What does it mean when a fruit juice is ‘from concentrate’ and how does it differ from ‘not from concentrate’?
In: Other
A concentrate is exactly what it sounds like. A substance concentrated by reducing excessive matter (ie water). You can concentrate something for example by boiling it. So if you take a quart of milk and boil it you can reduce its mass to less than half by the water that evaporates.
Concentrating juice makes it a lot easier to transport(and store for a longer period without going bad). Instead of transporting a gallon of juice you can transport a pint. Then when it reaches its destination you can dilute it with water again to make it “juice” again. The process does however compromise taste and many times sugar is added to disguise the lesser taste.
So juice not from concentrate has not been processed (well not processed in the above described fashion). But it makes for harder transport and does not have the same longevity thus making it more expensive.
Concentrated juices are made from removing water from the crushed fruit .. So it’s more of a paste than a liquid. This makes for cheaper storage, and transport. Then when the concentrate gets to it’s bottling destination, it can be “unconcentrated” just by adding water.
Conversely, not from concentrate is exactly the opposite. It’s crushed, the water remains intact, and is shipped / bottled “as is” so far as the integrity of the pulp (barring additives etc)
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