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The juice shelf is a vocabulary test. "Not from concentrate", "from concentrate", "reconstituted", "100% fruit juice", "no added sugar", "nectar", "fruit drink", "cordial" — most of these words are defined in law, and the definitions are not what the front of the carton suggests. The most useful fact on the whole shelf is also the most counterintuitive: the difference between the two kinds of 100% juice is small, and the difference between 100% juice and everything else is large. A second useful fact: "no added sugar" does not mean low sugar. A 250 ml glass of orange juice carries about 22–25 g of sugar — roughly what a can of soft drink carries — because the sugar in fruit is still sugar.
| Word on the pack | What it means | What it does not mean |
|---|---|---|
| Not from concentrate (NFC) | Juice squeezed from the fruit, pasteurised and bottled without the water ever being removed. The juice is usually stored in large oxygen-stripped tanks for months before bottling, and flavour packs made from orange oils and essences are added back to restore the taste storage removed. | It does not mean freshly squeezed, unpasteurised, or stored for a short time. NFC is a processing claim, not a freshness claim. |
| From concentrate | Juice with most of its water removed (by heat evaporation) to make a concentrate, shipped, then mixed back with water at the bottling plant to bring it to its original strength. Singapore's Food Regulations reg 172 defines concentrated fruit juice as juice reduced to not more than 50% of its original volume. | It does not mean the juice is diluted or watered down below normal strength. Reconstituted juice must be brought back to the standard strength for that fruit (see Brix below). |
| Reconstituted | The same thing as "from concentrate", said plainly: concentrate plus water, added back in the amount that was originally removed. Singapore's reg 171(2) defines it exactly that way, and reg 171(3) requires it to be stated on the label in letters at least 3 mm high. | It does not mean the product is only part juice. A reconstituted 100% juice is still 100% juice. |
| 100% fruit juice | Everything in the pack is juice — no added water (except the water used to reconstitute concentrate), no added sugar, no sweeteners. Under the Codex standard (CXS 247-2005), juice is either directly expressed or made from concentrate reconstituted to the minimum Brix for that fruit, and both count as juice. | It does not mean NFC, and it does not mean no sugar. It means 100% of the content is juice, and juice is naturally about 9 g of sugar per 100 ml for orange. |
| No added sugar | No sugar was added during manufacture. The sugar on the nutrition panel is the sugar that was already in the fruit. | It does not mean low sugar, sugar-free, or a good choice for someone watching sugar. Orange juice with no added sugar still has about 9 g of sugar per 100 ml. |
| Nectar | Juice or fruit purée blended with water, and usually sugar. Singapore's reg 173 sets a minimum fruit content: 50% for citrus nectar, 40% for peach and pear, 35% for apricot, 25% for other fruits. Codex sets the same 25–50% range by fruit, with orange nectar at 50%. | It does not mean 100% juice. At best, half the pack is juice; the rest is water and sugar. |
| Fruit drink / fruit crush / juice drink | A ready-to-drink product that contains some fruit juice. Singapore's reg 175 requires only that it "shall contain fruit juice" — it sets no minimum percentage. Codex describes drinks diluted to about 10% juice or less in this category. | It does not mean mostly juice. The first ingredient is usually water, and sugar is usually second. |
| Cordial / squash / syrup | A concentrate you dilute yourself. Singapore's reg 174 requires at least 15% fruit juice and at least 25% sugar in the bottle as sold. Once you dilute it, the drink you actually consume is mostly sugar water with a little juice. | It does not mean the same as a fruit drink. It is a syrup, not a ready-to-drink juice, and the sugar figure on the bottle is for the undiluted syrup. |
| Cold-pressed / HPP | Juice pressed without heat, then treated with high pressure processing (HPP) instead of heat pasteurisation to kill bacteria. Because there is no heat step, more vitamin C survives than in pasteurised juice. | It does not mean raw or unprocessed. HPP is a processing step, and the juice still has a short chilled shelf life. |
| Freshly squeezed | Juice pressed and drunk within hours, with no pasteurisation and no storage. This is the only type that keeps the full vitamin C of the fruit. | It does not mean the juice from a hawker stall or a café that was pressed that morning and kept chilled all day is the same as juice pressed minutes ago — vitamin C starts falling as soon as juice meets air, light and heat. |
Not from concentrate. Oranges are squeezed, the juice is pasteurised, and then it is pumped into huge stainless-steel tanks with the oxygen removed so it does not go off. It can sit there for up to a year. Removing the oxygen also strips out the flavour, so before bottling the producer adds "flavour packs" — mixtures made from orange oils and essences. In the US these are classified as natural flavours and do not appear on the ingredient list. The juice is still 100% juice, and it is still pasteurised, but "not from concentrate" describes one processing step it skipped, not a short journey from grove to carton.
From concentrate. Juice is squeezed and then heated under vacuum to evaporate most of the water, leaving a thick concentrate that is cheap to ship and store. At the bottling plant, water is added back to bring it to the standard strength for that fruit. That standard is measured in Brix — the percentage of dissolved solids, mostly sugar, in the liquid. Codex sets the minimum Brix for reconstituted orange juice at 11.2–11.8, and for apple at 11.5. The Brix rule matters: a reconstituted juice is brought up to a fixed sweetness, and if the original fruit was less sweet than the standard, the reconstituted juice can end up slightly sweeter — and slightly higher in sugar per 100 ml — than the juice that was originally squeezed. That is one reason some from-concentrate orange juices show a little more sugar per 100 ml than NFC from the same fruit.
Cold-pressed / HPP. Fruit is pressed without heat, then the bottled juice is put under very high water pressure (typically around 600 MPa) for a few minutes. The pressure kills bacteria without heat, so heat-sensitive vitamin C survives better than in pasteurised juice. The trade-off is cost and shelf life: HPP juice is more expensive and must stay chilled, usually for a few weeks at most.
Nectar, fruit drinks and cordials. These start with juice or purée and add water and sugar. Nectar keeps the most fruit (25–50% by law, depending on the fruit); a fruit drink keeps less and the law in Singapore sets no minimum at all; a cordial is a syrup with at least 25% sugar in the bottle. In all three, the sugar on the panel is a mix of fruit sugar and added sugar — check the ingredient list for sugar, and check whether sugar appears before or after the juice.
This guide does rank juice types, because that is the question — but it ranks types, by three stated criteria: how little processing the juice went through, whether sugar was added, and how much of the pack is actually juice. It does not rank brands or products, and there is no score. Within one type, brands differ very little on nutrition; the type is the decision.
| Rank | Type | Juice content | Sugar per 100 ml (typical) | Vitamin C | Why it sits here |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Freshly squeezed / cold-pressed (HPP), drunk soon | 100% | About 9 g (orange) | Highest — about 124 mg per 250 ml glass of orange juice | No heat, no long storage, no flavour packs. The most vitamin C and the closest to the fruit. Still no fibre, and still about 22 g of sugar in a glass — a whole orange is better than its juice. |
| 2 | Not from concentrate (NFC), 100% juice | 100% | About 9 g (orange) | High — about 93 mg per 250 ml glass | One processing step skipped, no water removed and added back. The best of the shelf-stable cartons, though months in a tank and flavour packs mean it is not the same as fresh. |
| 3 | From concentrate / reconstituted, 100% juice | 100% | About 9–10 g (orange) | Good — about 83 mg per 250 ml glass | The same sugars, potassium and folate as NFC, with a little less vitamin C — heat concentration loses roughly 15–30% of it, and the Brix standard can make it marginally sweeter. The gap between rank 2 and rank 3 is small; the gap between rank 3 and rank 4 is large. |
| 4 | Nectar | 25–50% by law (50% for citrus) | Varies — read the panel | Less than juice, in proportion to the juice content | Half the pack (or less) is juice; the rest is water and added sugar. You are paying for juice and getting a sweetened drink. |
| 5 | Fruit drink / fruit crush / juice drink | Low — no minimum in Singapore law | Varies — read the panel | Low | Mostly water and sugar with some juice. The fruit name on the front is doing most of the work. |
| 6 | Cordial / squash / syrup (diluted to drink) | At least 15% in the bottle; far less once diluted | At least 25% sugar in the bottle as sold | Very low once diluted | A syrup, not a juice. The drink you actually consume is mostly sugar water. |
Vitamin C figures are per 250 ml (about 8 oz) of orange juice from published comparisons: freshly squeezed about 124 mg, NFC about 93 mg, from concentrate about 83–84 mg. Health Canada's nutrient file gives the same story per 100 g: fresh orange juice about 50 mg of vitamin C, chilled juice from concentrate about 34 mg. Figures vary by brand, fruit and batch — the ordering is stable, the exact milligrams are not.
Two honest qualifications. First, the sugar barely changes across ranks 1 to 3: fresh, NFC and from-concentrate orange juice all carry about 21–25 g of sugar in a 250 ml glass. Processing costs vitamin C, not sugar — so if sugar is your concern, the type does not save you; the portion does. Second, every juice on this list loses to the whole fruit. A whole orange has about 1.8 g of fibre per 100 g; its juice has about 0.2–0.3 g. The fibre is what slows the sugar down, and juicing removes it. HealthHub's advice is to keep 100% juice to no more than one cup a day, and only where whole fruit is not practical — for example, for older people who cannot chew whole fruit.
Singapore's Nutri-Grade grades drinks by sugar and saturated fat per 100 ml, and the drink takes the poorer of the two grades. The sugar bands are: A — 1 g or less, with no sweetener; B — more than 1 g up to 5 g; C — more than 5 g up to 10 g; D — more than 10 g. A drink graded C or D must show the mark on the front of the pack; A and B labelling is optional, and advertising for D drinks is banned.
Orange juice at about 9 g of sugar per 100 ml falls in band C — so a 100% orange juice with no added sugar is still a Grade C drink, and some 100% juices with a little more sugar are Grade D. That surprises people, and it is the system working as designed: Nutri-Grade measures sugar, and it does not distinguish natural fruit sugar from added sugar. HealthHub says so directly — juices are graded C or D because of naturally occurring sugar — and adds that some C and D drinks still have a place in moderation, including 100% juice for older people who cannot chew whole fruit, at no more than one cup a day.
Florida's Natural is the clearest example on the juice shelf of why the ingredient list matters more than the brand you remember. For decades it sold itself on two things: it was a cooperative of Florida growers, and it was the only national orange juice brand that was 100% Florida-grown and not from concentrate. "Not from concentrate" was its identity.
In May 2022, with little warning, the formulation changed. The carton now says it is "a premium blend of our Florida not-from-concentrate orange juice and the best orange juice from Mexico" — the Mexican part being orange juice concentrate. The explanation printed on the side of the carton is that Florida's orange harvest had fallen about 70% from a decade earlier, after years of citrus greening disease and bad weather, and there was simply not enough juice in Florida to fill the cartons.
Three things about the change are worth knowing:
In Singapore, the same blend is what is on the shelf now: Singapore seller listings describe Florida's Natural as a blend of Florida and Mexican juices, and current ingredient listings read "Water, Pasteurized Orange Juice, Concentrate Orange Juice" — water first, which is the giveaway that concentrate is in the mix. If you have been buying Florida's Natural for years because it was the NFC one, check the pack you buy today: the brand changed, and the shelf did not announce it.
These are the Food Regulations (regs 171–175, 184) as they apply to juice. They are category definitions, not health claims — they set what a product must be to use a name.
| Regulation | Category | What the law requires |
|---|---|---|
| 171 | Fruit juice | Unfermented liquid extracted from sound, ripe, fresh fruit — with or without added sugar, dextrose, invert sugar, liquid glucose, permitted colouring, preservatives and ascorbic acid. Juice made by diluting concentrate must add back the water that was removed, and must say so on the label in letters at least 3 mm high. |
| 172 | Concentrated fruit juice | Fruit juice reduced by removing water to not more than 50% of its original volume, with or without ascorbic acid and permitted colouring. |
| 173 | Nectar | Pulpy fruit product from the whole edible fruit, blended with water, sugar and permitted acids and colouring. Minimum fruit content: citrus 50%, peach and pear 40%, apricot 35%, other fruits 25%. |
| 174 | Fruit juice cordials, squashes or syrups | Fruit juices, water and sugar, with permitted acids, flavouring, colouring and preservatives. At least 15% fruit juice and at least 25% sugar in the bottle as sold. |
| 175 | Fruit drinks or fruit crushes | A drink for consumption without dilution that "shall contain fruit juice". No minimum juice percentage is set. |
| 184 | Drinks named after a fruit | A ready-to-drink product that uses a fruit's name but contains none of that fruit's juice must be labelled "(fruit) — ade", "(fruit) flavoured drink", or "Imitation (fruit) drink". |
One gap worth naming: Singapore's regulations do not define "100% fruit juice" as a category, and reg 171 permits added sugar in fruit juice. So "100%" on a Singapore pack is a claim that must be truthful under the general labelling rules, not a defined legal standard — and the only way to verify it is the ingredient list. The Codex standard (CXS 247-2005) is the international reference most regulators use: juice is directly expressed or reconstituted to a minimum Brix, nectar is 25–50% juice by fruit, and "from concentrate", "reconstituted" and any added sugar must be declared near the name.
Four checks, in order, taking about thirty seconds:
Pages where these checks are most useful: fresh orange juice, fresh apple juice, cranberry juice, coconut juice and cordials and syrup drinks, plus the sugar and salt guide and the daily recommended nutrients guide.