You’ve got a family to look after, a career that keeps you busy, and everything else on your plate taking up your precious time and energy. Dedicating the time to researching healthier food alternatives can be tough.  The last thing you want to do is to start scavenging down the aisles of your local grocery store for healthier alternatives to soda or energy drinks. The trouble is, mass-produced drinks, even those that proclaim to be pure, are often loaded with additives and sugars you don’t want anywhere near your breakfast table. Some may not even contain fruit juice at all. There’s a difference between a soda, soft drink, a nectar or juice.

 

 

What’s In A Name?

 

Generally speaking, we can classify most beverages according to two categories:  beverages that contain fruit juice and beverage that don’t contain fruit juice.

 

Beverages that don’t contain fruit juice come in many shapes and sizes: carbonated or not, clear or in colors, refrigerated or ambient, sweetened (naturally or artificially) or unsweetened, energetic or soothing, labeled as organic, natural or artificial.

 

Beverages that contain fruit juice are a little trickier from a labeling perspective because they raise the question of how much fruit is actually present in them. In this category we differentiate between "made with fruit juice”, "contains fruit juice”, "fruit nectar”, "contains 100% juice” (with or without added sugar) and "100% pure juice”

 

Some beverages are ready to drink while others (fruit juice mix for example) require reconstitution.

 

All of these claims directly correlate to the quality of the product that you will purchase. The healthiest beverages are those that are labeled as 100% juice or 100% pure juice with no added sugar. Those definitions apply as well as to smoothie mixes, fruit purees, fruit concentrates, fruit juice mix or juice concentrates

 

 

Squeeze Out The Guesswork

 

When encountering so much uncertainty and marketing tricks in the marketplace, you might think that the only (or at least best) way to ensure that you’re drinking exactly what you want to be is to make your juice yourself. And you’d be right. You don’t have to grow an orchard to do that, though. If you find a company who sells 100% fruit juice or 100% fruit juice mix, made with nothing but real blended fresh fruit, you can use that fruit juice mix to blend your own healthy fruit juice right in your own home, and take the guesswork out of healthy drinking.