Low-Calorie “Juice” A Big Disappointment
Have you seen the ads for Trop50? The new fruit juice “goodness” with 50% less calories and sugar … and no artificial sweeteners? I was so excited when I first saw the ad for this product, I ran to the store to check it out. “Finally!” I thought, “A fruit juice without added sugar!” After all, why add sugar to fruit juices and canned fruits–it just adds calories and carbohydrates to our diet that are unnecessary. It makes us raise the bar on our desire for the taste of sweet on our tongue. It adds no nutrition and insults Mother Nature. I despise when companies bottle juices and can fruit and then have the nerve to add sugar to them.
You can imagine my disappointment when I got to the store and read the label on the carton. This was not pure juice without added sweetener. This was not finally the natural, good tasting, wholesome juice squeezed right from the fruit that I have been dying to see. This was part juice, adulterated with manipulation and additives. Trop 50 is another product hyped to be something we need to help us lose weight. Insulting is what it is.
The label says, “Juice beverage from concentrate”. Hmmm … not even “juice” but “juice beverage” … this is a bad omen. What they’ve done is take some juice concentrate, add a little bit more water than is needed to reconstitute the juice (making watery juice–the point being there are fewer calories in the product); then add some flavoring to make it taste less watery. The final insult is adding PureVia–PepsiCo’s brand of Stevia–as an “all natural sweetener”. No chemical sweetener here, just the stevia plant extractions. Great. What we have is watered down, artificially flavored juice with a sweetener added that has zero calories. Voila! “juice” with half the calories. Not half the calories of pure juice, mind you, but as it says on the label, “50% less sugar and calories than juice blends”. Yes, that’s because most of them add sugar (or corn syrup or honey or agave nectar) to the juice.
Disappointing? You bet! I am disappointed in Tropicana–which has some very pure juices on the shelves–for stooping to this level of marketing, trying to claim they have a fantastic product, and sending the message to consumers that “juice has too many calories so we’ve come up with a solution”.
Juice doesn’t have too many calories when taken in moderation. Real juice isn’t a major source of sugar in the diet of most Americans. Describing the product as “containing real juice” and “no artificial sweeteners” does not cover up the fact that they’ve adulterated real juice to try to sell to a group of unsuspecting consumers who are trying to do the right thing in their diet.
Want to enjoy real juice with fewer calories and less sugar? Take a 4-ounce glass of real juice (real 100% pure juice with no additives and not-from-concentrate) and add 2 ounces of fresh cold water. Now you have a product that’s pure and has 50% fewer calories than a 6-ounce glass of juice. Yum!
photo credit: dionhinchcliffe
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About The Author: Laurie Beebe has been a registered dietitian for 25 years and is certified in adult weight management. Laurie currently serves as a Related posts:
One Comment
oh gawsh. this is like the Orange Drink or Grape Drink – the cheap stuff – I loved as a kid. Kinda on the level of Sunny Delight. ya know?
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