Juice jive has consumers seeing cranberry red.(Trends)

Lots of you have been fooled by juice you've plucked off store shelves, if reader letters are any indication. A Maryland reader found that an Ocean Spray juice (recently discontinued) labeled "blueberry, pomegranate, and cranberry" listed grape and apple juice first on the label. An Arizona reader saw "orange fused pineapple" on a Sunny D package but discovered the contents were mostly water and high-fructose corn syrup with 5 percent juice, none of it pineapple. Then there's the surprise a New York reader got a while back from a bottle of Veryfine [Fruit.sub.2]O Plus Citrus Energy Boost, no longer made. The contents: artificially flavored water, vitamins, and caffeine.

Knowing juice-label lingo can help you buy what you intend to and avoid added sugars and artificial ingredients. Here are the basics:

"100% juice" or "100% pure." This is the gold standard, indicating that the product contains pure juice, possibly reconstituted from concentrate (more on concentrate below). Still, there are caveats: "All juice" might not mean all of the juice featured on the label-ruby-red grapefruit, say.

Many 100 percent juice products are a blend, often with apple or grape juice as the first ingredient and the featured juice lower on the list. That's allowed, as long as companies state on the label what the product really is. (Typically, the info is in far smaller print than that "ruby-red grapefruit.") Customer-service representatives at Tropicana and Ocean Spray told us that apple and grape juice are used to add sweetness and to make tarter juices, such as cranberry and pomegranate, more palatable.

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"Cocktail," "drink," "beverage." Red flags. These drinks contain less than 100 percent juice and sometimes as little as 5 percent. Water, flavorings, and added sweeteners such as high-fructose corn syrup may make up the rest.

"From concentrate." This refers to juice that has been concentrated, then rewatered to return it to its original form. Some labels boast "not from concentrate," which seems to mean they're a more healthful choice, but ...