Concentrates, Juices & Smoothies: How To Make Healthy Choices! FAN REQUESTED VIDEO! Mind Over Munch

Hey my munchie pals. That was weird. In the first Dining Debunked episode where I went to Panera, a lot of you guys, I mean a lot a lot requested that I do a video on concentrates and juices. So here it is. So juice concentrates. What are they? And more importantly what is juice? Alright so everybody thinks that juice is healthy and it can be but it really depends on which one you're drinking. Now of course the healthiest choice would be to make your own but today we're not gonna talk about that. We're gonna talk about store bought juices and smoothies. If you are interested in learning how to make your own juice without a juicer I have a video on that and I will link it in the description box below. So juice does provide some of the vitamins and minerals that are in fruit but it does not provide the fiber which is one of the best things about fruits and vegetables. It's gonna help with digestion, help keep you full longer so we really want that fiber. So once you take all that fiber out you're pretty much left with vitamins and minerals, water and sugar. Lots of sugar so it's pretty much sugary water. So let's use an example here by talking about an orange. An orange is 60 to 70 calories depending on the size and about 4 and a half grams of fiber. One cup of orange juice is about 110 to 120 calories depending on the variety and it has a whopping half gram of fiber. It will also take 2 to 4 oranges to get one cup of orange juice and that's for double the calories and less than you know what's the math here a half out of 4 and a half grams of fiber. It's bad ratio. So let's talk about some of the store bought juices and smoothies before we get to concentrates. Naked Blue Machine Boosted. 100% juice smoothie, a blend of 4 juices with added ingredients, no added sugar. Lots of health claims. In my opinion if you are eating whole foods in a relatively clean diet you should be able to get most of the nutrients that you need from your food. You shouldn't need a boost in your juice. And really the same goes for a multivitamin. This is very debatable and I don't want to get too far into it. Pretty much if you're eating really nutritious foods you're gonna be getting those vitamins anyways. Moving on. This juice is one serving in the entire container so this is an important note. A lot of these juices in these types of bottles are 2 to 2 and a half servings per bottle which means you have to double or multiply by 2.5 or whatever the serving size is the nutrition to get the correct amounts. So this one actually is one. Ingredients. Apple juice, banana puree, blueberry puree, blackberry puree. So pretty much a lot of fruit and then the vitamins which are added into it. One of these bottles is 320 calories, 76 grams of fiber, 10 grams of carbs, 55 of which are sugar. Some of you might be thinking, Alyssia all of those ingredients were natural. They're all from fruits and vegetables. There's no added sugar. That is true but we still need to be aware of how much sugar we're consuming overall even if it is natural. Let's get one thing clear here. Sugar is not evil. Fruit is not bad and will not make you fat. Your body uses sugar to survive and burns sugar to provide you with energy. But if you have filled your body up with more sugar than it actually needs your liver can't handle it and it ends up getting stored as fat. And it doesn't matter where the sugar comes from if we have too much of it. So this is why really active people can eat way more calories and carbs and sugar than people who aren't as active. They're burning off the fuel that they're taking in. So how much is too much? Well it's gonna be a little bit different for everyone but we can use some common sense to figure it out. Let's take a look at this juice again. It contains 27 blueberries, 3 blackberries, 3 and a third apples, and 1 banana. Now would you ever sit down and eat 27 blueberries, 3 blackberries, 3 and a third apples, and 1 banana at once? Or would you sit down and give your kid all those things to eat at once? Probably not. This is healthy which is a relative term that I hate in terms of ingredients because the ingredients are pretty solid right? Healthy fruits. But when we look at the macros and we look at how much sugar is there you know we may not want to consume this at least all at one time. It's not really one servings worth of juice. 320 calories is also quite a lot for one beverage. And when you compare this to a Coca-Cola, now this one's a little bit smaller but this is 15.2 fluid ounces. If I took 15.2 fluid ounces of Coca-Cola it would be 50 grams of sugar. How much should we say this one was? 55? So this still is going to have 5 more grams of sugar than a Coke. Another analogy. Let's just look at plain table sugar. There are 4 grams of sugar in 1 teaspoon, 3 teaspoons in 1 tablespoon so you have 12 grams of sugar in 1 tablespoon. That means you have over 4 tablespoons of sugar in this juice bottle. Now of course it's not table sugar that's sweetening this right? That is important to keep in mind. But you know would you sit down and eat 4 tablespoons of sugar at once or you know give that to your kid. Another juice I want to point out is kids juices. So Mots for Tots and Honest Kids, great brands by the way, they are advertising this as 40% less sugar and they are charging you a butt load for it. When you look at the ingredients the number 1 is purified water. And then it's apple juice concentrate which we'll get to. The point is they're diluting this with water. So they're literally pour half water, pour half juice, bottle it up and sell it to you for 5 bucks. 60 calories and 15 grams of sugar in 8 ounces. If you look at a regular serving of apple juice it's about double that. Just do it yourself. Save yourself some money, it won't be quite as processed. How about a thumbs up? So what about juice concentrates? What is the deal? Well juice is mostly water and water is bulky and heavy and expensive to ship. So most juices are concentrated by extracting or evaporating with heat most of that water so you're left with a concentrated form which is similar to what you'll find in the frozen food section at your grocery store. Later on they will add water back to the concentrate to rehydrate it. So you can see that this process makes juice from concentrate a little more processed. Concentrate is pretty much a fancy name for syrup. It is from the fruit yes but it is so concentrated that you're getting way more sugar than you need and again you're not getting any of the fiber and very few of the vitamins and minerals. So let's take a look here. Boathouse Farms Berry Boost. Now I'm a huge Boathouse Farms fan. I drink the carrot juice every single day but you gotta know what you're drinking. First ingredient in the Berry Boost apple puree from concentrate. Apple juice from concentrate. Blackberry puree, banana puree, elderberry juice from concentrate. Yeah pretty much it's all from concentrate. Here is an example as well of a bottle that has two servings in it. So it's 120 calories and 24 grams of sugar per serving but that means it's 240 calories and 48 grams of sugar in the entire bottle. So important to note From concentrate does not necessarily mean that there is added sugar but because it is using the concentrated syrup to sweeten you're getting much more sugar than you would otherwise. Also it is processed. So if you're someone who is trying to avoid processed foods you have to understand that this is still a processed food. Now is it healthier? Healthier than some of the other processed foods out there? Maybe so but if you're trying to avoid processed foods completely you don't think you're getting away if you're drinking this. Just because it says that there's this many servings of fruit or it's a hundred percent juice or whatever the claims are doesn't make it healthy. I've said this before health claims are evil. Dun dun dun. We do not want to listen to claims they are deceiving. These companies, the marketers they design these so that you want to buy them right? They want your money. If this bottle instead had in big letters on it that there was 48 grams of sugar and that it was all from concentrate and that you would have to eat more than 7 cups of strawberries to get the amount of sugar in this would you buy it? Probably not. Yeah so you're not gonna sit down on a normal day and eat 7 cups of strawberries probably. So that's where I'm saying you gotta use your common sense a little bit but they make it really hard when it's so hard to decipher everything that's on this bottle. So if you buy a regular juice at the store it will say something like 140 calories for 36 grams of sugar in 8 ounces. Ok. When you buy the concentrate at the store it's the same calories 140, 36 grams of sugar but the serving size is 2 ounces concentrated, 8 ounces recon. Recon means reconstituted so once it has been rehydrated. When you go to like Panera or something and you get a smoothie and it's made with concentrate, they're not rehydrating the concentrate to juice before they add it to the smoothie, they're just adding the concentrate. They're just adding the frozen syrup. And then of course they're adding a bunch of other stuff too and more sugar. A few others to take a look at. We have the organic blueberry flavor juice blend from concentrate and it has the USDA organic seal. Must be healthy. So I've said this before organic does not always make it better. Water is the first ingredient because it is from concentrate. So this is about 75% water because they have had to reconstitute the concentrate. This is followed by organic apple juice concentrate, organic blueberry concentrate, concentrate, concentrate. Now at the bottom you'll see natural flavors. Now it is important to remember that the concentrating process does not only remove the water it also removes flavor. So many of the manufacturers actually have to add back in these flavor packs which are pretty much chemicals that are going to make it taste natural again. Now some of the juices like this one will say natural flavors but some of them won't and they actually don't have to put if they use those flavor packs because it's still ingredients that are coming from the original fruit. Sneaky. Also juices using these flavor packs can be from concentrate or not from concentrate or 100% juice. We don't really know. So the last type of juice that I want to hit on today I could of course talk forever about the millions of juices available but we got to keep this video under control is vegetable juice. Vegetable juice. V8 is 100% vegetable juice from concentrate with added ingredients. Really small underneath there. They don't really want you to know it's from concentrate. Other health claims, two servings of veggies. Now here's what I really want to point out. I walk in a store, I go down the juice aisle, I'm looking for my vegetable juice and I see it but then I look below and I see the exact same juice and it is low sodium. So why is there a low sodium version of this vegetable juice? I probably wouldn't of thought to look at the sodium because I think it's vegetable juice. Why would there be that much sodium in it? But now that you have a low sodium version I am definitely going to look. In this original V8 there is a whopping 640 milligrams of sodium in 8 ounces. Now if you remember from Dining Debunked Panera we talked a lot about sodium. You're recommended to have 1500 milligrams of sodium a day. Debatable but the point is that's the recommended. This is almost half that in one 8 ounce glass. Also that you can get two servings of vegetables in. No thank you but at least it's gluten free. Also important to note the first ingredient is reconstituted vegetable juice blend. So this stuff is extremely processed and again I'm not hating. I think tomato juice has it's place. It's great to cook with. I like to cook my grains in it to give a lot of extra flavor but just drinking it to get your vegetables there are better sources. Like real vegetables. And V8 fusion. Fusing the fruits and vegetables. So now you really don't have to eat any fresh fruits or veggies because you got this. Not only are there health claims there are also anti-health claims. So you've got the normal 100 calories and you know all your vitamin C but you've also got no artificial sweeteners. No artificial flavors and no high fructose corn syrup. Now usually if someone is putting that there's no high fructose corn syrup there's sugar in it still. It's just some other kind or regular sugar. Also watch out for the words cocktail. First quenching juice cocktail. That is a bad sign. So they want us to think that this is a great substitute for fruits and vegetables. But what is one of the greatest things about fruits and vegetables? The fiber. Yes thank you for listening. 100 calories, 26 grams of carbs, 25 of which are sugar and a whopping 0 grams of fiber. And yes sugar is an added ingredient. This is not a nutritious juice. It is sugary processed water and it should be consumed as a treat if at all. Frankly if I'm going to have a treat I want something that's way better than this juice but you know your cheat meals are your own. Ultimately it is fine if you want to pick up one of these juices or smoothies on occasion here or there but remember that nothing is going to replace the nutritional value of your fruits and vegetables. And if you are going to pick up one of those juices whether it's in the cold section and seems healthier or on the shelf make sure you read the label. Make sure you see if it's from Concentrate and always read the ingredients list. And I am sorry that I couldn't get to every juice that's out there on the market that would have taken forever. So if I didn't get to your favorite juice I'm so sorry but before you comment and say well what about my juice? Is my juice ok? I want you to stop and think about what you learned and think about how you can apply it to your lifestyle. So the point of these videos is not to tell you which juice to drink and not to drink. It's to help teach you to be able to read the labels yourself and make informed decisions for yourself. And for all of you that have made it this far, wow you're amazing, in my last how to choose tortillas and top 10 unhealthy health foods video a lot of you guys said what do you do with all this food that you buy and you use in the videos and then you don't use it. What do you do with it? Do you eat it? No I don't eat it and I don't throw it away. I don't waste it. I return it. So Christian and I used to try and go film in the stores but we started getting kicked out and we just decided it was easier to buy it and then send it back. Alright that is it for now. I hope you have an awesome weekend. I will see you on Monday for a special episode and remember it's all a matter of Mind Over Munch.