Is Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice Healthy? 11 Things You Should Know

Is Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice healthy?

Cranberries are a healthy fruit, packed with antioxidants that may help reduce inflammation, prevent urinary tract infections, and even prevent cavities. But what about Ocean Spray cranberry juice? Does it come with the same benefits? Or is it mostly sugar?

Most flavors of Ocean Spray juice are not very healthy, as they are high in added sugar, with similar sugar content as soda. Ocean Spray Diet drinks have less sugar, but they have artificial sweeteners and colors that may worsen gut health. Ocean Spray 100% Juice may be healthy in moderation.

Below, I’ll cover whether Ocean Spray cranberry juice is fattening, how it compares to soda, and much more. We’ll be looking at all common flavors, including “100% Juice,” “Diet,” and “Light” Ocean Spray, too—not just the Original Cranberry Juice Cocktail.

Is Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice Bad for You?

Here are the 10 specific questions I’ll be answering about Ocean Spray nutrition. Click any of them to skip ahead to that section—or just keep scrolling to read them all:

1. What Is Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice Made Of?
2. How Much Sugar Do Ocean Spray Drinks Have?
3. Is Ocean Spray “100% Juice” Healthy?
4. Does Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice Have Artificial Sweeteners?
5. Does Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice Have Caffeine?
6. Is Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice High in Sodium?
7. Does Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice Make You Gain Weight?
8. Are the Artificial Colors in Diet Ocean Spray Safe?
9. Is Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice Healthier Than Soda?
10. Is It Bad to Drink Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice Every Day?
11. Is Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice Vegan?

1. What Is Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice Made Of?

There are many flavors of Ocean Spray cranberry juice. If you want to choose the healthiest kinds, you must pay attention to the details on the label.

Here are some of the common types of Ocean Spray, and what they’re made of:

• Classic Juice Drinks: These include the original Cranberry Juice Cocktail, and basic flavors like Cran Apple. They have some real juice, but most of the sweetness comes from added sugar. Vegetable concentrates are used for coloring.

• 100% Juice: These are made with only real juice—no added sugar, and no artificial sweeteners. Vegetable concentrates are used for coloring. These are mostly “natural,” but they are still high in natural sugar and calories.

• Diet: These only have 5 calories per serving. They have some real juice and two artificial sweeteners, sucralose and acesulfame potassium. They also have artificial colors. These are the most “artificial” drinks, but also lowest in calories.

• Light: These have 50 calories per serving. They have a mix of real juice, fructose, and the artificial sweetener sucralose. No artificial colors. These are kind of a half-way compromise between the “Diet” and Classic sweetened drinks.

• Pure: These are pure 100% unsweetened cranberry juice (or other pure juices). No juice blend, no preservatives, no sweeteners or dyes at all. These are the simplest (just one ingredient) and maybe healthiest, depending on your goals.

As you can see, the nutrition of Ocean Spray drinks could differ a lot between these different product lines. Below, we’ll compare them all in terms of their sugar content and more. That way, you can choose the best Ocean Spray drink for you.

2. How Much Sugar Do Ocean Spray Drinks Have?

Most Ocean Spray drinks are high in sugar, with around 40g of sugar per 12 oz serving, about the same as soda. However, Ocean Spray Light only has about half as much sugar, while Ocean Spray Diet is nearly sugar free. Ocean Spray also sells a “100% Juice” line, with only natural fruit sugar.

Here’s a table showing how Ocean Spray drinks compare to other sugary drinks, in terms of total sugar. Ocean Spray drinks are bolded:

Drink	Total Sugar (in 12 fl oz)
Ocean Spray Diet (Cran Grape)	2g
V8 Tomato Juice	10g
Ocean Spray Pure (Cranberry)	14g
Vitamin Water	15g
Ocean Spray Light (Cranberry & Grape)	17g
Gatorade	20g
Sunny D	21g
Simply Orange Juice	34g
Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice Cocktail	38g
Sprite	38g
Ocean Spray Cran Apple	39g
Dr Pepper	39g
Coca-Cola	39g
Monster Energy	40g
Ocean Spray 100% Juice (Cran Pineapple)	42g
Barq’s Root Beer	45g
Mountain Dew	46g
Welch’s Grape Juice	52g

As you can see, the amount of sugar depends a lot on which Ocean Spray drink you choose. The highest-sugar flavors have around the same sugar content as soda, while others are much lower.

But there’s an important follow-up question: What about “added sugar” vs “total sugar”? Most Ocean Spray drinks are sweetened primarily with added sugar. For example, the normal “Cran Apple” flavor has 26g of total sugar, and 23g of it is added sugar.

The American Heart Association recommends a limit of 25g of added sugar per day for women and 36g per day for men. So, just one 8 oz serving of Ocean Spray Cran-Apple would put you near the limit for women and about 2/3 of the limit for men.

But what about the “100% Juice” Ocean Spray flavors? What about their “natural sugar”? Let’s address whether those are healthy in the next section.

Related question:

• Can you drink Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice on keto? Most Ocean Spray drinks are not keto friendly. Most are high in sugar, whether from added sugar or real fruit. The only real exception is the Ocean Spray “Diet” line. Those are low in carbs because they’re sweetened almost entirely with artificial sweeteners.

3. Is Ocean Spray “100% Juice” Healthy?

We’ve seen that most Ocean Spray drinks are high in sugar. But some Ocean Spray drinks have added sugar, while others have only real fruit sugar. So, are those “100% Juice” flavors healthy?

I remember as a kid, I thought of “100% juice” as really healthy. It’s made from real fruit, after all—and fruit is healthy, right? Well, yes. But unfortunately, drinking fruit juice is not completely the same as eating fruit.

There are two big downsides of drinking “100% juice,” compared to eating whole fruit:

• 1. Juice doesn’t have the fiber of whole fruit. Fiber is very healthy, and it helps slow down your digestion of the natural sugars in fruit. But juices don’t have much, if any, fiber. So, the sugar in juice is digested more quickly, and it may spike your blood-sugar levels more than whole fruit.

• 2. You can drink juice much faster than you can eat fruit. And this means you can drink many more calories of fruit juice than you’d typically eat from whole fruit. So juice can cause you to consume excess calories, potentially causing weight gain.

For these key reasons, Ocean Spray 100% Juice drinks should not be considered as healthy as eating whole fruit. That said, this doesn’t necessarily mean they are completely “unhealthy.”

Many of the real juices in Ocean Spray drinks are rich in antioxidants and vitamins that have health benefits. If you drink a small serving of Ocean Spray 100% Juice, along with fiber-rich whole foods, it could be pretty healthy.

And in fact, if you choose the “Pure” Unsweetened Cranberry Juice from Ocean Spray, it is relatively low in sugar. That’s because cranberry juice itself is naturally lower in sugar than grape juice and apple juice, which are used in many of Ocean Spray’s juice blends.

So, if you drink a small portion of Ocean Spray Pure Cranberry Juice, along with other healthy foods, it could be quite healthy, indeed.

4. Does Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice Have Artificial Sweeteners?

Ocean Spray “Diet” drinks have two artificial sweeteners, sucralose and acesulfame potassium, combined with some real juice. Ocean Spray “Light” drinks have one artificial sweetener, sucralose, combined with fructose and some real juice.

Both of these artificial sweeteners in Ocean Spray drinks are FDA approved and generally recognized as safe. However, there remains some controversy around the long-term health impacts of each.

The most controversial artificial sweetener is probably aspartame. Personally, I avoid aspartame because of the research showing possible connections to depression. Ocean Spray drinks do not have aspartame.

So let’s look at the health concerns around the sweeteners in Ocean Spray Diet drinks—sucralose and acesulfame potassium.

First, let’s cover sucralose:

• Sucralose seems to be a migraine trigger for some people. (source, source)
• Sucralose may cause insulin resistance through multiple