Is Shop-Bought Juice Healthy?

It Depends What Is In It, Not What It Says

Shop-bought juice is not poison and nobody needs to feel bad about a glass of orange juice. But the words on the front of the carton are a poor guide to what is inside and the one that matters most is not on the front at all. It is the sugar figure on the back, per 100ml.

The genuinely useful distinction is not premium versus budget, or fresh versus concentrate. It is fruit-led versus vegetable-led and that difference is far larger than any of the others.

What the Label Words Mean

Term	What it actually means
From concentrate	The juice was pressed, the water removed for shipping, then water added back before bottling
Not from concentrate	Pressed and bottled without that step. Usually pasteurised, often stored in tanks for months first
Freshly squeezed	Pressed recently and not heat-treated. The shortest shelf life on the shelf
Juice drink	Not 100 per cent juice. Water, sweeteners or added sugar are in there. Check the ingredients
Smoothie	Blended rather than pressed, so it keeps the fibre. Usually higher in sugar per serving because of the fruit volume
No added sugar	Nothing was added. The fruit sugar already present is untouched and can still be substantial

"No added sugar" is the one that misleads most often. It is entirely accurate and it tells you almost nothing, because nobody was adding sugar to pure orange juice in the first place.

What Is Actually in the Glass

The photograph at the top of this page is not exaggerated. A 250ml glass of shop-bought orange juice contains somewhere around 26g of sugar, which is roughly six teaspoons. An analysis of 32 supermarket orange juices found a range from 7.6g to 11g per 100ml and supermarket apple juices ran from 8.7g to 11.2g per 100ml. There is variation between products, but the whole range sits high.

The wrinkle is what kind of sugar it counts as. Sugar inside a whole orange is bound up in the fruit's structure and is not classed as free sugar. Press that orange and the sugars are released from the cells, at which point they are classed as free sugars, the same category as the sugar in a biscuit. That is a UK definition rather than an opinion and it is why fruit juice appears in guidance on cutting sugar.

For scale: British Heart Foundation guidance puts a 150ml glass of fruit juice at around 12g of free sugars, against a recommended daily maximum of roughly 30g for an adult. One modest glass is a large share of the day's allowance.

Freshly Squeezed Is Not the Answer

This is the part that catches people out. Freshly squeezed orange juice contains a similar amount of sugar to the stuff from concentrate. Pressing does not remove sugar and paying more does not either. A premium chilled orange juice and a budget carton are far closer on sugar than the price gap suggests.

Freshly squeezed is genuinely better in other ways: no heat treatment, better flavour, more of the vitamin C intact. It is simply not the fix for the sugar, because the sugar was in the oranges.

What Fruit Juice Does Give You

None of this makes fruit juice worthless and pretending otherwise would be as unhelpful as the marketing. A glass of orange juice is a real source of vitamin C, it contains potassium and folate and in the UK a 150ml serving counts as one of your five a day. That is more than can be said for most things people drink at breakfast.

The limits are worth knowing though. Only one glass counts towards five a day no matter how much you drink and the fibre is gone, which is exactly why the sugars are absorbed quickly. Treat it as a drink with some genuine nutritional content rather than as a health measure and you will not go far wrong.

Fruit-Led Versus Vegetable-Led

Here is the distinction that actually changes the numbers. Fruit is sweet because it is full of sugar. Most vegetables are not. Celery, cucumber and leafy greens carry very little, so a juice built on those sits in an entirely different place from one built on oranges or apples.

Type	Where the sugar sits
Orange or apple juice	High. Roughly 8 to 11g per 100ml
Fruit-led "green" juice with apple as the first ingredient	Closer to fruit juice than the colour suggests
Vegetable-led green juice	Considerably lower. The leaves and cucumber carry very little
Straight celery juice	The lowest of the lot

This is why the ingredients list matters more than the colour or the word on the front. Ingredients are listed in order of weight, so if apple comes first you are drinking mostly apple whatever the picture on the label suggests. Low-sugar green juice goes through this in detail.

Worth saying plainly: some of our own juices contain apple and carrot and they carry more sugar than the pure vegetable ones do. The figure is on every product page. That is the point of putting it there.

Four Things Worth Checking

Check	Why
The first ingredient	Listed by weight, so it tells you what you are mostly drinking
Sugar per 100ml	The only figure that lets you compare two products fairly
Serving size on the front	Often 150ml or 200ml, which makes the per-serving figure look smaller than the glass you pour
Where it is sold	Ambient means heat-treated. Chilled with weeks of life means treated after pressing. See frozen, HPP or pasteurised

The Lower-Sugar End

Range	Pick this if
Celery juice	You want the lowest sugar of anything we make
Green juices	You want leaves in the glass and low sugar
Beetroot juices	You want the most-researched vegetable in the aisle
Carrot juices	You want the easiest way into vegetable juice
Juice shots	You would rather have something small and concentrated
Cleanse programmes	You want a structured multi-day set

Vegetables First

Cold-pressed, flash-frozen at the press and delivered frozen across the UK. Browse the full cold-pressed juice range, or start with the lower-sugar end:

The Bottom Line

Shop-bought fruit juice gives you vitamin C and one of your five a day and it carries about six teaspoons of sugar in a 250ml glass. Freshly squeezed is no lower, because the sugar came from the fruit rather than the process. From concentrate matters less than people think. What actually moves the number is whether the juice is built on fruit or on vegetables and the ingredients list tells you that in a second because it runs in order of weight. Enjoy the orange juice if you like it. Just do not mistake it for the healthiest thing in the fridge.

More in cold-pressed juice questions, or browse everything in the cold-pressed hub.

Where to Start

Browse the full cold-pressed juice range, or go straight to Daily Celery Juice, Fresh Greens or the Daily Juice Box.

Related reading

• Cold-pressed juice recipes
• Flash-frozen juice
• What is cold-pressed juice
• Cold-pressed juice benefits
• Cold-pressed vs centrifugal juice
• Cold-pressed juice vs HPP
• Is juicing good for you

By goal

• Juices for energy
• Juice for gut health

Related ingredient hubs

• Greens
• Celery
• Carrot