So, i’ve known and heard about the fact that most juice and concentrated juices are full of sugar and are far from being healthy drink to add in a diet. My question is concerning those juices that I can found in many shop or convenience store here in Japan, where on the packaging there is written depending on which on you pick :
Etc..
Few exemple (sorry those are the one I know but basically they say the above)
Are this scam ? Is there more to it than what they say ?
First of all, juice (and smoothie) can be a part of a healthy diet. It’s not a problem to have a cup here and there.
I don’t speak Japanese, I looked up the products on Amazon using a translator. These products are not juices, but smoothies - I don’t know if the ones on the other links are juices or not.
Juice is the juice/liquid of a fruit/vegetable. It contains vitamins and minerals and they may or may not cover the daily vitamin/mineral requirements. It depends on what kind of juice it is, what ingredients it has and whether there are vitamins/minerals added. They usually contain a lot of sugar (naturally occurring, not added) but do not contain any fibre that would affect sugar absorption. So they don’t provide the benefit of eating whole fruits. It’s not something we should consume often.
Smoothies however are simply blended vegetables/fruit. They still contain minerals and vitamins, lots of sugar, but they also contain fibre. So it is a better option than juice. They can cover your (half or all) daily fruit or vegetable needs. The vitamin/mineral content depends on the ingredients, just like with juice.
I don’t know exactly what they write about “supplements for X Y or Z”, but no product should be labelled as a substitute for a whole foods, varied diet.