Choose Cloudy Apple Juice, Clearly
It's not ideal for beach days, but cloudy does beat clear when it comes to apple juice.
Depending on how much pectin is removed during processing, apple juice varieties are either completely translucent or a bit murky. Choose the cloudy stuff. It contains more disease-fighting antioxidants.
Fabulous Phenols
Apples are full of cell-protecting phenols -- antioxidant-like compounds that fend off aging and diseases like Alzheimer's and cancer. When researchers compared see-through apple juice to the cloudy stuff, the muddled version was a clear winner on two fronts: It had more phenols and it mopped up more cell-damaging free radicals.
Why Clear Has Less
Clear apple juice goes through extra processing that makes it translucent. And that process appears to zap the juice's phenolic content, especially the procyanidins -- the predominant phenol in all apples (and red wine).
Apple variety can make a difference in nutritional value, too. Which apple variety is most nutritious? Read this tip.
RealAge Benefit:
Eating 5 servings of fruit a day can make your RealAge 1.4 years younger.Comparative study of polyphenolic content and antiradical activity of cloudy and clear apple juices. Oszmianski, J., Wolniak, M., Wojdylo, A., Wawer, I., Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture 2007 Jan;87(4):573-579.
