Juice
Juice is a liquid naturally contained in fruit or vegetable tissue. Juice is prepared by mechanically squeezing or macerating fresh fruits or vegetables without the application of heat or solvents. For example, orange juice is the liquid extract of the fruit of the orange tree. Juice may be prepared in the home from fresh fruits and vegetables using variety of hand or electric juicers.
Many commercial juices are filtered to remove fiber or pulp, but high pulp fresh orange juice is marketed as an alternative. Juice may be marketed in concentrate form, sometimes frozen, requiring the user to add water to reconstitute the liquid back to its 'original state' (Generally, concentrates have a noticeably different taste than their comparable "fresh-squeezed" versions). Other juices are reconstituted before packaging for retail sale. Common methods for preservation and processing of fruit juices include canning, pasteurization, freezing, evaporation and spray drying.
Popular juices include but are not limited to apple, orange, prune, lemon, grapefruit, pineapple, tomato, carrot, grape, strawberry, cherry, cranberry, celery and pomegranate. It has become increasingly popular to combine a variety of fruits into single juice drinks. Popular blends include cran-apple (cranberry and apple) and apple and blackcurrant. Prepackaged single fruit juices have lost market share to prepackaged fruit juice combinations. A number of new companies have had considerable success supplying prepackaged fruit juice combinations on the basis of this transition. "Innocent" and "P&J" are UK examples; "Nudie" is an Australian example.
Juice bars have also become commonplace across most of the western world and offer similar juices. Most of these juice bars offer freshly made fruit juices and claim that that confers greater health benefit. The rationale for this claim is that once the fruit has been juiced, its antioxidants start to react with oxygen free radicals and so lose their health benefit.[citation needed] Juice is also commonly found in many cooking recipes around the world. The most popular are lime and lemon juice which help to add a slightly more sour or bitter taste to dishes.
Health benefits
Juices are often consumed for their health benefits. For example, orange juice is rich in vitamin C, while prune juice is associated with a digestive health benefit. Cranberry juice has long been known to help prevent or even treat bladder infections, and it is now known that a substance in cranberries prevents bacteria from binding to the bladder. Fruit juice consumption overall in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and the USA has increased in recent years, probably due to public perception of juices as a healthy natural source of nutrients and increased public interest in health issues. The perception of fruit juice as equal in health benefit to consumption of fresh fruit has been questioned due to the lack of fiber. The high amounts of fructose in fruit juice when not consumed with fiber, have been suggested as a contributor to the growing diabetes epidemic in the West.[citation needed] High-fructose corn syrup, an ingredient of many juice cocktails, has also been linked to the increased incidence of type II diabetes. The high consumption of juice is also linked to people putting on extra weight. The high amount of disaccharides in many types of juices are simple sugars that the body has to break down without any nutritional value.
posted by Glommiary at 4:15 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home