TIL that not all orange juice is in fact... "Orange Juice"!
If you are like me, you like to enjoy a nice, tall, glass of delicious orange juice with your breakfast in the morning. It tastes good and it is good for you! How can you go wrong? Well, after our recent shopping trip to the grocery store last night and then subsequent breakfast this morning, I learned first hand that the term "orange juice" can mean many different things to different companies. The one in particular I am going to talk about comes from Tropicana...
We arrived to the orange juice section of Walmart last night and we pulled out our trusty app "Flip" to see if there were any deals for us on orange juice this week. There was! Tropicana "Trop50" was buy 2 for $4 (so basically $2 each), which was a good amount cheaper than most of the other brands. We had never tried this one before but thought lets give it a go, after all saving a couple bucks here and a couple bucks there starts to add up into real money pretty soon!
Well this morning it was apparent to the entire family that there was a reason this orange juice was half the price of the others... After closer inspection we learned that it wasn't really orange juice at all, but rather orange juice light. It had 50% less sugar, and 50% less calories than the original Tropicana Pure Premium orange juice and it claimed no artificial sweeteners...
Their official motto is: "Be 100% fabulous with 50% less sugar and 50% less calories!"
Well it tasted like it, in a bad way...
They don't use any "artificial sweeteners" but they do use something called PureVia. So, yes it doesn't use artificial sweeteners but it does use something that is not naturally found in orange juice.
Lets compare that with the Tropicana Pure Premium orange juice which is 100% juice. It contains 2x the number of sugars and 2x the number of calories. It is 100% juice, never from concentrate, and boy does it taste like it but in a good way...
When comparing the two, there really is no comparison. There was an independent blind taste-test of 25 editors comparing the two juices and the results were pretty clear:
- 92% could clearly identify which was the low calorie juice
- 94% preferred the taste of the pure premium orange juice over the low calorie
Some of the taster's responses:
"Trop50 tastes like Tang"
"It tastes like Sunny Delight, but not as good"
"It leaves a bad aftertaste that stays with you for hours"
"It tastes nothing like the real thing"
"Tropicana Pure Premium is one of the best tasting orange juices out there"
"It is worth the added calories"
"The creamy texture goes down smooth and tastes like it is freshly squeezed"
The people have spoken!
I think by now it is pretty clear that Trop50 doesn't really taste much like traditional orange juice. However, for people looking for a low calorie orange juice substitute, it just might do the trick. For me personally, I didn't even realize it wasn't orange juice or an orange juice light when I bought it, but it won't be something I will be purchasing again. Although, I could probably use a few less calories myself... :)
# dadbod
Live well my friends!
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/04/trop50-orange-juice_n_1184551.html
Image Sources:
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Tropicana-Pure-Premium-Orange-Juice-with-No-Pulp-59-fl-oz/20976683
Follow: @jrcornel
This is a good lesson in reading labels - never mind the taste test. We did a test a few weeks ago on mayonnaise - we read every label on every jar covering "reduced fat, slim, lite, light, real egg" and we checked the levels of added sugar. Well, well - big surprise if you do not know. Reduced fat is made by taking out the fat and replacing with sugar. The lowest sugar product was the real egg product - i.e., the way mum made it.
But this post is about juice - always good to know how the stuff is made. I took this photograph in a town called Koondrook on the Murray River in Australia. These are grapefruit stacked in a hopper ready to be crushed for juice. Nothing unusual about that other than it is clear that there is a bit more than fruit that goes in - all those skins get pulped too. Also any creatures that may be wandering about there. What you cannot tell from the photo - this was Sunday and plant had been closed since Friday end of shift. It was hot (like close to 100F) and it smelled of rotten fruit.
Oh wow... that is interesting and informative! Thanks for sharing! And yes it was a good lesson to learn for us :)
Whenever you see anything "reduced fat," run the other way as fast as you can. Fat is quite good for humans, and whenever they remove fat, they add sugar to compensate. Sugar is quite bad for humans in large quantities.
The US federal government launched a massive propaganda campaign some decades back to demonize fat, claiming they wanted to reduce heart disease. This was over the objections of many scientists, who pointed out that fat was good for people, and reducing it would increase heart disease. Since that campaign started, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, etc. all skyrocketed. Eat more fat.
The exception is trans fat, which is fake fat: trans fats are hydrogenated oils, and these are unnatural and are harmful to consume. Some trans fats do occur in nature, but are exceedingly rare, and only come in foods that also contain the nutrients your body needs to safely process the trans fats. Foods in the store are not so thoughtfully designed.
That Trop 50 stuff is vile. I tried drinking it for a while. I think if you like juice and you can't give up it is better to just dilute it slightly and/reduce the frequency to maybe a glass a day. It's still a lot of sugar though.
I agree. I add a bit of water to my juice and have come down from 6 to 7 glasses a day to just 2 or 3. My daily sugar intake is still relatively high, unfortunately, but this small step has made a huge difference.
That's still quite a lot but it is pretty addictive IMO just as much as Coke or Pepsi. Further the high concentration of fructose may be worse for you but at least you have managed to cut down. I know some people drink a couple of litres a day!
It is! This morning was the first time I tried that stuff... it was terrible!
Yes. Washing up liquid comes to mind.
Nothing is better than a homemade juice :)
I agree! Oranges are ripe this time of year as well ;)
Well, my wife makes it a habit when she shops for juice to find the one that is Never From Concentrate. I guess this just explains real fruit juice is much better than ones with added crap in them, even if it is natural and not artificial.
Yep you are right and I agree!
Buy fresh & local or juice your own - much better!
You nailed it! Woe is me and my love of the low prices :)
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