The folks at POM Wonderful contacted me about trying their product.  We like juice here, so I took them up on their generous offer… on one condition…

Before going any further, I have to address the elephant in the room.  Some of you probably know that POM used to test on animals, but most of you are probably unaware.  I happened to know that they did and I would only accept their product if they could guarantee that they do not test on animals for any of their products, not just for the pomegranate juice that they were offering to send me.  I was told that they have stopped their animal testing and have not resumed.  If you’re interested in learning about some of the cruel tests they used to perform on animals so that they could assert certain claims about their product (pomegranate juice… not like a cure for cancer or anything), you can read about that here, here and here.  And, for the record, I won’t support a company that tests on animals, but I also won’t necessarily continue my boycott of that company once it has stopped.  This doesn’t mean that I go out of my way to buy their products, though.

Back to the juice.  We received several bottles of it (an entire case). The ingredients list is pretty simple:  100% pomegranate juice from concentrate.  No sugar or other additives, but the “from concentrate” part threw me for a loop.  When a juice concentrate is made, it’s basically cooked to death into a syrup before being reconstituted back into a juice.  And then the bottle is pasteurized (more heat).  How this retains any nutritive properties of the pomegranate is anybody’s guess.

Emma enjoyed hers mixed with apple juice.  In fact, she now requests it that way since we have a few bottles of it leftover in the fridge.  We also used a bottle to make a refreshing smoothie of POM juice, banana, cherries and strawberries.  This was Emma’s concoction and it turned out pretty good.  She made it by herself with some supervision from me.  I think it would also make a good spritzer if mixed with some soda water or sparking wine.

The million dollar question:  would I buy this?  Sorry, POM Wonderful, but probably not.  I checked it out and the small, 8 oz. bottle of this at the store is $5.  No joke.  $5!!  I understand that it takes A LOT of pomegranates to fill that little 8 oz. bottle with juice, but $5 is more than I’m willing and/or able to spend on 8 oz of juice on a regular basis.  Also, I’m not sure that I buy all of their claims of the health benefits of concentrated/reconsituted/pastuerized juice.  If I really want the health benefits of pomegranate, I’m probably going to spend that $5 on whole, fresh pomegranates.

Like I said above, while I won’t continue my boycott of a company that previously tested on animals, I won’t necessarily go out of my way to buy their products either.  I’m not trying to bash their product or their company, but I do have to give my honest opinion here.  The juice was good, but I didn’t do back flips for it and the fact that they used to torture animals just doesn’t sit well with me, even if they don’t do it anymore.  They boast that they’ve spent $34 million on “medical research” and it is a big selling point for this product, so in a way, they are still benefiting from their previous animal experiments, right?