I have some Grape Juice in my fridge. I like to drink it periodically because I find it to be a light and refreshing, tasty treat. Plus it makes my tongue purple. Actually, to be honest it’s really Grape Juice From Concentrate. Which means that the people who operated the press that squished the cute little grapes thought really, really hard about what they were doing. They are quite safety conscious.

At least, I thought it was from concentrate. I looked at the ingredients late last night and was stunned at what I found. Listed as ingredients are:

Grape Juice Concentrate—I expected this one. It’s also listed on the front of the label. Truth in advertising you know.

Grape Juice—Huh?

Okay, if you are going to concentrate Grape Juice why add Grape Juice to it? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose? It’s like adding water to powdered water. It doesn’t make sense. Grape Juice concentrate, one would assume, is made out of grape juice. Right? So why add more grape juice to it?

Don’t get me wrong. The more grape juice the better. I like grape juice and grape juice likes me. It provides me with essential vitamins and minerals and I provide it with a purpose in life. That purpose is, of course, to be broken down by my body and feed my cells.

So I did a little investigating and I’m confused. Concentrate is something that has had the liquid removed (which, oddly enough seems to defeat the purpose of juicing, being as that is the action of removing the solid portion, but we’ll ignore that). So, what you are left with, essentially, is grape (in this case) sludge. Highly flavorful grape sludge. Therefore, to bring it back to its full potency you add water, the elixir of life.

For example, if you buy orange juice concentrate you put the sludge in your pitcher and add three cans of water. It’s easy. You do not, however, add three cans of orange juice to your orange juice concentrate. That would seem to defeat the purpose, would it not?

If you have grape juice on hand, why bother adding the concentrate? Just give me the grape juice.

In fact, it makes no sense. Why would you go through the trouble of preparing the solution only to have it reconstituted with itself?

For that matter, why is it if you buy a carton of juice from concentrate you pay less than freshly squeezed? Let’s go through the processes.

From concentrate:
1. Squeeze.
2. Pasteurize.
3. Concentrate.
4. Reconstitute
5. Package.

Okay. A five-step process. And I’m sure I’ve over-simplified. So, let’s look at fresh squeezed:

1. Squeeze.
2. Pasteurize (if lucky)
3. Package.

There you go. Three steps and without an entire factory to concentrate and rehydrate. In fact, one team can do the fresh squeezed job while it takes three or four to do the concentrated.

Therefore I ask why we must live with this excess? I say boycott your concentrated juices and demand fresh squeezed. Especially with grape juice.

I know, it’s cruel to make those poor little Central American kids cut the grapes in half and twist each half on the juicer but this is America. I demand my juice.

And tomorrow I take on my Hydrogen Peroxide. My bottle only contains three percent Hydrogen Peroxide. The other 97% is “inactive ingredients.” But they don’t tell me of what the 97% is comprised.

Have I been dousing my wounds with sheep pee?