Comparison of Sugar Content in Bottled 100% Fruit Juice versus Extracted Juice of Fresh Fruit

This paper presents findings of an experiment for the comparison of sugar concentration in extracted juice of fresh fruit to that of commercially-bottled 100% fruit juice with a “no sugar added” attribute. The goal of the study was to determine if the sugar content of bottled 100% fruit juice with a “no sugar added” label is equivalent to that of extracted juices of fresh fruits. The reported study was performed to address the potential concern that commercially-bottled 100% fruit juices with “no sugar added” may contain higher sugar content than extracted juice of fresh fruit. The fruit juices that were tested included apple, grapefruit, orange, pineapple, pomegranate, red grape and white grape. All bottled juices and fresh fruits were purchased in Toledo, Ohio, USA during the winter of 2012. The fresh fruits were juiced and three samples were tested for sugar concentration using a Brix refractometer. The same testing protocol was also applied to the bottled 100% fruit juice. Application of the Mann-Whitney test on the experimental data demonstrated no statistically significant difference (p > 0.05). The results suggested that the sugar content in the commercially bottled 100% fruit juice with the “no sugar added” label is an accurate representation of sugar content in the freshly-extracted juice of the corresponding fruit.