"Real" Food vs. "Fake" Food

My mom constantly nagged me to eat my fruits and vegetables when I was a child. I would consume the fruit with out too much persuasion, but I would always refuse to eat the veggies. Like many kids, I would eat everything but. It was a constant battle at the dinner table, until we got a juicer. Now my mom could hide those unsightly vegetables in some kind of fruit and vegetable blend. Carrot orange juice was my favorite. I didn’t even know there were actual carrots in it until my mom told me so. With the juicer my mom could trick me into eating the vegetables that I despised. We would make all kinds of juices, mostly mixtures of different fruits with some vegetables thrown in. The best part of the juicer is that you can put a whole apple in, skin and all. You get the benefit of eating the actual apple with out having to bite into it; you could just drink the refreshing juice. By using the whole fruit you are consuming the most nutrient packed parts, like the skin.

After a while the excitement around the juicer faded and it ended up on the dreaded top shelf of the pantry. Shortly after, bottles of store bought juices could be found in our fridge. It started with simple fruit juices and then escalated to juice blends like V8 V-Fusion. V8 V-Fusion was introduced into the market as a way of getting a full serving of fruits and vegetables. With tempting flavors like Strawberry Banana, Tropical orange, Peach Mango, and Pomegranate Blueberry, who could resist? Right? WRONG. These drinks were nothing compared to our homemade juices. They were tolerable, but I found them to smell kind of funny and they had a slight aftertaste. But due to the price of fresh fruits and the convenience of already bottled juices, I could always find it in the fridge.

V8 V-Fusion claims to be nutritionally the same as eating the fruit and vegetables its juices are made of. It also claims to be made of 100% juice. The juices in V8 V-Fusion are reconstituted vegetable and fruit blends. Reconstituted means that concentrated versions of the juices are brought to full strength by adding water. By processing and concentrating fruits and vegetables you loose a lot of nutrients naturally found in the “real” versions. Although this article is promoting a product called the Champion Juicer the author agrees with me on the idea of “real juice” vs. “fake juice”.