Varieties

Popular juices include but are not limited to apple, orange, grapefruit, pineapple, tomato, passion fruit, mango, carrot, grape, cranberry and pomegranate. Fact: date=February 2009 It has become increasingly popular to combine a variety of fruits into single juice drinks. Popular blends include cran-apple (cranberry and apple) and apple and blackcurrant. A demonstration of this trend is that prepackaged single fruit juices have lost market share to prepackaged fruit juice combinations. Fact: date=April 2009 A number of new companies have had considerable success supplying prepackaged fruit juice permutations on the basis of this transition.

Juice bars have also become commonplace across most of the western world and offer similar juice blends. Most of these juice bars offer freshly made fruit juices, claiming that fresh juice is healthier. The rationale for this claim is that once the fruit has been juiced, its antioxidants start to react with oxygen, which is a free radical, and so lose their health benefit.Fact: date=February 2007 Juice is also commonly found in many cooking recipes from various cultures. The most popular are lime and lemon juice which help to add a slightly more sour or bitter taste to dishes.

Labeling

Most nations define a standard purity for a beverage to be considered a "fruit juice." This name is commonly reserved for beverages that are 100% pure fruit juice.

In the UK, the term fruit juice can only legally be used to describe a product which is 100% fruit juice, as required by the Fruit Juices and Fruit Nectars (England) Regulations and The Fruit Juices & Fruit Nectars (Scotland) Regulations 2003. However, the term "juice drink" can be used to describe any drink which includes juice, even if the juice content is 1% of the overall volume. Comparable rules apply in all EU member states in their respective languages.

In the USA, fruit juice can only legally be used to describe a product which is 100% fruit juice. A blend of fruit juice(s) with other ingredients, such as high-fructose corn syrup, is called a juice cocktail or juice drink. According to the FDA, the term "nectar" is generally accepted in the U.S. and in international trade for a diluted juice to denote a beverage that contains fruit juice or puree, water, and which may contain sweeteners.

In New Zealand (and others) juice denotes a sweetened fruit extract, whereas nectar denotes a pure fruit or vegetable extract.Fact: date=March 2008

However, fruit juice labels may be misleading, with juice companies actively hiding the actual content. "No added sugar" is commonly placed on labels, but the products are often made from "reconstituted concentrates." This can have the same effect as adding sugars to the beverage as the naturally occurring fructose is still unhealthy for the consumer. It is difficult for the consumer to know the contents of the concentrates