not to tell you which
juice to drink and not to drink. It's to help teach you to be able to read the
labels yourself and make informed decisions for yourself. And for all of
you that have made it this far wow your amazing. In my last how to choose tortillas
and top 10 unhealthy health food videos a lot of you guys said "What do you do with
all this food that you buy and you use in the videos and then you don't use it, what do you do with it?"
"Do you eat it?" No I don't eat it and I don't throw it away, I don't waste it, I
return it. So Christian and I used to try and go film in the stores but we started getting kicked
out and we just decided it was easier to buy it and then send it back. Alright that is it for now,
I hope you have an awesome weekend. I will see you on Monday for a special episode.
And remember it's all a matter of Mind Over Much.