Best And Worst Juice Drinks For Kids Slideshow

This small company makes three flavors of juice boxes: cherry, peach, and pear. Each contains fruit juice along with something a little unique whole grains. Brown rice syrup is added to the juices to give them a fiber boost. Each 4.2-ounce box contains 3 grams of fiber, which is 3 grams more then almost all other juices. On top of that, the juice is low in sugar and is still drinkable for kids with gluten intolerance, as rice is gluten-free.

Sensible Sippers come in four juice box flavors and are made with 50 percent organic fruit juice and 50 percent water to reduce the overall amount of calories and sugar. The result is a juice that is low in sugar without compromising taste.

The name is a little strange but the concept makes sense. The drinks are a combination of 100-percent fruit and vegetable juices, creating a sweet drink that is lower in sugar than juices that only contain fruit. The apple flavor contains a third less sugar than traditional apple juice and 70 percent more vitamin C. ($3.89/6.75-ounce, 8-pack)

Starting your day with a glass of orange juice is common practice, but the clever folks at Tropicana have taken ordinary, pure orange juice and loaded it with extra vitamins and minerals especially for kids. While this is part marketing ploy, what they have added is genuinely important for kids. Orange juice is a naturally good source of folic acid, potassium, and vitamin C. Added to that here is vitamin A, D, and E, important for bone, eye, and skin health. What's more, one 6-ounce glass contains more calcium then a glass of milk. ($3.79/59-ounce bottle)

Juicy Juice has always promoted itself as offering 100-percent fruit juice with no added sugar. These juices are simple and contain 120 percent of kids vitamin C needs. It is a straightforward product that is an easy choice among the clutter of juice options. ($2.39/4.23-ounce, 8-pack)

The ingredients list on the back of a Sunny D bottle reads like a weird chemistry project. On top of many of the hardly pronounceable ingredients, the drink contains canola oil, artificial sweeteners, and other additives like modified cornstarch and gums. This translates into a Frankenstein of a juice. ($2.49/64-ounce bottle)

A favorite in kids lunch boxes, the second ingredient in Capri Sun juice drinks after water is high-fructose corn syrup. Fruit juice falls at the bottom of the list of ingredients. This "juice" is actually just a mix of water and high-fructose corn syrup, with a little added fruit juice for flavoring. ($3.49/6-ounce pouch, 10-pack)

Snapple recently took the initiative to remove the high-fructose corn syrup in their drinks and replace it with real sugar. However, Snapple's juice drinks may still contain more sugar than a regular soda. One 16-ounce bottle can contain as much as 56 grams of sugar (almost 4 tablespoons), 4 grams more than the 52 grams of sugar found in a regular Coca-Cola of the same size. (The 16-ounce apple juice pictured contains 48 grams of sugar.) ($11.99, 16-ounce bottle, 12-pack)

The packaging of this product is incredibly deceiving. Promoting a lower-sugar drink with no high-fructose corn syrup and toting a USDA Organic label, Honest Kids would appear to be an honestly good juice. Dig a little deeper, however, and you'll find that the drink is nothing more then a gussied-up Capri Sun. One pouch of the apple variety contains only 30 percent real juice (other flavors contain even less, ranging from 6 to 10 percent). The rest is just water and organic cane sugar, which has just as much sugar as high-fructose corn syrup.

Another high-fructose corn syrup culprit. Again, the top two ingredients in this juice drink are water and high-fructose corn syrup, with a minimal amount of concentrated, reconstituted fruit and vegetable juice added in. The drink also contains artificial sweetener, which is not recommended for kids.