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Juicy News About "Healthy" Fruit Drinks
today's food shopping is a blind date
Dr. David J. Demko, Gerontologist and Editor
AgeVenture Syndicated News Service, Boca Raton, Florida 04-11-2008

Food choice develops at an early age. For the average five-year-old, food choice is a no-brainer. Eat whatever mom serves up on your plate, or your odds of living to age six decrease dramatically. A draconian, yet effective, regimen for healthy eating.

Not so for later in life. Adult food choices are based mostly on advertising. And, just like your first blind date, you quickly realize that the initial hype of an entity is often no where near reality. Well, the same principle applies to food product labeling.

Woe be to the average shopper who bases food selection on how attractive the product is pictured on the packaging. Pretty images are the perfect coverup for faulty food contents. That attractive dessert staring back at you from inside the grocery freezer often includes enough sodium to kill a small horse, enough sugar to cause insulin shock, enough fat to beat your heart to death, enough additives to pickle your liver, and enough preservatives to mummify your body for centuries.

No doubt about it, food consumers are walking a veritable tightrope. You gotta eat, but America's grocery shelves are stocked with foods to literally "die for." Not to worry. Some one is watching your back.

Consumer Reports (CR) magazine has decoded juice-label lingo in an effort to help consumers buy what they intend and avoid added sugars and artificial ingredients. CR cautions:
  • “blueberry, pomegranate, and cranberry” juice can consist of mostly grape and apple juice.
  • “orange fused pineapple" juice is only water, corn syrup, and only 5% juice ... none of it pineapple.
  • "citrus energy boost" drink can turn out to be just flavored water, vitamins, and caffeine.
Consumer Reports’ experts offer the following tips to help consumers understand what’s in the juice they’re buying.
  • "100 percent juice" contains pure juice, possibly reconstituted from concentrate.
  • "100 percent juice blends" are often made with apple or grape juice as the dominant ingredient.
  • “Light juices" touting less sugar and fewer calories are basically regular juice diluted with water.
  • “Juice cocktail,” “drink,” or “beverage,” are mostly water, flavorings, corn syrup and 5% juice.
CR recommends that consumers should choose “100% juice,” but to check the ingredients for the listing of the juice they are looking for. Ingredients appear in descending order of weight. To save calories or money, consumers can dilute 100 percent juice with chilled water or seltzer.

The full report on juice-label lingo is available in the May issue of Consumer Reports.

I also recommend a visit to the FDA web site to test your "Food Label Reading IQ". Tell them Dave sent you.

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