Juice Costs
Financial, Health, Environmental

A Juice-aholic's Perspective ...

Hopefully this article can contribute to saving you a lot of money - and ideally also contribute towards saving the environment .....

JUICE BARS - A CONVENIENT SWALLOWER OF CASH

How much money are you spending on JUICE?
If you're a dedicated health nut, getting a freshly juiced one from your local juice bar every day, you're paying thousands of dollars a year for your juice.
Eg:
Extra large $5.95 x 365 days per year = $2171.75
Medium $4.50 x 365 days per year = $1642.50
If you add extras, such as spirulina or wheatgrass, the price gets even higher.
This is more than the cost of an annual gym membership, by a considerable margin.
No wonder the Boost Juice franchise was announced in September 2008 to be the 20th most powerful brand in Australia.
If you don't drink juice every day, you may be saving money, but at what cost to your health?
Ultimately your body is calling out - or perhaps even crying out - for nutrients, and so it's vital that you supply it with living nutrients ...

BOTTLED JUICE - IS IT BETTER?

What about the option of bottled juices?
It may be convenient to pick up a cheap bottle of juice from the supermarket, especially if you're a busy mum or dad and have a whole family of kids to quench/placate.
However numerous studies in the USA & elsewhere on bottled water have shown there are dangers of toxins leeching out of the plastic and into the water. Don't be surprised if one day in the not-too-distant future they present the same results for plastic bottled juice.
Kind-of cancels out the health benefits, doesn't it?
The other thing with plastic bottles - or glass bottles - is that they are not environmentally friendly.
Don't believe all the hype about recycling being okay.
Recycling still requires considerable energy to crush, melt and re-mold both plastic bottles and glass bottles.
There's your greenhouse gas emissions right there.
As for the financial cost of bottled juice, that can vary enormously, let's have a look at the figures:

*Prices sourced from various Sydney outlets in April 2009.

Top of the Range (available at your typical Australian cafe):

Nudie Juice: $3.80 for 250ml
Phoenix Organic Juice: $TBA
Parkers Organic Blood Orange: $3.50 for 250ml

Organic Cloudy Apple Juice: $4.00 for 275ml

Even at the top end of the market, the manufacturer's claims don't always match what's in the bottle, as this article shows.

Gourmet Supermarket Ranges:

Wild About Fruit: $5.99 for 2 litres ("real apple juice ... no added concentrate")

Black Label Chilled Orange (The Original Juice Company): $4.69 for 1.5 litres ("no concentrate")

Just Delicious / Just Squeezed Ruby Red Grapefruit Juice: $6.41 for 1 litre

Goulburn Valley Five Fruits: $5.51 for 2 litres

*In almost all cases, the juices have added Vitamin C, which gives a hint to what happens to the nutrients due to the pasteurisation process & long shelf life of the products. See below for further information on pasteurisation.

Cheaper Bulk Supermarket Ranges:

Daily Juice Company: $6.99 for 3 litres ("orange juice and reconstituted orange juice")

TMG Orange & Mango: $5.29 for 2 litres
Berri Creations: $3.98 for 2.4 litres (reconstituted apple & blackcurrant)

Just Juice Apple Passionfruit Juice: $2.29 for 2 litres (96% reconstituted apple)
Dewlands Guava, Peach Juice or Mixed berry Juice: between $1.99 and $2.49 for 1 litre ("ingredients made from concentrate")

Berri Tomato Juice (canned): $2.16 for 850ml ("reconstituted")

The cheaper varieties are more often than not reconstituted from concentrate, which is not ideal - you might be saving money but once again, you're trading off your health - and as a popular slice of health wisdom suggests, health is more valuable than wealth.

PASTEURISATION HAS SEVERE IMPACT ON THE JUICE

Unfortunately there is a worse aspect to the whole bottled and canned juice scenario, which is very under-reported. I wonder why ... advertising dollars at work again?
Pretty well all fruit juice sold in bottles in Australia, whether glass or plastic, is pasteurised.
Pasteurisation involves heating the juice to kill off bacteria, in order that it can be stored for a long shelf life without the use of artificial preservatives. Then of course the manufacturer can proudly display on their packaging: "No Artificial Colours, Flavours or Preservatives".
The thing is, heating the juice to the required temperature doesn't just kill off deadly or dangerous bacteria - it also kills off the living enzymes that are present in 100% freshly squeezed juice, such as you would get at home or from a juice bar.
Studies have shown that from bottled juice, you're only getting around 20% of the nutrients / enzymes that you get from "living" freshly squeezed juice. Pasteurisation requires temperatures of around 80-95 degrees Celsius for between 1-10 minutes. If you wish to confirm this please read this practical guide to storing fruit juice in bottles: http://practicalaction.org/practicalanswers/product_info.php?products_id=94

HEATING CAN ALSO CAUSE MUTAGENICITY

In one study, heat-treated and acid-hydrolyzed orange juice was tested for mutagenic activity. The authors hypothesized that the heating process produces intermediate products, which under test conditions, give rise to mutagenicity, and cytotoxicity. In other words you have got cancer-causing compounds in your orange juice. In another study, gel filtration and high performance liquid chromatography were used to obtain mutagenic fractions from heated orange juice.

http://www.westonaprice.org/modernfood/dirty-secrets.html

FRESH JUICING AT HOME

By now you'd know where this is leading! By using a quality cold-press juicing machine / juicer, not only is the juice not damaged by heat, and is therefore still living, but the environmental factors are also important. Juice bars create typical consumeristic garbage whereas juicing at home and putting the juice straight into reusable glass drinking containers is a very environmentally-friendly way of doing things.
Even better if you take your own re-useable shopping bags into the supermarket or fruit and vegetable shop when buying your produce. The environment will love you for it.
And your family's health - and your health - will thank you for your clarity of purpose also.

If you implement the above, your wallet will be heavier too.

Juice fanatics - we're on your side!!

...... more health tips coming soon ...

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