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What Does this Label Lead You to Believe?

Ocean Spray 100% Juice

“Ocean Spray 100% Juice” means what, exactly?

Ruby Red Grapefruit, 100 percent juice, no sugar added. And the price is higher than an equivalent amount of refrigerated fresh 100 percent orange juice, so it must be pure grapefruit juice right? Wrong. It does not say “pure grapefruit juice” and it’s not.

If one reads the ingredients one learns that it contains grapefruit juice plus two other juices. Talk about deceptive labeling. I hope you are reading the labels in the “juice” section of the market. The only pure juices one can find these days are certain grape juices and most prune juices. All others, like 95 percent of the “juices”, are blends and “cocktails”, and are also spiked with high fructose corn syrup to help you get fat faster. Why? If I wanted soda pop or candy I can go to the soda pop or candy sections of the market. This is supposed to be the juice section, or it used to be anyway.

Be very careful when buying fruit juices. “Pomegranate juice” is mostly grape juice. “Blueberry” is mostly grape juice. Read the label and you’ll find that nearly all of them except grape and prune are not what they appear to be.

5 Comments

  1. Laeyra

    Also beware of juices that contain a lot of apple or grape juice, unless they are supposed to. Apple and grape juice is used as a filler for many juice blends because they are very cheap to produce.

    “Contains 100% natural ingredients” doesn’t mean what you think, either. Most people would think that 100% of ingredients are natural, but what it usually means is it contains an ingredient or two that are themselves 100% “natural.” Natural also has a rather broad definition, it doesn’t just mean something that came out of the ground or off a tree as is.

    This, combined with many other factors, makes me somewhat paranoid of what I eat and drink.

  2. Phil

    Yes, you have to be very, very careful, read the labels carefully, and understand that language is twisted so that it deceives or fools the buyer but is still legal.

    Your example is perfect: “Contains 100% natural ingredients” leads one to believe that all of the ingredients are natural, but in English that statement can also mean “contains some ingredients that are 100% natural”, and the latter is precisely what it DOES mean, not what the casual buyer is led to believe.

    Food companies have a lot of smart people and lawyers who sit around coming up with this stuff. “How can we trick the buyer and yet stay inside of the law”.

    And the law is pretty sloppy on this too. The term “organic” means different things to different companies. To some it means 100 percent organic. Others will put organic on the label if it contains even 1/2 of one percent organically grown/produced content. (No, I’m not kidding). It all depends on the manufacturer’s own policies.

  3. Omegaham

    The vending machines at my school sell “juice” that says “100% Juice with Added Ingredients.”

    Interesting…

  4. Phil

    Omegaham: Bahahaha. That made me burst out laughing. It makes you wonder, just how dumb do they think people are?

  5. rdugar

    great example. I guess the only way to be 100% natural is to eat the fruit.

    Thanks to the other commenter on the ingredients of juice. I didn’t know that about apple and grape juice. Need to read labels carefully…

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