If you need a sweet treat, some fruit is fine. If you're just starting to work on your diet and health, and you're trading fruit for chips or cake or any other "hyper-palatable" foods, great! Fresh fruit is undeniably a better choice.
But, fruit juice is approximately as good for you as any soda, and as you try to optimize your diet more and more, you'll want more fibrous fruits, less sugary fruits, and eventually a little bit less fruit overall.
But by then you'll already be pretty familiar with your goals and diet and how various foods fit in to them.
Yes - fruit juice that you buy in the store is typically pH balanced with ascorbic acid and heat pasteurised, which removes a lot of nutritional value. And in some cases an apple base is added to give sweetness (with lots of sugar). And depending on the degree to which the juice is juiced, you change the degree to which sugar and other nutrients are available to your metabolism before passing through.
There is a substantial difference in health value between a berry based smoothie you make at home and an apple juice from the store.
I’ve never seen anything marketed as fruit juice that did not consist of only fruit. If there is sugar added, it’s a different kind of drink and the label does not say that it is fruit juice. It might contain fruit juice, but it’s not called fruit juice. But I live in the western hemisphere so maybe the standards are different where you live.
Italy, and they're not called "Fruit juices" of course they're called "Succhi di frutta", of which fruit juices is the literal translation.
Yes they have always been called "succhi di frutta" even if filled with sugar and other stuff, I had no idea that in some countries those are not called fruit juices.
Yes, at least in my country (in Europe) I'm pretty sure that it's a recent trend to favor 100% single-fruit juices.
And I've seen the traditional juice fruite producers come up with increasingly comical/tragic ways to address it:
HUGE 100%, miniscule "natural ingredients" below it (so no motor oil at least xD )
HUGE name of a specific fruit, such specific fruit all over the box, big "100% fruit" and label saying 99.9999 apple, 0.0001 specificfruit powdered extract
But, fruit juice is approximately as good for you as any soda, and as you try to optimize your diet more and more, you'll want more fibrous fruits, less sugary fruits, and eventually a little bit less fruit overall.
But by then you'll already be pretty familiar with your goals and diet and how various foods fit in to them.