What To Keep In Mind When Selecting Juices And Soft Drinks?

Here are some tips that will help to select fruit juices and beverages that are healthy and safe to consume.

- Dr Saurabh Arora

Whether it is celebrations at home, at the club, a corporate event or a celebration in your housing society, it is important to provide guests with the right choice of healthy and safe beverages. There is a vast array of branded juice and soft drink options, which include fruit juices, fruit drinks, milk based drinks, carbonated drinks, water and soda based drinks and nectars. In recent times fruit juices have taken a lead as many consumers prefer these to other beverages. They are also being included in festive gift hampers along with dry fruit, snacks and chocolates. Here are some tips that will help you to select fruit juices and beverages that are healthy and safe to consume.

What are the various fruit drinks available? 

In India, many sweetened drinks are marketed on a large scale but out of these some of them are erroneously labelled ‘fruit juice.’ The truth is that many of these drinks have only a small percentage of fruit content and some others contain only fruit flavours. They should actually be called fruit drinks, fruit beverages, fruit nectars or flavoured drinks and not be labelled as ‘fruit juices’. Here are some facts about fruit drinks you could be unaware of:

Fruit drinks have 5 -10 per cent of fruit content, which could be pulp or juice and could contain added flavour, colour, preservative, sugar and water, etc.

Carbonated fruit drinks are like fruit drinks which also contain 5-10 per cent of fruit content but with soda.

Fruit nectars have 20 per cent fruit juice content.

Fruit juices on the other hand are composed of hundred per cent fruit content but could either contain added sugar of upto 5 per cent or could have no added sugar.