It's not 'juice', but it's similar...

Question

As someone who sees many American movies where people drink juice... I have to wonder if Americans drink that we here actually call juice, and how it is calle din English. What I am referring to is, I guess, mixed up chemical concentrate or 'syrup' to which you add water to make drinkable stuff out of it. Do you have it, what is it called?

Delmobile · Accepted Answer

If you mean the frozen juice concentrate sold in cans that you reconstitute four-to-one with water, then yes, once it's reconstituted we drink it and call it "juice." If you mean powdered stuff, like Kool-Aid...well, I think most people call it Kool-Aid, although the manufacturers probably dislike this http://www.wordspy.com/words/genericide.asp. (There's our word for the day!) Crystal Light is a similar product without sugar for dieters; I've heard people actually call that "Crystal Light." ("You want a glass of Crystal Light?") I'm not sure I'm familiar with a syrup product like that, but I don't think we'd call it juice, probably "orange drink" (if it was orange) or "fruit drink" or whatever.

And no matter what the FDA calls it, nobody except the manufacturers calls anything a "juice cocktail." Some common forms of "juice cocktail," for example cranberry, are referred to as "juice." If you ask for a vodka and cranberry juice in a bar, you're almost certainly going to get vodka plus Ocean Springs brand Cranberry Juice Cocktail. But if you ask for vodka and orange juice, you'll get the real thing, though likely from concentrate, not fresh-squieezed.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juice: "fruit juice can only legally be used to describe a product which is 100% fruit juice, as required by the Fruit Juices and Fruit Nectars (England) Regulations^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juice#_note-0} and The Fruit Juices & Fruit Nectars (Scotland) Regulations 2003.^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juice#_note-1} However, the term "juice drink" can be used to describe any drink which includes juice, even if the juice content is 1% of the overall volume.^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juice#_note-2}
In the USA, fruit juice can only legally be used to describe a product which is 100% fruit juice. A blend of fruit juice(s) with other ingredients, such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup, is called a juice cocktail or juice drink^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juice#_note-3} According to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FDA, the term "nectar" is generally accepted in the U.S. and in international trade for a diluted juice to denote a beverage that contains fruit juice or puree, water, and which may contain sweeteners.^"

^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juice#_note-4}

It's not 'juice', but it's similar...

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