I went shopping in a new store today. At first I was excited to find something with 100% juice that wasn’t absurdly expensive. But then I looked at the ingredients and saw cochineal extract, AKA carmine, AKA crushes beetles used to make things red.

I just don’t understand. You’ve got this juice, you could totally add beet juice for coloring and achieve a beautiful color. But no, gotta throw insects into it instead. As far as hidden non-vegan ingredients go, stuff from insects tends to fly under the radar. Yet I bet if more people were aware of what they were buying, even non-vegans would take issue with it.

A photo of the Nutrition Facts on a carton of juice. At the top it says “100% juice,” but among the ingredients it lists “cochineal extract” for color.

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[–] 53 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Is this not just... beetlejuice?

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  • [–] 25 points 5 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 17 points 5 months ago (6 children)

    Wait til you hear about the Antarctic fish blood in the icecream

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  • [–] 18 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    aye, so, I just searched "Antarctic fish blood in the icecream" and did not find anthing but articles on icefish and some fish that has antifreeze for blood.

    Id like to know more, whats the ingredient name?

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    [–] 38 points 5 months ago (11 children)

    Legally how can you state it is 100% juice when the first ingredient is filtered water, then you add the cochineal extract, and the acorbic acid. I mean it's mostly juice but it's clearly not 100% juice. I feel like this is a lawsuit waiting to happen.

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  • [–] 36 points 5 months ago (9 children)

    Some additives are allowed in small amounts, and the water is allowed because it’s juice from concentrate where you can add exactly the amount of filtered water that was previously removed to make the concentrate.

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    It's not necessarily the same amount of water that was previously removed, it's based on the sugar content in the resulting mix from the concentrate. So if you had super sugary apples, you may be able to make more "100% juice" than you started with by concentrating and re-diluting it.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago* (1 child)

    Concentrate is very bitter. The banana pulp and "natural flavours" (stuff like apple and pumpkin) is added to sweeten the drink.

    They cannot add sugar and call it "juice".

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    Sorry, I blocked my sentence weird... it's based on (suger from juice concentrate) in the final mix.

    For example, 100% apple juice is apple juice concentrate diluted to at least 11.5% (sugar from concentrate).

    Hypothetically, if I could breed super apples that made 23% sugar juice, I could concentrate and redilute 1L of juice to make 2L of 100% juice.

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  • [–] 13 points 5 months ago (5 children)

    Ah that makes so much sense, thanks for clarifying! Manufacturers are legally allowed to lie to consumers, that's much better!

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  • [–] 19 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    Like how tic tacs are "sugar free" at "0 gm" per serving yet they are 94% sugar. At 0.49 gm per tic tac any amount of sugar is rounded down. Thanks FDA!

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    From the company’s point of view, this is not a lie. They’re following a legal definition that tells them what they can call their product. The law defines what 100% means, and a product falling under this definition can’t legally use e.g. names for diluted juice products, in the same way that it couldn’t be sold as milk.

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  • [–] 9 points 5 months ago

    Beetle juice?

    Beetlejuice

    Beetlejuice

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago

    Juice still isn't AI generated?
    There is yet hope for humanity!! (/s)

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    100% juice

    first ingredient filtered water

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago

    And where does the "natural flavor" come from?

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    Beet would not produce enough colour.

    Only in America

    Yes, in many countries coal tar dye is still used.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    Your choices are petroleum or beetles. Take your pick.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    not even real juice, just concentrate, and ton of sugar.

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  • [–] -1 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    I call this food poisoning. There is no need to crush up insects in a juice. Stuff like this makes it very easy to never buy that product/company again.

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  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago

    Only in America

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  • [–] -2 points 5 months ago (9 children)

    0% sugar my fucking ass. I hate shit like this. A tablespoon is ~12 grams of sugar. Your daily recommended (by the USDA, the people tasked with selling more agricultural products) sugar is 50 grams. So a mere 8oz of this shit has half of the sugar you are supposed to get in a 24 hour period but it’s 0%… fuck this lying bullshit.

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  • [–] 11 points 5 months ago (7 children)

    You seem to be missing that it is 0% ADDED sugars. They are not lying about anything here (at least as far as we know).

    Should they include the percentage for the 24 grams that come from fruit? Yes. Does that make the label misleading? Yes. Does that mean they are lying about there being no sugar in there. Absolutely not! In fact I'd say they are being very clear about where the sweetness comes from, as they should be.

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  • [+] -10 points 5 months ago (6 children)

    I didn’t miss anything. It says total sugars 24g and then leaves that line blank. Then it says no added sugar when apple juice is the second ingredient, which itself should be illegal. It sure seems that you are bootlicking the purveyors of this unhealthy quaff.

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  • [–] 11 points 5 months ago (5 children)

    Immediately calling me a bootlicker, even though I pointed out the label is misleading, classic internet...

    And yes, you are still missing something. Added sugars means sugar added in later into the batch to make it more sweet, the same way you'd add sugar into your tea. Label "Includes 0g Added Sugars" means they added 0g of sugar, simple as.

    On the other hand, that juice still has 24g of total sugar. You correctly pointed out that it comes from apple juice concentrate (and other concentrates, and banana puree). Fruit concentrates can be used as sweeteners and should be counted towards added sugars in other products, however not in the case of juices. The reason for that is very simple - because then nothing would ever be juice. All of it would just be very sweet water. In the same vein, that would be like taking a bag of sugar and calling it a bag of air with added sugar. That doesn't make much sense, does it?

    Let's say for a minute that you are correct and sugar from these fruits should be included in the added sugars section. This now means added sugars and total sugars are one and the same, at 24g. So now what is the point of this distinction? More importantly, how would you know how much sugar did they add outside of fruits? I have no doubt corporations would quickly jump on this and start adding in sugar like crazy in order to make people addicted.

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  • [+] -8 points 5 months ago* (4 children)

    I didn’t call you a bootlicker I said it seems like you are bootlicking. But it wouldn’t be the Internet unless somebody was misquoting somebody else to for their argument.

    I really didn’t need it explained to me. I wasn’t saying sugar from all juices should be counted as added sugar either. I was pointing out that they use apple juice to get away with not adding sugar. Honestly if we both agree that the label is misleading I’m not even sure why you are insisting on arguing.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    That wasn't in your original comment though. It's a valid point that adding apple juice for the sugar is a dirty way to get around the "no added sugars" restriction. Only in your followup comment did you mention this, but it wasn't immediately obvious to me either that that was the point you were trying to make.

    I don't think the other commenter was trying to be patronizing to you, it just genuinely seemed like there was some confusion going on.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    If that person’s comment isn’t patronizing then I’m totally lost. They even bolded added like I’m a fucking moron. I admit it’s my bad for thinking that people would understand that this clearly has added sugar but I don’t see any reason to reply the way they did.

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  • [–] -1 points 5 months ago

    Typical Florida Man juice

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