Worried out the sugar in your orange juice? Ferment it!

By 5. September 2013Blog, Health, Nutrition

Just one for the adults unfortunately, scientists from Spain have come up with a novel way of getting one of the 5 a day but with less sugar which has been highlighted recently by the Obesity expert Prof. Robert Lustig as being “toxic”.

Actually, the idea behind the paper was to combine the goodness from orange juice such as the high ascorbic acid, carotenoid, and flavonoid content with the apparent protective effects seen from a moderate intake of alcohol against coronary heart disease.

They found that after fermentation the amount of carotenoids and flavanoids had significantly increased, the ascorbic acid levels did not differ significantly and only the total phenolics decreased.

People who like to have a bit of a tipple should not get too excited though, the researchers wanted to produce something with only a low level of alcohol and so used a controlled fermentation to end with an alcohol content of only 0.87%. Previous studies had used spontaneous fermentation ending with considerable higher alcohol contents of approx. 12%.  The fermentable sugars in the juice had been reduced by half from nearly 50g/l to 25g/l.

As always we ask the question, how does it taste though?

The publication is available from the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry website.