Among the fruit juices which are rich of Vitamin C, perhaps orange juice is the most popular one; it’s because of the variety of orange around the world and its nutrition to our health.
A raw cup of orange juice ( about 248g) includes 124mg of vitamin C, 20.8g of sugars, an amount of fiber, potassium, thiamin, folate and some other nutrition, which provides us about 112 calories.
Although orange juice is very familiar with us, there still have some notes we should take when using it.
We know that there are fresh and commercial orange juice which we could use in our daily life, each type has its convenient and inconvenient.
For fresh orange juice
We could squeeze and drink directly from orange fruit (with sugar adding unneeded), so its nutrition could be use up. There are the advantages and disadvantages of fresh orange as below:
-
Advantage: fresh orange is a good drink with vitamin C and some minerals which could be helpful in reducing blood pressure, strain, cancer, heart-attack risk. It’s also a refreshing drink, good in increasing body resistance, the immunity’s and peptic’s health. We could have a glass of orange juice easily and freshly by squeezing orange fruit, the fruit which could be kept fresh up to a week (at room temperature, low moisture) and 2-4 weeks (in the fridge)
-
Disadvantage: because fresh orange juice is squeezed directly from fresh orange fruit, so we should use it right after squeezing to keep its whole nutrition. The longer we keep it after squeezing, the more nutrition could be lost and the bitter it will become.
Although this is a fresh and good juice for our health, but because of its acid typical, we still have to add it suitably (1-2 hour after meal is the best) to avoid some affections which could be harmful to the peptic.
Besides, without adding sugar, fresh orange juice is a little sour even it’s squeezed from sweet orange like Navel or Valencia orange, this is its natural flavor.
What about the commercial orange juice?
Commercial orange juice could be dried or concentrated to remove water and oxygen, then will be re-added water and bottled to consume. This type could be pasteurized also and be sold as “not from concentrate” product. Although orange juice “from concentrate” or “not from concentrate”, in the production processing, would be reduced the natural flavor, Vitamin C and nutrition, so the manufacturers will re-add these ingredient and a flavor pack also. The flavor pack is generally made from orange peel, helps to restore the orange flavor, but it’s normally not mentioned on the orange juice label. Commercial orange has its advantages and disadvantages such as:
-
Advantage: Commercial orange juice seems convenient to us, because we could have a glass of it quicker than to squeeze an orange fruit and in the production process, the manufacturers have tried to re-added nutrition to reach closest to the fresh juice. Besides, its shelf life is longer than the fresh, could be up to a year.
-
Disadvantage: commercial orange juice has to be passed through a production process, so its flavor and nutrition couldn’t be kept as origin. Beside, there are some ingredient would be added to the commercial orange juice but not mentioned on the label.
In general, a rich nutrition drink like orange juice will be good for our health only when we use suitably with our condition. We know it clearly then we could increase the efficient in using orange juice or any other food or drink.
