V8 Juice: Nutrition In A Can? Or…

V8 Juice.

We’ve all seen the ads.  Guy drinking a soda looks over and sees his buddy drinking from a colorful can with pictures of celery, tomatoes, carrots, and other brightly painted vegies on it.  Guy knocks himself in the head exclaiming “Wow, I could’a had a V8!”.

V8 100% Vegetable Juice, now made by the Campbell Soup Company, still retains the same basic recipe as when it was first formulated back in 1933.  Per the V8 site, the original V8 Juice (there are now more than 20 additional V8 brands) contains a healthy mix of vegetable juices extracted from tomatoes, carrots, celery, beets, parsley, lettuce, watercress and spinach.

Campbell claims that each eight ounce glass of the V8 100% Vegetable Juice equals two servings of vegetables.  So, in theory, drinking 2-3 cans of V8 each day should fulfill your daily requirements for the vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and healthy plant based sterols that we would get from fresh vegies eaten raw, steamed, or even juiced.

But is that true?  I’ve often wondered about the processes required to prepare fruit and vegetable juices for mass storage and distribution, and the effects of these process on the nutritional value of the juice.  In other words, is drinking a glass of 100% Apple Juice from a bottle as nutritious as eating 2-3 raw apples?  Is drinking a glass of V8 as healthy as downing a couple of helpings of spinach and carrots?

Let’s look at how V8 (and most other fruit and vegetable juices) are processed.  We are not privy to the exact recipe of how the juice is prepared or what the percentage breakdown of the eight included vegetables is, so let’s just assume that, at the early stages, it really is a healthy combination of raw juices from the vegetables listed above.

Now this is a glass of juice I’d like to drink.  In addition to an abundance of vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals, freshly extracted vegetable juice also contains living enzymes.  These living enzymes are protein molecules and are essential for most of the building and rebuilding that goes on constantly in our bodies.

But, if I wanted to get the full nutritional value of that glass of raw juice, I would need to drink it quickly.  Prolonged exposure to air will speed up the breakdown of these living enzymes.  In fact, most of the valuable enzymes are destroyed within 20 minutes of exposure to air.  This is why, when you go to a juice shop and order wheat grass or any of the other freshly extracted vegetable juices, you are encouraged to drink it quickly.

Now if you’re lucky enough to be able to immediately seal that freshly extracted juice in an airtight container, you might be able to store it in your fridge for up to 3-4 days before the enzymes are completely broken down.   Freshly extracted fruit juice can be sealed and stored for up to five days before losing all the enzyme goodness.

Reading between the lines, I’m pretty sure all those living enzymes are gone by the time those cans and bottles of V8 reach my pantry shelf.

So, maybe V8 should change it’s name to:

V8 100% Vegetable Juice (But Without All Those Pesky Healthy Enzymes).

Okay, back to our glass of freshly made pre-processed V8 Juice.  Now the makers have to be able to package the juice in cans and bottles and ship it across the world so that it can be ready and waiting on your local grocery shelf.  But wait, first the juice must be pasteurized.   Per Webster’s Dictionary:

Pasteurization is the act or process of heating a beverage or other food, such as milk or beer, to a specific temperature for a specific period of time in order to kill microorganisms that could cause disease, spoilage, or undesired fermentation.

Pasteurization kills organisms–such as salmonella, listeria, and brucella–that can make you sick or cause food and juices to spoil.  Our favorite governmental glee club, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), through its Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN), sets detailed guidelines for the pasteurization of fruit and vegetable juices.

What does pasteurization do to our glass of prep-packaged V8 juice?  Well, per numerous studies, it has been proven that the pasteurization process can destroy large quantities of the nutritional goodies that remain in our already enzyme-depleted glass of juice.

Specifically, it has been shown that the various vitamins in our glass of vegie juice react differently to heat.  Vitamin E is relatively stable and has a 90% retention rate.  In contrast, vitamin A has only a 60% retention rate after heat processing.  The B family of vitamins is relatively stable with retention rates ranging from 75% to 90%.  The exceptions there being folic acid, which has about a 50% survival rate after being pasteurized, and riboflavin, which is sensitive to both heat and light.

What about vitamin C?  Well the majority of the vitamin C in our pre-packaged glass of V8 vegetable juice never makes it to pasteurization.  Turns out vitamin C, like our living enzymes, is also very sensitive to air exposure and will break down in a short period of time.

In summary, a plate of raw fresh vegetables or a glass of raw vegetable juice contains quality protein, antioxidants, vitamins, and complex sugars to provide long lasting metabolic energy.  The same juice after going through pasteurization contains little protein, no antioxidants, and nutrients that have broken down into large quantities of simple, monosaccharide sugars.

Now, on the plus side, it has been shown that plant phenols are relatively stable throughout the heating process.  But, again, the free radical scavenging antioxidants aren’t.  They are almost completely lost.

So, is an eight ounce glass of V8 100% Vegetable Juice really equal to two servings of fresh vegetables or freshly extracted vegetable juice?

Not even close.  And when you throw in the extra salt that they add to enhance the flavor that is also lost during the heating process, you really have gone from 100% Vegetable to maybe 50% Vegetable Light Plus Salt.

I still drink V8.  The low sodium brand.  I know it’s not going to replace or even really reduce the need for real vegetables, but it is a tasty drink that does offer more nutritional value than soda, coffeee, or bottled water.

There are over twenty different types of V8 juices on the market. What’s your favorite? And do you drink it for the “health benefits”, or just the taste?

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