Concentrate or not from concentrate

[Chepstowmonkey]

Dd is 18 months and I have recently started to give her diluted fruit juice. I always buy 'not from concentrate' juice but I have realised that I have no idea why! Does anyone know why it is better? Does concentrating fruit juice reduce the vitamins or do they add sugar/other sweeteners?

I've been wondering it for a while and I thought some of you clever people might know!

Don't know if vitamins are lost, non-concentrated is pasteurised anyway so that would probably polish off a few vits, but I wouldn't have thought concentrated fruit juice is going to make a massive difference to her nutrition compared to non-concentrated, given the quantities she has.

Non-concentrated costs a lot more to ship as it is bigger volume, so is more expensive. Concentrated juice is shipped in much smaller and lighter units and re-hydrated once in-country so much cheaper (and environmentally friendly as less fuel used).

It may have sugars etc added, but not necessarily, so just pick check labels and pick one you like. :)

I was told not to drink 'from concentrate' orange juice when I had gestational diabetes so it must be something to do with the sugar content - but I didn't query it at the time and never got round to finding out about it :)

Concentrated juice is a bit grim IMO, I work in the produce industry and have had a fair bit to do with juices & concentrates etc over the years.
One of the best examples of what happens during concentration is ribena.. They got into a whole load of trouble a few years ago when it was found that their concentration treatment removed all vitamin c from the base ingredient to their drinks, they had to add it back in. Some girls in NZ did a high school project and found that by the time you diluted the cordial there was 0% vit C left! Eu labelling regs made it impossible to add vit c in as well...
Heat pasteurisation and then concentration boil the fruit juice down, then this is rehydrated, sugars, aromas and esters (the bit of flavour that hits your Tongue first) added and the flavour balanced before bottling/packaging.
Not from concentrate is pure juice, it will have been heat treated to remove the chances of infection of botulinium, but it is the best in terms of vitamins, anthocyanins etc apart from squashing things yourself,

I must add that ribena and theor growers funded an enormous research programme to find varieties of blackcurrant that naturally have higher levels of vit C and the claims on the bottle are 100% accurate these days.