Ocean Spray's Light Cranberry Juice Cocktail

I've been looking into quite a few drinks lately, shining some light on their ingredients. Ocean Spray's Light Cranberry Juice Cocktail contains 27% fruit juice and has the following ingredients:

1. Water
2. Cranberry Juice from Concentrate
3. Fructose
4. Natural Flavors
5. Pectin
6. Sodium Citrate
7. Acesulfame Potassium
8. Sucralose (splenda brand)

I'm pretty sure that Ocean Spray doesn't want to public to figure out what a lot of these things are. So, being me, I decided to figure out.

I found the following on Wikipedia:

Fructose:

Fructose (also levulose or laevulose) is a simple reducing sugar found in many foods and is one of the three important dietary monosaccharides along with glucose and galactose. Honey, tree fruits, berries, melons, and some root vegetables, such as beets, sweet potatoes, parsnips, and onions, contain fructose, usually in combination with glucose in the form of sucrose. Fructose is also derived from the digestion of granulated table sugar (sucrose), a disaccharide consisting of glucose and fructose.

Crystalline fructose and high-fructose corn syrup are often mistakenly confused as the same product. The former is produced from a fructose-enriched corn syrup which results in a finished product of at least 98% fructose. The latter is usually supplied as a mixture of nearly equal amounts of fructose and glucose.

Pectin:

Pectin (from Greek πηκτικός - pektikos, "congealed, curdled"^[1]) is a structural heteropolysaccharide contained in the primary cell walls of terrestrial plants. It was first isolated and described in 1825 by Henri Braconnot^[2].

It is produced commercially as a white to light brown powder, mainly extracted from citrus fruits, and is used in food as a gelling agent particularly in jams and jellies. It is also used in fillings, sweets, as a stabilizer in fruit juices and milk drinks and as a source of dietary fiber.

Sodium Citrate:

Sodium citrate usually refers to trisodium citrate, though it can refer to any of the sodium salts of citric acid:

• Monosodium citrate
• Disodium citrate
• Trisodium citrate

Trisodium Citrate:

Trisodium citrate has the chemical formula of Na₃C₃H₅O(CO₂)₃. It possesses a saline, or mildly tart, flavor. Trisodium citrate is chiefly used as a food additive, usually for flavor or as a preservative.


Acesulfame Potassium:

Acesulfame potassium is a calorie-free artificial sweetener, also known as Acesulfame K or Ace K (K being the symbol for potassium), and marketed under the trade names Sunett and Sweet One. In the European Union, it is known under the E number (additive code) E950. It was discovered accidentally in 1967 by German chemist Karl Clauss at Hoechst AG (now Nutrinova).^[1] In chemical structure, acesulfame potassium is the potassium salt of 6-methyl-1,2,3- oxathiazine-4(3H)-one 2,2-dioxide. It is a white crystalline powder with molecular formula C₄H₄KNO₄S and a molecular weight of 201.24.^[2]

Sucralose:

Sucralose is a zero-calorie sugar substitute artificial sweetener. In the European Union, it is also known under the E number (additive code) E955. Sucralose is approximately 600 times as sweet as sucrose (table sugar),^[2] twice as sweet as saccharin, and 3.3 times as sweet as aspartame. Unlike aspartame, it is stable under heat and over a broad range of pH conditions. Therefore, it can be used in baking or in products that require a longer shelf life. The commercial success of sucralose-based products stems from its favorable comparison to other low-calorie sweeteners in terms of taste, stability, and safety.^[3]

Sucralose is typically added to foods in very small quantities. Sucralose products manufactured in the US for domestic consumption are commonly formulated by the addition of "bulking" ingredients (e.g. dextrose, maltodextrin) to give a degree of sweetness per unit weight comparable to sucrose, and to give some products an appearance similar to granular sugar. Some examples of these sweeteners are Splenda and SucraPlus.

Isn't that freaky???

M