PRODUCT REVIEW: Wal-Mart Great Value V8 Fusion

Well, much like a musician when Weird Al parodies their work, or an entertainer being roasted by the Friars' Club, a product knows that it's hit when Wal-Mart produces a "Great Value" rip-off. V8 Fusion is officially a mega-hit.

The Great Value version is fifty-nine cents cheaper, $2.39 compared to $2.98, and after checking the ingredients and nutrition info, I had hopes that the flavors would be similar. No such luck. As you can see from the photo, the Great Value variant is significantly lighter in color. The same effect can be seen in the taste. It's both less flavorful and more watery in texture. The official V8 is better in ever regard.

Great Value's juice isn't bad, but one of the reasons why the Fusion is such a hit is because it tastes very good in pretty much every way. It's a tasty combination of vegetable and fruit juices that even picky (also known as pricky) children would like. Wal-Mart's made the juice taste cheaper and more like "kid's" juice. It's not bad enough to not recommend, but at the same time, I have a hard time recommending it. If budget is a serious concern, and you buy a LOT of this stuff, that sixty cents per bottle could mean significant savings over a year. But if if you don't fit that scenario, buy the V8.

Great Value V8 Fusion: RECOMMENDED

PRODUCT REVIEW: V8 Fusion With Green Tea

I love V8 Fusion, as does, apparently, the entire country. It's been a massive, runaway success for the company, selling tens of millions in product in its first year alone. It's proven to be big enough of a hit where Wal-Mart has even introduced its own Great Value version of the drink.

Capitalizing on this success, V8 continues to release new versions of Fusion and has now introduced an entirely new variant, a sort of double-fusion of Fusion and green tea. I was hyped and grabbed the bottle. I assumed that they just soaked a green tea bag in V8 fusion, but no. That would have been hoping too much, and it also gives me an idea to just do that myself.

V8 Fusion with tea is 50% juice and 50% tea, and the 50% that's tea has been sweetened with, ugh, sucralose. Why couldn't they have just used extra grape juice, or, sacrilege, sugar. Mercifully, the sucralose flavor is mild, here. No, the biggest problem is that the flavor is just so bland and mild compared to ordinary Fusion. That 50% that isn't juice is sorely missed. The flavor is hollow, you kinda' sorta' taste the green tea, and the sucralose makes itself known very quickly as the flavor leaves your palate. And, as with most sucralose-sweetened drinks, that flavor is the last one to leave your tongue after you stop drinking it.

Unlike drinks completely flavored with Splenda or aspartame, which means diet or diabetes, this is not zero calorie nor zero sugar. It has 10g of sugar and 50cal per serving. This is a drink that you drink because you want it, not because you're limited in your choices. As such, the use of sucralose is open to criticism. It makes it taste bad. Yes, yes, I know that not everyone can detect the difference; but I can, and so can most of my friends.

I initially puzzled, who is this drink for?! It's not diabetes or diet friendly, but it's flavor is negatively affected by the presence of sucralose. Why would they put sucralose in at all? Then it hit me. I'm coming at this drink from the wrong angle. It is not V8 Fusion. It is bottled, pre-sweetened green tea with juices added. This is for people who drink bottled Green Tea like crazy, because they think that it's somehow healthy, but want something that tastes, I dunno', good.

That is where my dislike is rooted; the bottle is branded incorrectly. If they had called this Lipton Green Tea with V8 Fusion added, I would never have even considered it, and I would have never been disappointed. As such, if you come at the bottle with this perspective, you won't be disappointed. In fact, you might be ecstatic to find bottled Lipton tea that doesn't taste like butthole. But I'm not reviewing Lipton, I'm reviewing V8 Fusion, and this concoction just isn't up to snuff.

V8 Fusion with Green Tea: NOT RECOMMENDED

Is Orange Juice With Pulp Better For You?

All you have to do to understand the complex slurry of nutrients in your average piece of fruit is watch any of the countless documentaries about food being produced. You can watch The Future of Food or Food Inc., or read some random book about diet and learn about pectin, fiber, sugar, and the extra calories burned by eating raw food. So this raises an obvious question for the American breakfast eater: is OJ with pulp better for us?

It's not an easy question to answer. According to Tropicana, with pulp or without, the nutrition facts for orange juice are identical. But as we all know, the nutrition facts that companies are required to print are completely inadequate — if for no other reason than we still don't fully understand the way our body digests food. For example, it would be nigh-on impossible to get fat on raw apples, but you could easily pack on the pounds with apple juice or pan-seared apples.

Also, it just seems obvious that there has to be something in that pulp. It can't just be nothing. So what the hell is it? Well, scientifically, they're vesicles. Specialized cells that do nothing but store juice. The membrane of those cells is what comprises the pulp.

Picture stolen from Ciprex

As you can see from the diagram, those cells only make up about 2.7% of the total volume of the orange, so whatever they're made of, it doesn't comprise much. The vast majority of what is in an orange is in the juice. Unless you count the peel, which no one eats. Except for weirdos.

As with a lot of nutritional things, if the information is identical, we have to turn to scientific research for some kind of quantifiable benefit. Lucky for us, we have precisely that!

Orange pulp improves antioxidant status and suppresses lipid peroxidation in orchidectomized male rats

Nutrition, Volume 23, Issues 7-8, July-August 2007, Pages 617-621

Abstract:
Objective- Oxidative stress is linked to an increased incidence of cardiovascular disease in men. The objective of this research was to delineate whether daily consumption of orange pulp (OP) modifies antioxidant status and decreases cardiovascular risk factors in orchidectomized rats.

Methods- In the present study, 45 1-y-old male rats were randomized to a sham-control group (n = 9) and an orchidectomized group (n = 36). The orchidectomized group was equally divided among the following five treatments: orchidectomy (ORX), ORX + 2.5% OP, ORX + 5% OP, and ORX + 10% OP.

One hundred twenty days after the study began, all rats were sacrificed and plasma was harvested for its antioxidant status, C-reactive protein (CRP), lipid profile, and indices of peroxidation. Superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase activities in the liver were also monitored.

Results- Orchidectomy decreased (P < 0.05) plasma levels of antioxidant, SOD, catalase, and CRP and increased (P < 0.05) plasma levels of malondialdehyde, nitrite, and lipid profile compared with the sham-control group. In contrast to ORX, ORX + OP increased (P < 0.05) plasma antioxidant, dose-dependently increased (P < 0.05) SOD and catalase, decreased (P < 0.05) plasma malondialdehyde, nitrite, cholesterol, and triacylglycerol concentrations in the liver; and had no effect (P > 0.1) on plasma CRP or lipid profiles.

Conclusion- The beneficial effect of eating an orange is demonstrated by the increasing antioxidant status and by the decreasing peroxidation independent of plasma triacylglycerol, cholesterol, or CRP concentrations.

So it IS better for you to keep the pulp in the OJ... but for some unknown reason. Whatever the hell pulp is can be turned into fiber and other things for food alteration, but it's not fiber when we get it, nor does it affect the nutrition label.

Pulp contains a lot of flavonoids. In fact in your average orange, nearly all of the flavonoids are contained in the pulp. And flavonoids don't show up on any label, but our body does something with them, so is there any benefit to consuming them. As this study shows, the flavonoids do not have a direct effect on the body, but instead seem to stimulate the body's own waste-removal systems, which pumps more of the "bad stuff" out of our system. That somewhat jives with what we read in the previous journal entry.

So, still, it seems that we can be at least somewhat confident in the belief that OJ with pulp is better than without, but it is a very mild and indirect effect. If your diet is otherwise healthy and balanced, drinking pulp-free OJ, if that's your predilection, is no worse than drinking OJ that's practically a solid.

But is eating an orange better than the juice? Considering that diagram, and seeing that what we actually eat in an orange is primarily juice anyhow, what's the huge benefit to eating the fruit? I think that our own behavior has more to do with this than anything. An 8oz glass of OJ requires upwards of five oranges. A person can easily bang back 8oz of juice, and likely more. But eat five oranges in a sitting? Very few people do that. The process just naturally results in fewer calories.

I also think that the simple process of digesting results in fewer net calories in an ounce-for-ounce comparison. Even though there is pulp in OJ, it's been heavily machined. Much of the energy that would have been expended by our jaws and stomachs in processing the food has already been done, meaning more easy calories. Much of the raw food movement is predicated heavily on this idea, but I suspect, and the scientific evidence indicates, that this is a small effect.

Still, I think the conclusion to be reached is that the difference between OJ with and without pulp is very small and, if anything, indirect. You can achieve it by simply having a good, all-around diet. The difference between an actual orange and juice is nothing more than calories. So if you watch your calories around the OJ, eat, drink, it's whatever you feel like.

UPDATE 6/14/2010:

Previously, I had said that there is no difference in taste between OJ with or without pulp. That was apparently incorrect. I had never noticed before, but a recent taste test of juices showed pretty conclusively that OJ with pulp is lower on both sourness and bitterness. The differences are small, but noticeable. If you strongly prefer OJ without pulp, you're not sacrificing much.

BUT, if you want juice with absolutely fantastic flavor, pick up a bottle of Orchid Island, which came in first in that same taste test. You can buy it branded as Dave's own OJ at most Dave's Markets in Rhode Island. They don't keep it near the ordinary OJ, they usually store it in that gourmet juice section of the produce aisle. Is Orchid Island worth twice the price? Amazingly, yeah. It is. It tastes significantly better than any of the major brands. It's a truly delicious juice.