What we're really asking is, will drinking that juice actually prevent a cold?

If it's loaded with preservatives, which tax the liver and keep it from dealing with the extra stress of a cold, sugar, which competes with vitamin C for uptake into the immune cells making them less able to fight off infection, or artificial colour, again taxing the liver, then the answer is likely "no".

Introducing these harmful ingredients into your system is going to have the opposite effect of helping with a cold, even if there is vitamin C included.

This opens up an interesting discussion on processed foods and their health claims. It's important to note that processed food companies making these kinds of claims are basing them on assumptions. Studies are often done on particular foods or supplements that may be used as ingredients in a product, but it is extremely rare that the claims are based on studies which have been done on the food products themselves.

In other words, a cereal can say that a diet high in fibre has been found to lower cholesterol levels. But this doesn't mean that eating that particular cereal is going to lower your cholesterol level, (particularly if you haven't made any other changes to your diet or lifestyle). It is assumed that eating the cereal will have these effects because it contains fibre and studies have found that consumption of fibre lowers cholesterol levels. We don't actually know if that particular food product will lower cholesterol, it is only assumed based on it's ingredients.

In an interview with NutraIngredients-USA.com, Professor Gregor Reid from the Canadian R&D Centre for Probiotics at the Lawson Health Research Institute and the University of Western Ontario discussed the role the government plays in allowing health claims regarding probiotics in food products.

"They don't understand that unless you show that a product confers a health benefit on the host (which by itself requires a properly designed human study) then it should not be called probiotic... Sadly, we have probiotic chocolate, bread, orange juice, certain dairy products and even an ice cream that has a flyer which mentions probiotics can prevent colon cancer (how much ice cream should I take every day to do this?). I am not questioning the quality of these products or that they might be beneficial, I just want to see some data on what they have been shown to do. Otherwise, we are fooling the consumer and/or not giving them sufficient information."

These days, you don't even need to make health claims to infer that your product is healthy. Simply by proclaiming the content of vitamin C in juice gives one the impression that the juice is healthy, even if our hypothetical juice product happened to contain sugar, effectively nullifying the vitamin content. Some advertising simply mentions a study on one of the ingredients of their product, leaving the consumer to conclude the product is healthy.

To me, this simply represents another form of deception in advertising. In my opinion, if studies have not been done on the food products themselves they shouldn't be allowed to make these sorts of claims. Products really have no business making claims based on their isolated ingredients. Unfortunately, studies on the products themselves aren't always considered necessary and as a result we end up with ice cream labels claiming the frozen treat can prevent cancer. Be weary of health claims on food products, whether stated outright or inferred.


The Healthy Foodie is Doug DiPasquale, Holistic Nutritionist and trained chef, living in Toronto. You can email him with questions at dugdeep@gmail.com.