"juices" news and stories

Thinking about Lemonade this morning put me in the mood for something refreshing and the Pink Lemonade from Simply Recipes sounds like just the thing. Elise's recipe is extra-pink and uses cranberry juice to give it its distinctive coloring, unlike commercial versions which use food colorings or concentrated natural colors to create pinkness. The natural tartness of the cranberry juice also helps it to blend well with the lemon flavor, creating a smooth and balanced drink. Sure - it's a tiny bit girly looking, but who could turn down a glass of lemonade, knowing that it was homemade? If you can't use plain sugar for any reason, you could try sweetening the juice with Splenda, too.

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The Big Book of Juices and Smoothies has 365 recipes for juices and smoothies that you can make at home, rather than having to go out to a specialty juice bar and pay upwards of $4 or $5 for a drink. There are combinations intended to boost your energy level, increase your immune system's function and even to clear your skin. The basis for these claims is found in the inherent nutritive benefits of natural fruits and vegetables and at the end of the book, there is a  section that not only gives you all the nutritional information for the juices, but makes recommendations based upon your health needs (feeling tired, achy, etc)

The book is spiral-bound, so you can lay it flat on the counter while you work at your juicer or blender, and the recipes are arranged by ingredient, making it easy to find recipes based around the ingredients you have on hand. It's a nice reference book to have on hand, especially during the summer when cooking can seem too tiring or you'd simply rather have a cool drink than a hot meal during the day.

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The San Francisco Chronicle did a taste test of pure pomegranate juices, more and more of which have been finding their way onto shelves and into refrigerators in grocery stores as the antioxidant-rich fruit gains popularity. Their tasting only dealt with the pure juices (not blends) and tasters picked POM Wonderful as their favorite, over brands like L&A, Langers, Frutzzo, Knudsen and Trader Joe's. The brilliant jewel color of the juice was mentioned several times by tasters, but the "blend of sweet and tangy" flavor won over 4/5 of the panelists.

Pomegranate juice, particularly POM, isn't cheap and sells for around $3.99 for 16-ounces. While it won against other pomegranate juices, is it really worth buying over other kinds of juice from a taste perspective?

I liked the blueberry-pomegranate blend more than the pure pomegranate juice, myself, and I still think that I'd much rather eat some actual pomegranate than drink either of the beverages.

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The concept of "drinkable fruit" is one that I do not quite understand. I understand fruit juice, but Tropicana's new Fruitwise Drinkable Fruit beverages are just confusing. Tropicana makes good-quality products, so I don't doubt that these drinks taste good, but the marketing concept is weird.

The drinkable fruit line is neither a juice nor a smoothie, but somewhere in between. The products claim to deliver two full servings of fruit in their 8-ounce, 170-calorie containers, but the fruit inside isn't necessarily the flavor printed on the packaging. Take the Strawberry Kiwi flavor, for example. It lists it ingredients as "filtered water, apple puree concentrate, strawberry puree concentrate, white grape juice concentrate, apple juice concentrate, raspberry puree concentrate, kiwi juice concentrate and natural flavors." The ingredients are all natural and to increase the thickness it is not surprising that everything was from "concentrate" - but there are more flavors in the bottle than promised, and the kiwi flavor seems as though it was thrown in as an afterthought.

A serving of fruit juice is ordinarily 6-ounces and you could drink 12-ounces of fruit juice for the same number of calories contained n one of these drinks - so why bother with them? Have plain juice if you are looking to get more fruit into your diet or make a smoothie on your own instead of reaching for one of these.

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