Have you ever wondered what makes our juice different? ✨
It goes beyond the glass bottle, local produce, and cold-pressed process. In fact, the difference is actually microscopic!
What makes a dedicated juice shop different from your neighborhood grocery store is pastuerization!
Pasteurization is a form of preserving the juice to extend the shelf life. In doing so, ALL the living enzymes and nutrients are sterilized. Whether they use heat or submerge the product under water (HPP), all juices in the grocery store are pasteurized, and can not be truly raw.
Juice is most popularly pasteurized in two ways:
With heat. 🔥 The product would be heated under high temperatures for a short amount of time in order to kill or "sterilize" the product from living bacteria and enzymes.
With pressure. 💧 This is called high-pressure processing or HPP. This process is when the product is submerged underwater with extreme pressure to inactivate microorganisms and enzymes and can prolong the shelf life up to 10x.
No matter how the juice is pasteurized, most of the enzymes and microorganisms in the food have been zapped. Pasteurized juice is sometimes referred to as "dead" juice.
This means ALL the bacteria has been killed, even the good probiotic bacteria that befriends our stomach and balances our gut biome!
Keeping enzymes alive and well in the juice is important because enzymes work as catalysts for biochemical reactions, making it easier for our body to absorb new nutrients and recycle old ones! Enzymes help with: digesting food, breaking down protein, and reducing complex sugars. Our bodies produce enzymes naturally, but drinking truly raw cold-pressed juice is a great source to feeding your body some extra support!
With lack of enzymes, we may experience slowed digestion, decreased metabolism, low energy, and an overall feeling of grogginess. Think of what you are drinking the juice for... 👆🏼 it's to help with most of these issues!
The truth is, to receive (and feel!) the most benefits from your juice - it has to contain enzymes!
Vive's dedication to keeping our juice raw is actually why you can't find us around your local grocers. While we would love to be in your favorite whole foods small shop, for juice to be wholesaled and/or retailed it is legally required to be pasteurized!
So, direct to consumer is where you'll find us! 👋🏼 And connection is what we're all about anyway, so make sure to stop by and say hi... to us, and all the live enzymes in your juice. 🌿
How can you know when your juice is not actually raw?! Well, we've come up with some simple tips to keep a lookout for to make an educated decision about reading those juice labels!
There are no FDA restrictions on labeling your juice as raw. Even if the juice has been pasteurized, they can still label it as raw since the ingredients they used were raw!
- All wholesale/national brands are required to process their juice with some form of pasteurization. It’s not raw!
- Any juices with an extended shelf life. Real cold-pressed juice has a shelf life between 3-7 days. If you’re reaching for a bottle and it goes out a couple of weeks - it’s not raw!
- The juice isn’t refrigerated at the store. All shelf-stable juice has been heat-pasteurized. It’s not raw!
- Juice that has traveled far and wide to get to your neighborhood grocery store. If you’re in Utah and you’re drinking juice made in California or New York - it’s not raw! Due to the short shelf life stated in tip #2, there’s little chance that juice is spending half its shelf life being shipped your way.
- You think the juice has a typo. Instead of cold-pressed, it says cold-pressured. This is not a typo - it’s a shady tactic to try to hide another method of HPP. (Cold-pressured processing!) It’s not raw!
- Bonus tip: This is not always the case, but we encourage you to be really skeptical about juices bottled in plastic. You can’t pasteurize juice in glass because it would shatter under the pressure. What doesn’t break under pressure? That plastic bottle. 😉 It may not be raw!
1 comment
Thank you. This is really good informtion. I do not think most people know this. I did not know a lot of it and I like to think I am well educated on Sustainable Raw food. I have nothing to pitch. Just passing by.