Flash in the Pan

Noble Juice shipped a selection of their products for testing. It arrived the other day and already we've gone through all but one of the bottles. The juices were uniformly good, some advertised as "natural" (as opposed to unnatural juice?) and others as organic. I thought the tangerine guava mango combination was particularly good and interesting: sweet with a faint hint of contrasting bitterness that only heightened the taste. The blood orange was also a treat, again with that complexity of taste. But then, I liked the orange tangerine as well.

An added benefit is that the company is shifting to a biodegradable bottle made out of corn. The products are also available through a wide number of grocery chains, so finding it shouldn't be too hard. It only gets tough when the juice gets home and is suddenly unprotected from the familial hordes.

Labels: fruit, juice, product, review

At times, I find myself becoming dizzy and nigh on to nauseated as one company after another batters away with product health claims. "Contains antioxidants!" shouts one. "Chock full of omega-3 fatty acids!" yells another. "Oh, yeah? Well, our omega-3 acids are low fat!" I expect another to loudly declare. A recent entry into the health hystrionics is CherryPharm - though one with redeeming values.

Surely this must be one of the worst names in the annals of food history (though there do seem to be serious contenders for this title every year). It sounds like a cough syrup or even, heaven help the digestion, a laxative. Being neighter, it is, instead, a fruit juice mix "harnessing the natural power of 50 whole tart cherries" - whatever that exactly means - in an 8 ounce bottle. That container also holds water and apple juice concentrate, so it's not straight tart cherry juice. The manufacturer touts the nutritional value, but a quick look shows that while they say it is good for muscle aches and cramps, there are also few vitamins.

But then, I'm no nutrition expert and think that you cannot depend on any one food stuff, no matter how mighty, to balance your diet. What I can say is that the juice is tasty - the whole family tested the sample sent by the company's PR firm and liked it. Be warned, it is also tart, which can be more refreshing, I think, than a sugar-laden slurry. You can purchase the product from the web site in batches of 8 bottles ($2.50 each) or 24 (price drops to $2 per). Shipping on a case of 24 bottles is $6.22 (at least when going to Massachusetts), which would make the least expensive per bottle price $2.26.

Labels: juice, opinion, product, review

When the small (under 9 ounce) slim cans of Fizz Ed came in for review from Apple & Eve, the whole family eyed them. These are mixes of fruit juices (as you might expect, heavy on the apple and grape, no matter what the name of the flavor) and soda water. Everyone here got a taste of several varieties and the unamimous conclusion was that they are a good sight better than most of their competitors. In fact, my wife said that she'd actually pay as much as $3 for a can of the blend with mango. My eyes bugged out as I reflexively grabbed for my wallet. You certainly could buy a bottle of exotic juice from R.W. Knudsen and mix in some seltzer, but this is pretty convenient, and the family masses have spoken. The products are supposed to start hitting supermarkets and other consumer outlets by January, so if you can't find it just yet, you soon should.

Labels: drinks, juice, opinion, review

When you live in Massachusetts, you have to like cranberries - I think there's some statute to that effect. And I do like cranberry sauce, cranberry juice mixed with orange juice, and sweetened dried cranberries. But I wasn't that taken with Ocean Spray 100% Juice Cranberry & Blueberry Blend. The drink is 100% juice, which is a great improvement over water and high fructose corn syrup. Unfortunately, although there are taste hints of blueberry and cranberry, they are relatively weak. Leading the ingredients list - which means filling most of the bottle - are apple and grape juices. This has become a standard practice, both to help tie flavors together, I think, but also to save money. I have some sympathy for the company. Cranberries don't really contain significant juice on their own, so they'd probably have to crush and steep them in something, and blueberries get a lot more expensive than apples and grapes. But the flavor is altogether too bland and undistinguished. At a suggested retail price of $3.59 for a half gallon bottle, you could serve it to the kids, and even drink it yourself, but don't expect what the label seems to promise.

Labels: blueberry, cranberry, juice, Ocean Spray

Nectarine juice blends seemed unusual enough that I wanted to give them a shot, so in came the PR-arranged samples of Sun Shower nectarine juice and juice blends from NBI Juiceworks. And, overall, I liked the taste, but I would take strong exception with the way they position the drinks.

More on that in a minute, but let's jump into the taste test of three varieties: one straight nectarine, a nectarine-mango mix, and nectarines blended with berries. The combination juices got the highest ratings from our in-house panel of adults and expert-drinking teenagers. Flavors were good and there was just the right mouth feel of viscosity. The plain nectarine also had a good taste, but was definitely on the tart side - not unpleasantly so, though it might kick in a mild shock if you were expecting something else.

Now for the grousing. First, I get really tired of 12-ounce versions of drinks, obviously bottled for consumption by one person, as having, in this case, 1.5 servings. The press materials may brag "Only 93 calories per 8 ounce serving," but the bottle has 139.5 calories.

My greater irritation lies with the technically-correct claim that the products are 100% juice - because, if you round and ignore minute amounts of other things, they are. But as the company claims "100% Juice - No added sugar or preservatives" in the press materials, it neglects to add, "Oh, but we do add sucralose to sweeten things, because the nectarines can be sour."

Sucralose is the common name for the product Splenda, and is an artificial sweetener about 600 percent sweeter than sugar. On the company's own web site, it addresses the question of "Why sucralose?" The answer? Nectarines vary in sweetness:

By adding sucralose, NBI JuiceWorks™ is able to balance the sweetness of our juices (called the acid/brix ratio) to ensure each bottle has the consistent great taste consumers expect.

Read that as, "If people tasted what these fruit were like on their own, their mouths would turn inside out and that would be bad for business. And because we want to say 100 percent juice, we can't add sugar or honey, because the amounts would become some percentage of the final mix and the calorie content would go up." That is, their marketing of the juice would suffer, because on the bottle itself it makes very visible the words "no added sugar or preservatives" and squeezes the sucralose mention into the government-mandated label. If it did mention the substance, people might wonder why it still has almost 140 calories per 12-ounce bottle.

There were other things I disliked in the web site's attempt to spin the sucralose. Approved by the FDA to be used in juice? Well, of course it was, otherwise this company couldn't use it. Excellent safety profile? Just what does that mean? I'm not knocking the use of sucralose or other artificial sweeteners - I even had nice things to say about Zsweet. But, frankly, I was very disappointed. Personally, I'd rather pay the price in calories for the real sweetener and not let the manufacturer try to let me think I'm getting away with something for nothing. Particularly when the company is trying to create an impression of concern for health.

Labels: berries, fruit, juice, mango, NBI Juiceworks, nectarine, sucralose, Sun Shower

Two bottles of muscadine grape juice from Nature's Pearl arrived in the middle of an onslaught of extra teenagers staying over. Luckily I got some tasting in before others had decimated the contents. You find them in the southeastern US and are, at least according to the PR materials, the only grapes that grow naturally in the climate. They must be hearty compared to regular grapes, which can fall prey to disease, and the hotter climates of these areas become virtual breeding grounds for microbes.

The materials make a number of claims as to what muscadines contain compared to some other fruits:

• 40 times the resveratrol or regular grapes


• up to 10 times the antioxidants of blueberries, cranberries and goji berries (though for all I know, regular grapes do as well)


• anti-inflammatory and antihistamine properties


• healthy compounds usually not found in grapes, but in foods like apples and onions (quercetin, ellagic acid)

How much of this is real and what are the effects? I don't know and have no idea. But the juice is very sweet while still retaining the fruit taste you could lose with added sugar. As my wife said, "Yum." She preferred the red, as did I, but there was a little bitter aftertaste in the white that I still found pleasing, if a bit more astringent.

Unfortunately, this is another case where purchase is expensive - because you have to buy a case at a time. A dozen bottles run $108 and shipping from North Carolina to Massachusetts would have run $20, for a total of almost $11 a bottle. Clearly this is not a casual drink for the kids. Also, the web site says that supplies are limited. Of course, a billion bottles would still be limited, but if you're interested, you might go to the site's contact page and see if there is any problem for getting the quantity you wanted. You might also point the site out to a local store and see if it would bring in some bottles for you.

Labels: grape, juice, muscadine, Nature's Pearl, opinion, review