This review is long overdue… the kind people at POM Wonderful sent me several little bottles of their 100% pomegranate juice to sample & review. I have to admit, my first impression made it a little hard for me to continue.

I tried to drink a little POM straight up first thing in the morning, thinking it would be a good way to get some calories in me before a morning run without having food sitting heavily in my stomach. I found it a wee bit tart for me to handle at that time.

But I later discovered having a small glass of it with dinner was a nice pairing! Almost like a wine pairing, without the booze and while retaining the antioxidant power!

In fact, the benefits of pomegranate juice and the antioxidants it has can benefit a range of health conditions; diabetes, heart health, age-related issues and male-specific conditions. I’ve read in several different sources that pomegranate juice helps improve blood flow in the body. More efficient blood pumping certainly can’t hurt, since part of the benefits that come from running are cardiovascular improvements and we want to support that, right? Antioxidants can also help reduce inflammation.

The POM Wonderful line is 100% pomegranate juice, no added sugars or preservatives. And the juice comes entirely from fruit grown in California, none of it imported from other countries (which apparently often test positive for additives even when labeled as being pure juice.)

Also, this was interesting to me… the “Wonderful” in the name isn’t just a self-boasting proclamation about their product’s quality. It actually refers to the juice coming from the Wonderful variety of pomegranate, a variety known for “superior antioxidants, delicious taste and deep crimson color”. It’s kind of like different types of grapes offer differing levels of antioxidants.

There are other ways to use the juice, if straight up isn’t your thing. I decided to get savory with my POM and turn it into a pomegranate reduction to serve over pork tenderloin. This isn’t a recipe blog so I have no exact proportions for you! Basically I put the following items in a pan:
> Pomegranate juice, rosemary, garlic, orange zest, brown sugar
Then boiled it down until reduced by about half.
Drizzled across the pork, it was delicious.

Another option, if you wanted to sugar it up, would be to make a pomegranate syrup or molasses from the juice. Post-run waffles or pancakes with some of that drizzled on top would be a nice treat.

And pomegranate syrup is basically what real grenadine is, as opposed to that high-fructose corn syrup, red food coloring stuff that is sold in most stores. So you could use it to make a yummy cocktail/mocktail!

The people at POM Wonderful have a whole bunch of products that contain the antioxidants from this fruit. I’ve seen rumblings from other blogs about coffee/tea products they have created. There’s also a scant bit of information on their site about bars which sound kind of interesting to me.