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Friday, January 13, 2012

Update and Concentrate

We are almost two weeks into our challenge and loving every minute of it. We have yet to miss eating out. It has been great. We have even endured sickness, exhaustion and crazy days already. Honestly, it has been so nice. As I browse the cookbooks, I get more and more excited about all the recipes I get to try. What fun!

Today I am going to pull out my soap box, hop up and hope you don't run away.

This journey/challenge was made for many reasons- bringing our family back to the table, health, finances and many more. Today I want to talk about something which I don't quite understand...

Juice vs. Juice Concentrate

I am a firm believer that high fructose corn syrup is NOT just "another sugar". I believe that it is slowly disabling and killing our bodies and minds. There are many studies linking HFCS to headaches, ADHD, diabetes and weight gain (just to mention a few).

Andy and I made it our mission to rid our home of it two years ago. And while we haven't done perfectly, we've made great strides.

One of the biggest struggles I had was with juice. My family loves juice. I LOVE juice. However it's extremely hard to find juice not containing HFCS.

I looked through pre-made juices and juice concentrates. I found one brand of juice concentrate which is generally healthy - Old Orchard. I really like it. Our local Meijer often has it on a 10 for $10 and get the 11th free. This is a really good deal for juice not containing HFCS.

This leads me into my next question. Why do we pay big companies to add water to our juice and pay an exorbitant amount of money for that water? Has our society gotten so lazy that we cannot add water and stir our juice? Just a "fruit" for thought... Get it? Fruit for thought?! Ha!

What kinds of juice do you buy for your family? With water or without? Why?  :)

Sweet juice thoughts until Monday!

2 comments:

Zaira said...

*if* we get juice it is the bottled 100% fruit organic kind, love the breakfast blend by R.W. Knudsen, the last time we bought juice was for the kids at DS's birthday party, otherwise we don't buy it

Have you heard about flavor packets in juices?
http://consumerist.com/2011/07/oj-flavor-packs.html

it makes sense when you sit and wonder how on earth the juice always tastes the same lol

Unknown said...

We usually either buy 100% juice or 100% fruit juice concentrate - and we don't often do that even. Fruit juice - even 100% fruit juice - is another sugar that our bodies have to work hard to process, so it's an occasional treat for us. Often added to recipes and/or a very small amount on the side. We realized the other day that after drinking about 6 oz of a delicious 100% OJ that our bellies were not very happy. It was delicious with breakfast for dinner, but ick, the tummy-ache later was rough. :| It had been quite a while since we'd had OJ - or any juice for that matter. However - it's GREAT to add to our water kefir for a flavoring! :) Not sure about the OJ but apple juice was tasty! :)

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