An innocent guide to fruit juice

Smoothie

A real smoothie is a blend of crushed and squeezed fruit. It should be 100% pure fruit with no added sugar or water and, very importantly, be made with NFC 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.

Concentrates

Concentrates are made by taking a fruit juice, heating it to a very high temperature and evaporating off the water. This leaves a thick syrup that's a small proportion of the original volume (as low as 12% with oranges). When the drums of concentrated juice arrive at their destination, water is added back to restore the juice to its original volume.

As a result a concentrated juice will often taste 'cooked'. The process that concentrates juice is really harsh. And because it's so harsh, there's no point using the best fruit when you're doing it. So concentrate manufacturers tend to use the lowest quality fruits. That's not how we like to do things. Also the whole idea of boiling a juice and reconstituting it with tap water is not natural in our eyes so we prefer to avoid it.

Pasteurisation

There are two types of pasteurisation: gentle and UHT.

Gentle or flash pasteurisation is the process that happens to all the fresh milk you buy and to some juices, including our smoothies. This is the best way to make our products safe whilst having a minimal effect on taste and quality. Fresh juice is pasteurised to knock out bugs. When you're making smoothies and putting in the whole crushed fruit, you don't want to take any risks.

UHT pasteurisation is the same process that produces long life milk. This can affect the product - long life milk doesn't taste that great and a UHT pasteurised fruit isn't likely to be the same quality as other juice.

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.

Juice drink

A juice drink is not a fruit juice. Juice drinks are traditionally made with water and juice.