Table of 29 juices: integral, nectar and juice drink side by side

What the law calls each thing

The three words have legal definitions, and the difference between them is the amount of fruit.

Integral juice. Decree 6.871 of 2009, in article 18, paragraph 10, defines it: "The designation integral shall be exclusive to juice with no added sugars and in its natural concentration, and the use of such designation for reconstituted juice is forbidden." In other words, fruit and nothing else, at the concentration the fruit delivers.

Nectar. The same decree, in article 21: "Nectar is the unfermented beverage obtained by diluting in drinking water the edible part of the plant or its extract, with added sugars, intended for direct consumption." Water, fruit and sugar, by definition.

Juice drink. Article 22: "Refresco, or fruit or vegetable drink, is the unfermented beverage obtained by diluting fruit juice, pulp or vegetable extract of its origin in drinking water, with or without added sugars." It is the same principle as nectar, with much less fruit.

How much fruit each one must contain

The minimum percentages are not in the decree, but in the rules of the Ministry of Agriculture. This table is the practical part of the article.

The phrase the law requires and nobody reads

"No added sugars" is the most misunderstood claim in the supermarket. It does not mean the product is low in sugar. It means, only, that no sugar was added at the factory.

The rule is very specific about this. To use the phrase, the product may not contain added sugars, nor ingredients that contain added sugars, nor naturally sweet ingredients used as a sugar substitute, nor a manufacturing process that raises the sugar content of the final product. None of this prevents the product from being naturally very sweet.

And the rule itself acknowledges this: when the product does not meet the criterion of free of sugars, it is required to carry, next to the claim, the phrase "contains sugars inherent to the ingredients". That phrase exists precisely because the lawmaker knew that "no added sugars" would be read as "no sugar". It is usually printed in much smaller type than the claim it corrects.

Rich in vitamin C is easier than it looks

"Source of vitamin C" requires the product to have at least 15% of the recommended daily intake. "Rich in" or "high content" requires 30%. These are percentages low enough that a sweetened juice can reach either one with the vitamin C that already comes from the fruit, or with cheap fortification.

The detail that matters: the rule treats each nutrient in isolation. There is no rule preventing a product from stamping "rich in vitamin C" on the front while, at the same time, meeting the criterion for high added sugar content. The two things coexist on the same label with no legal contradiction whatsoever.

In the comparator above, the vitamin C column has the widest gap between first and last place. It is worth sorting by it before believing any seal.

The picture of the fruit promises nothing

Nowhere in Brazilian legislation is there a rule linking the illustration of a fruit on the package to a minimum percentage of that fruit in the product. What exists is a general clause: RDC 259 of 2002 forbids the label, including its illustrations and graphic representations, from misleading the consumer about the nature and composition of the food.

In practice, this clause is only invoked in evident cases, such as a fruit drawn on a product that does not contain that fruit. A large, glossy orange on a drink with 20% orange juice is perfectly legal. The gap is the rule, not the exception.

Why the mind gets this category so wrong

This has been measured, and the size of the error is larger than intuition suggests.

In a survey of parents in the United States, only 5% considered soda a healthy drink for their children, against 30% who considered a "fruit drink" healthy, that is, six times more. The sugar content of the two products compared was nearly identical: 27 grams versus 30 grams in the same cup measure.

In another study, in the United Kingdom, people underestimated the sugar in fruit juice by 48% and overestimated that of soda by 12%. The error is not random: it has a direction, and the direction always favors the product that looks natural.

So is juice bad for you?

That is not what the evidence shows, and it is worth resisting the temptation to exaggerate the conclusion just because the first half of this text was critical.

The most robust review on 100% juice and body weight pooled 42 studies, with nearly 46 thousand children and more than 268 thousand adults. In children, each additional daily serving was associated with a small but consistent gain in body mass index, of 0.03 per serving. In adults, the result depends on the adjustment: without controlling total energy intake, a gain of 0.21 kg appears; controlling for energy, the signal flips to minus 0.08 kg. In randomized clinical trials with adults, there was no statistically significant effect on weight.

The honest reading of this is that juice seems to act through the calories it carries, not through something of its own. It differs from sugary soda, whose evidence of harm is stronger and more consistent. And it differs from whole fruit, which delivers the same fruit with fiber, volume and chewing, three things the blender removes.

For the World Health Organization, however, the sugar in juice goes into the same tally as the sugar in soda. The definition of free sugars in the 2015 guideline includes, in so many words, the sugars naturally present in fruit juices and in fruit juice concentrates. Whole fruit is not included. The distinction is not about the origin of the sugar, it is about the sugar no longer being locked in the structure of the fruit.

What to do with the table

• Look for the percentage of fruit on the front of the box. In nectar and tropical juice it is mandatory and large. It is the quickest information to check and the one that most separates similar products.
• Read the added sugar column before the calorie one. It answers where the sweetness comes from, which is a different question from how much it weighs.
• Sort by the vitamin C column. The gap between first and last runs to tens of times, among products sold side by side on the same appeal.
• Check the source of each line. The source column says whether the number came from the manufacturer, from a retailer reproducing the label, or from an official government table, and the lines where sources diverge state the problem right below.

The boundary

Nothing here is consumption guidance. Whether juice fits into your day, in what amount and at what time, depends on your expenditure, on the rest of what you eat, and on conditions only a professional can assess. This text compares labels and explains rules; it does not replace a dietitian, and does not try to.

Why log it

A single glass of juice decides nothing. The pattern of months decides, and that is what nobody can reconstruct from memory. Darwin keeps that history over time, so you can see the trend line instead of judging by today, and so the conversation with a dietitian starts from data rather than recollection.

If you want to follow the same line, the soda comparator breaks down the label rules that allow a zero to be not zero, the beer and wine ones run the same math for alcohol, and the food database with official data has the rest.