Our Senators and Rep. Keating are now forming the Cranberry Caucus, to look out for the business interests of Southeast MA’s favorite crop. Seems that they want to prevent sweetened cranberry juice from being labeled as “unhealthy”.
Two things: a.) Cranberry juice “cocktail” is fairly comparable to unsweetened fruit juices like orange, pineapple, apple, etc. Currently, a cup of cranberry juice “cocktail” has 137 calories; a cup of orange juice from concentrate has 122. So on the face of it, it seems reasonable to defend the nutritive value of cranberry juice.
b.) Especially directed at Senator Brown: Shouldn’t addressing climate change be a big part of advocating for local agriculture, especially aquaculture?
A.D. Makepeace President and CEO Michael Hogan said this region is already being affected. “The night temperatures are affecting our harvest, and the deep-red cranberry hue. Unless we work together to address climate change, the working landscape will be at risk of disappearing, or else our children won’t be able to come see a working Massachusetts cranberry bog.”
Yes, I’d like to beat Sen. Brown and elect Elizabeth Warren. But I’m nostalgic for the days when the GOP even gave lip service to global warming. I’d rather have a GOP committed to act on climate, than a Democratic majority that either can’t get anything done, or that thinks like Joe Manchin.
Discuss
5 Comments . Leave a comment below.Cranberries are an interesting case, as the fruit is very healthy but a lot of added sugar is not. Center for Science in the Public Interest took a look at several juices and rated cranberry juice as more nutritious than apple or grape juice but less so than pineapple, tomato and orange. You may or may not agree with the scale they used (“levels of 12 vitamins, minerals, and carotenoids, plus fibre”) but you can see the chart on the second page of this PDF.
My inclination would be to use some sort of cutoff for grams of sugar per serving and allow moderately sweetened cranberry juice to escape the unhealthy beverage tag. If orange juice has 23g of sugar per serving, Ocean Spray cranberry juice has 28g of sugar and Coca Cola has 32g, where should that Ocean Spray cranberry juice fall? Considering that according to about.com’s calorie counter, Trader Joe’s Just Cranberry juice has just 7g of sugar per serving?
As much as I love cranberries and appreciate our cranberry industry, I believe the decision ought to be a uniform rule for all fruit juices taking into account nutritional value vs added sugars and not simply “cranberries are a special case so they can add as much sugar as they want.”
Raw cranberries are far more bitter than other fruits, without added sweetening they are inedible. They also offer health benefits not available in other fruits — nobody drinks extra apple juice (or even pinaeapple, tomato, or orange juice) when fighting a urinary tract infection. Perhaps this is a tradeoff between our palate (how much “tartness” do we like) and the health consequences of added sugar.
I agree that we need to do more than just claim that cranberries are “special” — that strikes me as having a strong component of good old-fashioned boosterism. As much as I applaud the cooperation signaled by the “Cranberry Caucus”, I think it is driven primarily by political considerations.
University of Arkansas Study
Don’t misunderstand me, I like the stuff and I like that it’s a local crop, but the urinary tract infection stuff has been disproved.
I’m not surprised. I used to drink lots (fresh) orange juice when I felt cold/flu symptoms — that, too, is a myth. The study you cited does reference other studies that suggest that drinking cranberry juice can help prevent a UTI, so perhaps there’s hope in that for the Cranberry Caucus.
Like many other consumers, I view cranberries primarily as a source for jam/jelly with turkey/chicken/goose etc. I start with raw fruit and add (lots of) sugar to taste while boiling them down. In the overall scheme of vices I might avoid for my health, cranberries with added sugar during the Thanksgiving/Christmas season is pretty far down the list — well below, for example, my cigar habit.
For the sake of cranberries and a whole lot more it would be good to have a Republican Party that did not make refusal to accept climate science a matter of cultural and political identity. Given that Senator Brown spends most of his time hiding from anyone who might ask him a real question and given the lack of interest by most political reporters and pundits in climate change, I would expect that Brown might be able to skate by without ever answering any questions on his views on whether he accepts that we are causing global warming and what he intends to do about global warminig
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