FoodBozo.com

A mom refuses to buy her favorite drink after learning about its questionable contents.

Natalya Murakhver, a New York food writer and mother of an 18-month year old daughter, loved her premium brand orange juice — the “100 percent pure” and “not from concentrate” kind that comes in the colorful carton and tastes consistently delicious.

That is, until she said she learned from her first-time moms group that there’s a “secret ingredient” in all premium orange juices that companies are not required to put on their labeling.

Read more: Orange Juice’s ‘Secret Ingredient’ Worries Some Health-Minded Moms

Everyone knows sugar hurts those pearly whites, but so can fruit and vinegar.

Soft Drinks
Tooth enamel is the hardest substance in your body, but some foods may be stronger. Here are 7 that can spoil your smile.

Guess what? Sugar isn’t the biggest culprit when it comes to a fizzy drink’s impact on teeth. These beverages — diet or not — strip minerals from tooth enamel because of their high acid content. We’re talking corrosive acids like phosphoric, malic, citric, and tartaric. And the flavor of the fizz matters. They all have an impact, but in a study, clear, citrus-flavored bubbly beverages dissolved enamel two to five times more than colas did.

Read more: 7 Worst Foods for Your Teeth

Not only are many top brand cartons not as fresh, what you taste may not even be the fruit.

Ever wonder why commercial orange juice—even the premium, not-from-concentrate, “100-percent pure” juice kind—tastes the same each time you buy it, but doesn’t taste exactly like a freshly peeled orange?

Turns out there’s a lot more to making juice than simply squeezing some citrus. As part of the mass-production process, big-name brands like Tropicana, Minute Maid, Simply Orange, and Florida’s Natural add artificial flavouring in order to make sure your juice tastes consistent from carton to carton—and to make sure it tastes like oranges.

“It really rocks people’s world to learn that most orange juice is not a fresh product,” says Alisa Hamilton, author of “Squeezed: What You Don’t Want to Know About Orange Juice” says in an interview posted on her website.

Pasteurized, not-from-concentrate orange juice takes up a lot of storage space. In order to keep it from spoiling without adding chemical preservatives, the companies “deaerate” (or strip the oxygen out of) the juice. (Another surprise: During production, deaerated juice often sit in million-gallon tanks for as long as a year before it hits supermarket shelves.)

Read more: Not so sweet: Even “100 percent pure” orange juice is artificially flavoured

This drink helps even athletes become faster, stronger and may prevent the growth of tumours.

Beetroot juice is probably not part of your daily routine. Maybe it should be. The natural elixir has been getting a lot of press lately, both for its antioxidant properties and its workout-enhancement benefits.

Faster and Stronger

A new study out of Exeter University found beetroot juice enhances speed, energy and stamina during workouts. It also helps cleanse the body — Gwyneth Paltrow should dedicate a GOOP newsletter to it — lowers blood pressure and decreases your risk of dementia.

Scientists say the beet’s superpowers are linked the abundance of nitrite in the vegetable.
Nitrite widens blood vessels to increase oxygen flow to the muscles, essentially maximizing the air we inhale. It can therefore reduce the amount of oxygen the muscles require for physical activity.

Read more: Beet juice: It does a body very good

This thirsty little girl gives her opinion of the sour taste with her own adorable twist.

Think of your all-time favorite rock song: Hey Jude, London Calling, Smells Like Teen Spirit, whatever. Now imagine that the next time you crank it up, all the guitar riffs will be replaced by violins. Kinda weak, right?

Well that’s akin to what happens when you turn a fruit into fruit juice: You still have the flavor, but you don’t have the grit, the substance, the power. Even the very best fruit juice isn’t as nutritious as the fruit it originally came from, because the fiber that makes a piece of fruit so filling has been stripped away: Instead of filling your belly like an apple or an orange, juice just passes through your gastrointestinal tract like a little stream of sugar. It’s like listening to “Hey Jude” without the “Na-na-na na” part at the end. The sweet melody is intact, but the soul is lost. So as a rule, always choose the original version (that would be the fruit) over the Muzak version (that would be the juice).

Read more here: Unhealthiest Juices in America