Juices and Soft Drinks Packaging is the Key

Whether it is celebrations at home, at the club, a corporate event or a celebration in the housing society, it is important to provide guests with the right choice of healthy and safe beverages.

- Dr. Saurabh Arora

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. During recent times, fruit juices have taken a lead as many consumers prefer these to other beverages.

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, 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 percent 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 percent of fruit content but with soda.

• Fruit nectars have 20 percent fruit juice content.

• Fruit juices, on the other hand, are composed of 100 percent fruit content, but could either contain added sugar of up to 5 percent or could have no added sugar.

• Fresh juice means that it does not contain any additives, flavours or juices that have undergone a concentration process.

Some juices such as kiwi, lemon, lime, blackcurrant or other sour juice, generally do not have 100 percent juice and are diluted with water and could contain added sugar of up to 20 percent so as to give a desired taste, which will appeal to consumers.