When we walk into a quality grocery store, we are likely to find:
- Fresh produce, in the chillier part of the store and,
- Frozen fruit and veggies, in the frozen food section.
When we then purchase these fresh and wholesome fruits and veggies, we are also just as likely to store them in the refrigerator, or a cool, dry place.
The goal is to keep the fresh produce– fresher… longer.
If this is the case, why then do we buy fruit and vegetable juice from an un-refrigerated aisle, that can then be stored, for months, in a room temperature pantry?
The answer, of course, is pasteurization.
When juice is pasteurized, it is heated to a high temperature for a short period of time. Pasteurization destroys bacteria, molds, and unwanted micro-organisms, that might be lurking in the juice. Pasteurization also prolongs shelf-life, making it a much more cost-efficient product. But what happens to those lovely raw vitamins, minerals and enzymes?
Gone baby. All gone.
If heating something can destroy the bad, you better believe that it is going to destroy the good too. What does that leave us with then? Perhaps a miniscule amount of nutrients, but only because most juice manufactures acknowledge this travesty, and attempt to “fortify” their juice with “vitamins”. Hey! On the bright side, 100% juice products are, at least, not chemical ridden, and full of additives, like regular and diet soda pops.
In all seriousness though, after the pasteurization process, the brightly packaged juices, the ones that can sit for an eternity on the shelves of every market, are about as rich in nutrients as a pack of “natural” gummy worms. And that ain’t saying much.
In other words– we are left with sugar. Lots and lots of sugar.
Fructose, the kind of sugar that is found naturally in fruit and vegetables, is fine in moderation when consumed R-A-W. This is because the live enzymes and nutrients that chaperon the sugar, offer the body much needed nourishment, and help the body to break down and assimilate itself, all the while, nourishing the body.
Fruit and vegetables juices, that are freshly pressed, are quite possibly one of the most hydrating, nourishing and healing drinks you can consume.
An avid juicer, I have found my Breville Juicer to be, perhaps, one of the best investments I have ever made.
Fresh juice should ideally be consumed on an empty stomach, without solid food. This infuses the body and tissues with an abundance of vitamins, minerals and live enzymes. Because it is lacking fiber, it does not require digestion– thus it gives up a burst of energy. To learn more about the power of juice, read the article entitled, Enzymes.
Knowing the ingredients in any food is crucial to understanding if it is healthy, or not.
But…
HOW the food, or in this case, juice, is prepared is just as important.
Next time you go to purchase a juice from the market, you may want to consider what about it is healthy, and nutritious, after it has been heated, and treated. You may think you are giving your kids 100% grape juice, when in actuality, you are giving them an indulgent glass of grape sugar liquid. Yum!
I suggest investing in a juicer… you will not regret it.
A Better Juice for Kids 
2 organic pears
1/2 organic golden delicious apple
1/2 inch fresh ginger (optional)
3 stalks of celery
1/2 cucumber
(put through juicer, and serve over ice)
I have a question but not about juice. I eat half an avocado a day or more. I wake up craving them…I crave them after I eat them. My body wants avocado! Thought I like guacamole, I’m mostly just talking any form to eat solid avocado… avocado roll or on a salad, whatever…I’m not picky!
Tell me…is this really bad for me? I know they are good fat but is there a reason my body could be craving them? could eating them daily be hurting me?
I’d love to see a post on this! I’m quite curious.
Hey Melissa!
Funny you should ask about avocados as I was planning to write an article on them.
Avocados are in fact healthy fats, yes! – and you could be craving them because it is your body’s main source of fat.
Additionally, they are very nutrient dense and therefore provide a body with live enzymes and raw vitamins– both of which any healthy body would seek.
As long as you are not having any adverse reactions to them, you are not harming yourself.
I will try to write more on this to come!
Enjoy!!!
Thanks for this post. It was so timely! I just bought a juicer. I’m not sure it’s going to save me any money, but I will say the juice is amazing! I love being able to use up left-over veggies and mix them with fruits or other veggies. I think cucumber makes any juice ultr-refreshing. I just did a post about it, if you’d like to see the pix. I’ll be writing about my juicing experiences as I keep experimenting!
Thanks again for this post and I can’t wait to check out some of your other articles.
andrea
Hi, I have a question about ginger juice. How long will it last in the refrigerator after being juiced?
Thanks,
Sunny
How long will juice I make at home on my juicer last in a fridge?
It would be best to freeze. Generally, I would not drink juice after 3 days (frozen and then left to defrost). it would need to be sealed very tightly during those 3 days as well. It can be done though.
Hi Lauren.
Recently I heard about the Norwalk juicer and how good it is. Is the Breville like it? You mentioned freshly pressed, does the Breville press?
I am really interested in changing our family diet and in juicing but couldn’t if I had to get a Norwalk. It’s so expensive. I see that the Breville is cheaper.
Thanks for your blog. I have so much to learn.
Dona
Hi Dona! I love that you’re interested in bringing freshly pressed juice into the house. You are truly doing your family a great favor.
The Norwalk is great but I love my Breville $150. It is especially a wonderful juicer to start on. You will love it. If you feel like upgrading at a later date, go for it! But I know you will love experimenting with the Breville juicer!
Have fun!!
happened on your site via a google search
my wife and i have been educating ourselves (reading, dr oz, etc) and like the info on this pg a great deal, it’s been very helpful for us
thank you
I am so happy to hear that
I would love to juice but if you have a large family….it is near impossible to afford enough fruit on that daily basis for juicing let alone eating for a snack. And if you are buying organic then you are talking more money. You have to be wealthy to be healthy these days.
[...] blogger Lauren from Diary of Nutritionist says in her blog post “How Healthy is that Juice?” that, “After the pasteurization process, the brightly packaged juices, the ones that [...]
[...] Pasteurization is a heating process that kills off potential pathogens and in the process… the aforementioned benefits of the juice in the first place. Resulting beverage? Generally a sugary fruit flavored liquid (a diabetics worst nightmare). Check out this article: How Healthy is that Juice? Juice and Pasteurization. [...]
I was writing some counter opinions to the ‘health expert’ on the Today show on my website and stumbled on to this site. Thanks for real information and research. The amount of disinformation on the mass media stations is incredible, for example talking about vitamin C and its ineffectiveness to ward off colds and flu when nearly all the studies regarding C are with synthetic vitamins! Who wants synthetic anything in our foods or vitamins? Thanks, Pete
[...] occurring and found in fruit and vegetables is fine in moderation when consumed raw.This is because the live enzymes and nutrients that chaperon the sugar, offer the body much needed nourishment, and help the body to break down [...]
Ehhh…. So you are saying the process of applying heat to vegetables reduces their nutritional value to minuscule levels?
“If heating something can destroy the bad, you better believe that it is going to destroy the good too. What does that leave us with then? Perhaps a miniscule amount of nutrients”
If heat kills nutrients then eating steamed vegetables is now an utter waste of time because they were heated for higher temperatures and for a longer time then the process of pasteurization…
*rolls eyes*
If you want to make these claims AND you have some serious studies to back them up then that is one thing… Until then they are just personal opinions expressed to make yourself feel good about the way you have chosen to prepare your diet.
Sure cheap sugary juices are unhealthy… but not because they are pasteurized, but because they were made to taste good regardless of nutritional value.
Well I am glad to hear someone so passionate.
Actually, no steaming vegetables is not an “utter waste of time” but actually makes some cruciferous veggies easier on digestion (softening the fibers). Unless you are absolutely scalding your vegetables, steaming and pasteurization are not one in the same. A slow and shorter steam is preferred– leaving veggies bright green and al dente.
During pasteurization, all of the precious food enzymes and much of the nutrients are depleted. In the case of juice– it seems that we are left with shelf-stable liquid sugar. I would highly suggest you try fresh carrot juice and compare it to a flash pasteurized carrot juice… test for yourself. When a sugar is FRESH, is much more beneficial.
Cheap sugary juices are created to taste good… but are you trying to argue that a “nothing-added” 100% pasteurized juice is the same as a freshly pressed/or unpasteurized OJ?
When I freshly press two identical glasses of carrot juice… Heat one up to 185 degrees farenheit for 45 seconds and then let it cool (that is the typical pasteurization process for juices) not only can I not tell a difference in the taste after letting both chill… I would contend that there is no significant difference in nutritional value.
Steaming raises a vegetable to the ambient temperature of the steam (which is about 212 degrees farenheit, the boiling point of water), for a duration of around 10 minutes depending on the vegetable. Therefore if you believe heat is what is killing the vital nutrients in vegetables, then steaming does more damage since it raises the temperature even higher, and for 10 times the duration. Hence, you would have to be against steaming as well…
If your point of the post was to compare the nutritional value of pressing your own vegetable juice versus the nutrional value of Welches or Sunny D then I agree, fresh pressed vegetable juice with no additives is better then that kind of reconstituted, sugar enhanced, “juice”. But saying the reason for this nutritional difference is pasteurization can misguide “passionate” people who take food fads to extreme… AKA people who buy and drink raw milk, then spend a few months or worse in the hospital from e coli and salmonella infections. I can name more then several occasions within the last year (conteloups from colorado, sprouts from germany etc) where fresh produce, foods which easily could be used in juicing, were contaminated by bacteria and killed dozens of people. No one would have died if these vegetables were juiced and pasteurized, no matter how much e coli was on them.
Anyways, just the ranting of a twenty something health nut like you… bored at work.
well, contending that there is “no significant difference in nutritional value” based on taste alone is an argument that will not hold water.
but the point about steaming of vegetables does raise questions. the blog author mentioned earlier about steaming helping digestibility but did not answer whether steaming does or does not remove nutrients from vegetables the way pasteurization supposedly does to juices.
what we need to ascertain is if it is pasteurization that removes nutrients from off the shelf juices? and we cannot say that freshly pressed is better than shelf only because of the “sugar enhancement” in the latter. with finality, does the freshly pressed have more or the same nutrients than off the shelf juices?
using e coli and other bacteria argument just veers us all away from the main point further, we can’t say fresh pressed is less nutritious because of the risks of bacteria, it is non-sequitur…
True… I can not use taste as a way of determining the exact nutritional value, it can be an indicator however of whether the basic structure of the food has changed… And in this case the indicator (taste) suggests it has not. Until I read a scientific study suggesting otherwise, we are left with an argument of opinions, with hopefully common sense leaning in one direction *cough*.
You cannot compare the nutritional value of shelf juices to that of home pressed juices and attribute their differences to pasteurization. There are too many other more significant differences, such as shelf juices being concentrated and then reconstituted, that limit our ability to do so.
“using e coli and other bacteria argument just veers us all away from the main point further, we can’t say fresh pressed is less nutritious because of the risks of bacteria, it is non-sequitur…”
I don’t think it veers from the main point at all… The only reason pasteurization exists is because of this reason, if you want be base an argument against the process you need to explain the consequences of going non pasteurized. If pasteurization does not kill nutrients, as I contend, then there is no disadvantage to the process yet the upside is a safer food. If the author is correct and it does kill off nutrients, then a keen reader must realize their are advantages and that its not just some corporate conspiracy meant to weaken the population.