Big Shot Fruit Punch: A punch into your health

December 5, 2012 |

When you are shopping for a healthy soft drink, there is useful tip to follow: Skip all kinds of punches, including fruit,  berry,  citrus , etc. It looks as if beverage industry has selected them for experimenting with introduction of the nastiest chemicals into the American diet. Remember, punches usually contain little or no fruit juices. Here is another example of the kind: New Orleans Own Big Shot Fruit Punch.

DyeDiet Doesn’t Buy It!

Big Shot Fruit Punch: Risk, Nutrition and Dye ContentBig Shot Fruit Punch: Risk, Nutrition and Dye Content

The food additives to avoid are:

  • Red 40 Please read a PDF file Food Dyes: A Rainbow of Risks. Artificial color content was found 50 mg of Red 40 per bottle
  • Sodium benzoate is a preservative.  According to the Wikipedia, in combination with acids, such as ascorbic acid (vitamin C) or citric acid, sodium benzoate and potassium benzoate may produce benzene, a known carcinogen. It seems, however, that in most beverages that contain the combination of both, the benzene levels are below those considered dangerous for consumption. Ultimately, you decide if you want to take the risk or not. I don’t.
  • Artificial flavors are usually simple synthetic chemicals that are added to mimic complex natural flavors

Other food additives include Glyceryl abietate (yellow segment, not dangerous) another name for Glycerol ester of rosin which is a food additive used as an emulsifier and stabilizer, to keep oils in suspension in water. You need to know that this one is much lesser evil than brominated vegetable oil emulsifier you can find in many cloudy-looking drinks like Squirt, Mountain Dew and others.

Another food additive is Gum acacia (also gum arabic), a complex mixture of glycoproteins and polysaccharides. Gum acacia is used as a stabilizer. Fortunately, gum acacia is perfectly safe (green segment in the diagram). On the top of all the above you will get ~ 100 g of High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) with every bottle of the punch.

Finally, drinking Big Shot Fruit Punch will put you at a significant health risk of: DDFI = 22/11 = 2 and will give you miserable nutritional value of  DDNF = 11/30 ~ 0.4. Does this worth a dollar? Not mine…

Bottom line. Why to drink this chemically contaminated water made luscious with 25 teaspoons of HFCS? By drinking it you allow the chemicals to punch your health in the vital systems which may eventually be weakened or corrupted. Instead, you may want to consider Arizona Fruit Punch or Mott’s For Tots Fruit Punch. But the golden rule is that you don’t substitute any soft drink for pure plain water – what our body needs the most. Hydrate Yourself Straight!

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Category: Food and cancer, Food Dyes Exposure, Food Terrorism, Soft drinks

Comments (6)

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  1. benamore says:

    My favorite drinks in order:
    1. Coke
    2. Vanilla Coke
    3. Root beer
    4. Fanta strawberry
    5. Fanta lime
    6. Fanta grape
    7. Fanta orange
    8. Sprite
    9. Powerade
    10. Water

  2. benamore says:

    Please review Fiber One products (they contain aspartame).