concentrate vs not from concentrate juice

getting back to basics

Whether you’ve just picked up a bottle of ‘from concentrate’ or ‘not from concentrate’ juice, it’s important to understand what your juice has gone through to get from the great outdoors to the bottle in your fridge.

While all juices go through a manufacturing process to ensure they’re all safe to drink, ‘not from concentrate’ is created by juicing the fruit and then processing it without any water removal or reconstitution, whereas ‘from concentrate’ can be a tad more complex. This time the fruit is juiced and then filtered, extracted and evaporated to remove almost all the water. Why all the trouble? This process makes the juice easier and cheaper to transport and package, and also gives it a longer shelf life.

how the process works

When ‘from concentrate’ reaches the evaporation stage, the juice is heated to super high temperatures. This can potentially reduce the nutritional value of the juice but it also has the ability to extend its shelf life. In some cases, this can even be a number of years because ‘from concentrate’ juices can also be cryogenically frozen. To bring the ‘from concentrate’ juice back to life before it’s packaged and then sold to everyday folk in stores, the water is re-added, and the juice pasteurised again. In some (not all) instances, additives are also added to the final product.  

being label aware

Whether you’re buying reconstituted, ‘from concentrate’ or ‘not from concentrate’ fruit juice, it’s important to know whether your favourite drinks contain any added sugars, preservatives or colours. At nudie, our juices are free of added sugar, added flavours and preservatives such as sorbates. Like other ‘not from concentrate’ juices, our yummy stuff is processed without any water removal or reconstitution – the way Mother Nature intended.