An innocent guide to fruit juice

Smoothie

A real smoothie is a blend of crushed and freshly squeezed fruit. It should be 100% pure fruit with no added sugar or water and, very importantly, be made with fresh rather than concentrated juices. A smoothie will be thicker and more pulpy than a normal juice as it contains whole crushed fruit. Beware, there are a lot of bogus 'smoothies' on the market that contain concentrated juices, sugar and water or even worse. If it isn't pure and fresh, it simply isn't a smoothie.

Freshly squeezed

Fresh is the magic word. This means that the juice has come from fruit that has been brought into the UK, squeezed locally and put into a bottle. This means that the fruit juice is not tampered with by concentrating it, therefore it will taste great and have the best possible nutritional profile.

Concentrates

Concentrates are made by taking a fruit juice, heating it to a high temperature and evaporating off the water. This leaves a thick syrup that is a small proportion of the original volume (as low as 12% with oranges). This is packed in drums and shipped across the world. At the bottling stage, water is added back to blend the juice up to its normal strength. Some manufacturers then use things called 'add backs' to give the juice a 'fresh' aroma and compensate for the effect of concentrating.

The sole reason for concentrating a juice is to reduce shipping and storage costs. It is definitely not in the best interest of the fruit or the person drinking it.

Pure / 100% fruit

If a product is pure juice or 100% fruit then there is nothing in the product apart from juice. However, the product may not be fresh and it could be made from concentrate. It is always worth checking on the label, because if a juice is from concentrate it should be declared. Basically, if a juice doesn't say it is fresh then it won't be.

Pasteurisation

There are two types of pasteurisation: gentle and UHT.

Gentle pasteurisation is the process that happens to all the fresh milk you buy and to some juices. It does not affect the product: all nutritional properties remain the same and (if done well) it's impossible to taste the difference. Fresh juice is pasteurised to knock out bugs. When you're making smoothies and putting in the whole tropical fruit, you don't want to take any risks. Odwalla, a US smoothie company, didn't pasteurise its juice and unfortunately this resulted in outbreak of E. Coli that killed one person and hospitalised many others. In the US, if you don't pasteurise your fresh juice, you have to put a health warning on the label.

UHT pasteurisation is the same process that produces long life milk. This does affect the product - long life milk doesn't taste that great and a UHT pasteurised fruit juice just doesn't have the same nutritional quality as other juice. It is used to remove anything from the juice that would cause it to go off so the product can sit on a shelf for months without anything happening.

Pressed/juiced/crushed/squeezed...

Lots of different terms get used when people describe how juice is obtained from different types of fruit. To keep it simple, we divide fruit into three areas:

• Hard things (e.g. apples, carrots) are juiced or pressed
• Soft things (e.g. berries, mangoes) are blended, crushed or squashed
• Citrus things (e.g. oranges) are squeezed

Not from concentrate

If a product is not from concentrate (or NFC), then it has been made with juice that hasn't been concentrated. NFC products can be made by importing frozen juice into the UK and then defrosting it upon arrival.

Pure squeezed

This is the same as 'not from concentrate'. It does not mean fresh - the fruit will have been squeezed in another country, frozen and shipped to the UK.

Juice drink

A juice drink is not a fruit juice. The quality of them varies - our This Water is the most natural example available. Juice drinks are traditionally made with water and juice. Beware of juice drinks that use weird things like vegetable oil and corn syrup - they're no fun.

Crush

A crush is a drink made from fruit juice, purees and water. It's often found in supermarkets and is much thinner than a true 100% fruit smoothie.