What can destroy vitamin C in citrus fruits?

You're going to have a hard time getting a sufficient quantity of vitamin C by drinking lemonade. It's basically just sweetened ice water, with a little lemon juice for flavoring. You'd need about 8 ounces of lemon juice, which would be about a half-gallon of lemonade. Pucker up!

Vitamin C can be destroyed by heat, but not necessarily from cold. Frozen OJ concentrate contains a lot of vitamin C.

The OJ they sell in those pretty clear plastic bottles? If it's not from concentrate, they pasteurize it, and that destroys some vitamin C.

Fresh OJ, not from concentrate, may not, especially if it comes in those clear plastic bottles. Because they pasteurize that fresh OJ, but not the stuff made from concentrate, you get *less* vitamin C in the not-from-concentrate stuff. Hmmph! Who'd have guessed?

Those clear plastic bottles let light in, and the longer it sits on the shelf, the more the vitamin C levels go down. Oxygen destroys vitamin C, too.

I can't find *anything* that says sugar destroys vitamin C. In fact, I find references that vitamin C prevents sugar in our cells from converting to sorbitol, which causes some of the problems associated with diabetes, such as retinopathy, neuropathy, and nephropathy.

Posted in Citrus Fruits