Pomegranate and Blueberry Juice Consumer Shopping Guide

A NaturalNews PhotoTour by Mike Adams

The TrueBlue brand wins recognition for being among the most deceptive superfruit juice products on the market (in my opinion, anyway). Sporting pictures of pomegranates and blueberries on the front label, the product's first three ingredients are water, grape juice from concentrate and sugar!

Note that none of those top three ingredients are pomegranate or blueberry. Yes, those fruits are listed in the ingredients, but they're not the top three.

Amazingly, the front label on this product (see the yellow box in the upper right corner of the label) claims, "NO High Fructose Corn Syrup." That's an important claim, it seems. And it's true: The product contains no HFCS. But guess what? It contains sugar instead, and it's only 25% juice. The rest of the beverage is sugar water.

Adding water to juice tends to thin out the color and make it appear weak (it also waters down the taste). To compensate, this TrueBlue product uses natural color extracts from purple and black carrots. It makes the juice appear more substantial, even though it's 75% sugar water. Thankfully, the colors are at least from natural sources, and since they're from purple carrots, the colors contain healing anthocyanins and anti-cancer medicines, so there is actually a beneficial health effect to these colors.

A company that didn't care at all about what was on the label might use artificial colors. Heck, if the product were made in China, they would just pour in black ink and call it "natural." So the choice of coloring ingredients is good, even if the product is still 75% sugar water.

It's also worth noting that this product is preserved with grape seed extract (GSE), a natural preservative. It does not contain sodium benzoate or other chemical preservatives. That's a good thing, since sodium benzoate can form benzenes in the presence of citric acid (which is also present in this product), and benzenes are highly carcinogenic. The absence of this chemical makes me feel better about this product: At least it's not a complete disaster. It's still 75% sugar water, but it doesn't seem to contain any chemicals that would actually harm you (although the sugar content should be avoided, of course).

This product is from Canada, by the way. Manufactured for Leading Brands in Vancouver, B.C. I don't recommend it as a quality superfruit juice, although it's still FAR better than drinking fruit punch or sodas. If your kids actually like this stuff, it would seem marginally ok to let them drink it. In fact, there are significant health benefits found in the 25% juice contained in this product.

Next, let's check out a premium superfruit smoothie product and see if it's any better...

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