Approaching the Spring Festival, whether it is a family dinner or entertaining guests, drinks are an indispensable "Chinese New Year's Eve meal" on the table. There are various varieties of beverages with different tastes, how to choose, and what is the difference between fruit and vegetable drinks, protein drinks, and carbonated drinks...... In this issue of "Eating Truth", we will answer them for you one by one.
1. Definition of beverages
According to the National Food Safety Standard for Beverages (GB 7101-2022), beverages refer to products that use one or several edible raw materials, with or without the addition of laying materials, food additives, and food nutrition enhancers, and are processed into quantitative packaging for direct drinking or brewing, and the ethanol content does not exceed 0.5% of the mass fraction, which can also be called beverages.
Second, the classification of beverages
According to the mainland's national standard "General Principles for Beverages" (GB/T 10789-2015), the classification of beverages mainly includes fruit and vegetable juices and their beverages, protein drinks, carbonated drinks, special-purpose drinks, flavored drinks, tea drinks, coffee drinks, plant drinks, solid drinks, etc. Take the three most common types of drinks as examples:
(1) Fruit and vegetable juices and their beverages. This type of beverage is mainly a liquid beverage made from fruits and/or vegetables (including edible roots, stems, leaves, flowers, fruits) and other raw materials. It should be noted that fruit juice drinks and fruit juice are two kinds of beverages, fruit juice generally refers to reconstituted fruit juice or non-reconstituted fruit juice, and the juice content of fruit juice drinks is 100%, and the juice content of fruit juice drinks is not less than 10%.
(2) Protein drinks. This kind of beverage is mainly a liquid beverage made from edible proteins containing milk or dairy products, or edible proteins of other animal origin, or plant fruits and seeds containing certain proteins. Protein drinks can be divided into dairy drinks, plant protein drinks, and compound protein drinks.
(3) Carbonated beverages. These drinks contain a certain amount of carbon dioxide gas, which can bring a little coolness when drunk.
3. Purchase of beverages
(1) Purchase through formal channels
1. For online purchases, you should choose qualified formal e-commerce platforms and merchants for purchase, such as checking the business licenses, business licenses and other qualification certificates of the platform and merchants. When selecting goods, it is necessary to purchase goods produced through formal channels, such as checking the qualification information such as product production licenses and production enterprises displayed on the webpage.
2. For offline purchases, you can choose large supermarkets, chain stores and other qualified and fixed supplier business premises, and the quality is more guaranteed. It depends on whether the name, ingredient list, net content, factory name, factory address, telephone number, production date, shelf life, product standard number, etc. on the food packaging are clear.
(2) Make reasonable choices based on individual needs
1. Choose from a nutritional point of view. For the selection of beverages, it is recommended to follow the principles of nutrition and health, such as trying to choose nutritious dairy products, fruit juices and other beverages with rich nutritional content such as protein, vitamins, minerals, and dietary fiber, and try to avoid choosing drinks with high salt and sugar.
Consumers can understand the nutritional information of the food through the nutrition label of the food, such as the protein content in the nutrition label, the sugar index can pay attention to the carbohydrate and total sugar, sucrose and other contents in the nutrition label, the salt index can pay attention to the sodium content in the nutrition label, and can also pay attention to whether other nutritional information such as vitamin C, calcium, and dietary fiber are marked in the nutrition label.
2. Choose from the taste. If you like the faint aroma of tea, you can choose tea drinks, if you like to listen to the bubbling sound of the bottle cap when you open it, and enjoy the cool rise of carbon dioxide bubbles in your mouth, you can choose carbonated drinks, if you like frankincense, you can choose protein drinks, and if you like the sweet and sour feeling brought by fruit juice, you can choose fruit juice drinks.
3. Select from the features. Consumers can choose herbal drinks in plant drinks, which add some medicinal and edible substances, such as frangipani, chrysanthemum, honeysuckle, prunella, etc., which can assist in reducing fire;
Finally, consumers are reminded that consumers, especially children and adolescents in the stage of growth and development, should not drink excessively, let alone replace daily drinking water, and should follow a healthy diet.
The content of the article comes from the Shandong Provincial Administration for Market Regulation