Juice drinks slammed over content

Drinks aimed at children often contain very little real juice

Food campaigners say parents are unwittingly paying up to £34 a litre for fruit juice when they buy it in the form of "juice drinks".

A survey by the Food Commission found products labelled as juice drinks contain as little as 5% fruit juice.

The group says parents are being misled by healthy sounding descriptions and paying an "exorbitant" price for juice.

But the manufacturers say this is a bizarre comparison, and that shoppers know when a drink is pure juice or not.

Among the juice drinks highlighted in the survey are blackcurrant Ribena, which contains 6% juice; Robinsons Fruit Shoot Apple No Added Sugar which contains 11% and Calypso Organic Forest Fruits which contains 10%.

'Value for money'

If parents bought pure juice at the same price per millilitre charged for these and other juice drinks, they would pay between £3.53 and £34.67 per litre, the commission said.

"The description 'juice drink' typically means watered-down juice, with sugar, sweeteners, colours and flavours. These are added to make low-juice drinks seem fruitier than they really are," said policy officer Kath Dalmeny.

But a spokesman for Princes Soft Drinks, which makes 'Twist n Squeeze' drinks - 5% juice - claimed at between 19p and 29p per 200ml bottle the product offered good value for money.

"It is one of the lowest priced juice products on the market and meets the demand for children who want to buy a drink with their pocket money," he said.

A representative for Calypso said: "None of these drinks are pure. It is fairly obvious that if you had a pure blackcurrant drink, for example, it would be intensely sweet and not at all what children want."