Drinking fruit juice adds essential vitamins and minerals to your diet. Fruit juice is also a healthy alternative to soda for satisfying a sweet tooth. Unfortunately, many brands of juice include artificial colors and flavors. Reading labels will help you avoid products with artificial additives. All-natural options are available in the regular juice aisle as well as the natural or organics section of your grocery store.
Juicy Juice
With specialty natural and organic products growing in popularity, there are mainstream all-natural juices on the market. Juicy Juice--a Nestle-owned company--has been producing all-natural fruit juices for over 40 years. Juicy Juice does not add sweeteners, sugars, preservatives or artificial color to their products. The company makes single fruit juices, like apple and cherry, and multi-fruit juices like punch, tropical, and strawberry banana. Juicy Juice's line Juicy Juice Sparkling offers lightly carbonated, lower-sugar versions of their regular fruit juices. Visit the Resources section to find the Juicy Juice Expert Advice page where you can ask a panel of experts questions about your toddler, preschooler, kindergartener or grade schooler.
R.W. Knudsen
The R.W. Knudsen Family company has been in the all-natural fruit juice business for just about 50 years. The tradition began in 1961 when Russel W. Knudsen began creating juice from the organic grapes he grew himself. Promising only natural flavors, the R.W. Knudsen Family juice FAQ page states that their products "contain no refined sugars, no preservatives, no artificial flavors, no petroleum derivatives and no monosodium glutamate." The R.W. Knudsen company uses natural juice to flavor and sweeten their products, which include sports drinks, juice boxes, non-alcoholic sparkling juice drinks and vegetable juices. R.W. Knudsen offers a wide range of juices that include traditional flavors like apple, grape and orange as well as harder to find flavors like blueberry, pomegranate and pear.
Simply Orange
Another growing trend is for mainstream companies to create smaller subdivisions for the production and marketing of specialty natural and organic products. The Simply Orange company--which operates under the umbrella of Minute Maid, itself a subsidiary of Coca-Cola--produces 100 percent fruit juices and fruit juice blends. The company does not use any artificial color or flavor additives, nor do they use juice concentrate for any of their products. Simply Orange produces orange, apple and grapefruit juices as well as lemonade and limeade; they also offer each juice in 13.5 oz. single-serving sizes for on-the-go convenience.
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