Good question. Let us take this moment to understand what nature identical and natural flavouring mean, and how they differ from artificial flavouring. Take out your notebooks!
A. Natural Flavours: Flavours that have the exact chemical composition as the fruit, and are derived from natural sources.
B. Nature-Identical Flavours: Flavours that have the exact chemical composition as the fruit, but are derived through a chemical process.
C. Artificial Flavours: Flavours that don't have the exact chemical composition as the fruit, but go for the closest tasting substitute without a care for chemical structure - or your well-being. These are chemically synthesised.
With nature and nature identical flavours, you get the closest there is to the real thing, without putting your family's health at risk.
We would like to put the real deal entirely. Trust us, we really do. But our greatest deterrent here is the great Indian heat. Freshness is a casualty of our weather. As is the risk of the fruit juice changing chemical composition. Nature identical flavouring makes it more resilient to chemical change. Keeping all these factors in mind, I guess we'll have to be content with being the next best thing to 'freshly plucked and juiced'.
Now acidity regulators and stabilizers may sound like artificial bubbling concoctions made in a mad scientist's secret volcano lair but let us assure you they are quite safe. Not to mention not really artificial and more importantly, not made in a mad scientist's secret volcano lair. In fact, they are quite abundant and freely found in nature. How? Time to take the notebooks out again.
Acidity regulator: Is Vitamin C. Found naturally in practically all citrus fruits. Oh, and it's good for you. Stabilizer: Is Pectin. It's a binding agent found exclusively in plant cells. So while the other ingredients keep it wholesome, stabilizers keep it whole.
Both of them help us battle the great Indian heat by helping us keep it all together like one big happy (liquid) family.
Yup. That is all they are. Regulatory language is well, heavy.
Preservatives and artificial flavours are monstrosities masquerading as civilization. So there are not and never will they be in any V p Foods drink. Mummy promise!
You can probably see us waving our hands right now to answer this one.
Being proper first benchers, we have studied and researched and found ways of preserving our drinks - without using unnecessary chemicals.
Our drinks are made in a super-duper ultra-clean environment (10000 class, the grade used in the pharma industry!), and passed through tremendous amounts of heat - so that we prevent the chance of microbes even considering us as their party-venue. When we pack our products, we pack in pressure too. And microbes, we have found, do not perform under pressure. We pack in purified Nitrogen that doesn't encourage microbes, at all, and protects the drinks from contamination. Our packaging also includes a forcefield-like layer that guards the drinks from The Great Indian Heat, and impurities much more than other packaging materials.
Our products last about four to six months in the shelf, when stored in a clean and dry place away from direct sunlight. Basically, when treated nicely. One of our sales folks has also reported that talking regularly to your shelf of V P Foods earns you a few weird looks.
Why call oxygen, oxygen? Why call the sun, the sun? Why call anything, anything? Why not complete nomenclatural anarchy, while we’re at it? That would be nice though. A world where an apple could be a zeppelin, where potatoes could be elephants... where anyone could be anything they wanted to be. Every sentence would be a mystery. People wouldn’t speak, they would ‘unravel’ to each other.
Because it’s simple. And it reminds you of the days gone by. While at the same time, makes you realize that those days could come back with an act as simple as folding paper. Or sipping on a drink that you once had on a summer vacation where you visited the zoo.
V P Foods pouches are made of a four-part laminate. The two outer layers are a blend of proprietary polypropylene and polyethylene. This makes the pack withstand extremes in pressure and heat while at the same time being easy to print upon. This is the one time you can actually judge something by its cover.
The penultimate layer is made of bonded aluminium. This is to keep any form of moisture and vapour entering the pack and tampering the goodness of the drink inside. Of course this layer makes no contact with the drink. That’s the job of the inner (and final) layer. This layer is made of virgin, food-grade polypropylene which keeps the content fresh, safe and tasty.
Right now as we speak, no, our pouches are not recyclable. But despite this particular handicap, our pouches offer numerous environmental benefits over glass bottles, cans and other packaging substitutes. Our drink pouches have a 10% lower carbon footprint and generally lower overall environmental impact than glass bottles. Not to mention, Tetrapak and PET bottles. And did we mention significantly lesser percentage of packaging waste? They are lighter and more compact, making them easily transportable. That way they even cause fewer emissions for the same volume of drinks.
Lemon juice concentrate and ascorbic acid (which is basically Vitamin C) are naturally occurring additives. We add them in miniscule quantities to our drinks to ensure that ours drinks are safe for direct consumption. They help to lower the pH level of our drinks which in turn prevent the growth of harmful pathogens and keep our drink pouches safe.
No. You shouldn’t be concerned at all. This isn’t a food safety issue but a direct result of the post- fill heating of the pouch. In the factory, when a V P Foods pouch is filled and sealed, we lay it on its side and immerse them in a hot water bath to remove any impurities on the pack as well as to kill any microorganisms inside. Sometimes, when it lies on its sides like this, the drink gravitates towards the spout (towards the heat) and can oxidise partly and thus, thicken in consistency. This “plug” is absolutely safe to consume.