The Difference Of Fruit Flavor Drinks, Fruit Juice, FC Fruit Juice And NFC Fruit Juice

Fruit and vegetable juices are a category of soft drinks. This category includes three categories: fruit and vegetable juice (pulp), concentrated fruit and vegetable juice (pulp), and fruit and vegetable juice (pulp) beverages. But when we go to the supermarket to choose our favorite juice, we find there are so many kind of fruit juice, some marked juice flavor drinks, fruit pulp(nectar) juice, FC juice, 100% NFC juice, we get confused about the names of the various juice drinks, so what is the difference between these juices? Today we will have a brief introduction of these different fruit juice drinks: fruit flavor drinks, fruit pulp, FC fruit juice and NFC fruit juice.

This kind of juice drinks is not a juice strictly speaking, because it does not include any fruit pulp or juice. Its main raw ingredients are fruit flavors, water and syrup, and the fruit flavors are not made from fruits, which are synthesized with chemical substances. But when you drink this type of drink, it has the flavor of fruits. The fruit flavor drinks are the lowest cost among all kinds of fruit juice because the raw materials and processing methods for this type of drink are the simplest and cheapest. With the improvement of human living standards, there are fewer of this type of juice drink on the market, but in some poorest countries, some small workshops are still producing this kind of juice drink. They use crude equipment with one blending tank to mix all the ingredients, they use the simple filler to fill into bottles or just do the manually filling. The sanitary of the juice production line is also terrible.

This type drinks are using concentrated fruit juice or fruit powder(10%-20%), RO pure water(70%-75%), syrup(3%-5%), other additives(3%-5%) like flavor, antiseptic, vitamin C, pigment as raw materials, and then mix them together, after sterilizing, at last filled into small packages like bottles or pouches. The fruit juice drinks are very popular in developing countries like Africa, Southeast Asia and South Asia because of the relatively low price. The shelf life can reach to 12 months in ambient temperature after pasteurizing.

To produce this type of juice we usually choose fruits that are rich in pulp(citrus, mango, coconut) as raw materials, then mix with water and other ingredients, after sterilizing filled into bottles or tin cans. This type of fruit juice contains about 20%-40% fruit pulp, and the pulp size is 3-5mm. When producing this type of juice, we need to pay attention to that we need to use tubular type sterilizer to process the fruit juice with particles, and for filling, we have two steps, firstly filling the fruit pulp, the second process fill the fruit juice.

Some country also calls this type of juice as squash drinks, the squash drinks is a  type of fruit beverage that contain at least 25% percent juice and 45% total soluble solids. It also contains about 1% acidity and 350ppm sulphur dioxide and 600ppm sodium benzoate (for coloured juices). It is diluted before being served in the proportion of 1:3. Squash can be prepared from a wide variety of fruit like mango, mandarin orange, lime/lemons, guava, pineapple, papaya, litchi, pomegranate, plum, etc.

FC fruit juice is short for concentrated fruit juice, also called reconstituted juice dilution line, juice repacking line. This kind fruit juice use concentrated fruit juice as raw materials, then use RO pure water and other additives to dilute the juice, after sterilizing, then filled into small packages. The FC fruit juice contains about 10%-90% fruit pulp, it is similar to fruit juice drinks but the fruit pulp is thicker. It can also use two or more concentrated fruit juices as raw materials to produce compound fruit juices.

NFC fruit juice stands for not from concentrated fruit juice, it use fresh fruits as raw materials, then use cold press method to extract juice, after we get fresh fruit juice, we use PASTEURIZER or HPP sterilizer to process the fruit juice, finally the sterilized fruit juice will be filled into bottles or aseptic cartons. This type fruit juice is 100% pure, organic fruit juice. As the entire processing is little affected by heat treatment, the flavor and nutrition of the juice are retained to the greatest extent. And there is no other additives in this type fruit juice, so in order to get long shelf life, the whole process need to be aseptic, which means the cost for producing this type fruit juice is very big. Generally speaking, large and medium-sized factories will choose to invest in the production of this type of juice. Because the concept of natural ,organic and health gradually gains popularity, this NFC juice is more and more popular among young people. In European and North American countries, the consumption of this NFC juice has gradually become a mainstream trend.

An infographic to illustrate the difference among these drinks: