Nordic Petal – 100% Organic Rosehip Juice 500 ml

What Science Says About Rosehip

1. Vitamin C — and why the published figures differ fourfold

The USDA reference entry for wild rose hips gives 426 mg of vitamin C per 100 g of raw fruit. [1] Measured side by side on one organic farm in Pakruojis, Lithuania, over the 2017 and 2018 seasons, the fresh flesh of Rosa rugosa held 736.27 mg per 100 g and the fresh flesh of Rosa canina 385.82 mg; the seeds of both hold almost none, 29.45 and 23.99 mg per 100 g. [2] The much larger numbers in circulation are dry-matter measurements — the same group, working on freeze-dried and milled flesh, recorded 3036.08 mg per 100 g of dry matter for R. rugosa and 2060.67 for R. canina at the earliest ripening stage. [3] Those describe dried powder, not fresh fruit, and the two are not interchangeable. Ripeness moves the figure again, and awkwardly: in German measurements of Rosa rugosa picked green, orange and fully red, vitamin C peaked at the orange stage, around 1090 mg per 100 g of fresh weight, and was lower in fully red fruit, while total phenolics were highest at full red and above 1000 mg gallic acid equivalents per 100 g at every stage. [4] The picking date decides which compound is being harvested; no date favours both.

2. Vitamin C and the immune system

This is the one area where European law permits a specific statement, and it belongs to the vitamin rather than to the plant. The European Food Safety Authority concluded that a cause-and-effect relationship has been established between dietary vitamin C and the normal function of the immune system, and set the wording that reflects the evidence: “Vitamin C contributes to the normal function of the immune system.” [5] [6] For a beverage the arithmetic is fixed in law. The reference intake for vitamin C is 80 mg; a beverage is a source of vitamin C at 7.5% of that per 100 ml, which is 6 mg, and high in vitamin C at twice that, 12 mg per 100 ml. [7] Published pressed rosehip juice clears both by a wide margin: a 100% R. rugosa juice measured 253.60 mg of total vitamin C per 100 ml, 78.2% of it as L-ascorbic acid. [8]

3. Collagen, skin and connective tissue

The same vitamin carries a second family of authorised wordings, built on collagen — “Vitamin C contributes to normal collagen formation for the normal function of blood vessels”, and the equivalents for bones, cartilage, gums, skin and teeth. Each may be used only for a food that is at least a source of vitamin C. [6] It is worth being precise about what that is: a statement about the nutrient, permitted because the juice contains enough of it. No trial has tested rosehip juice on skin, and no human study of Rosa rugosa exists for any endpoint at all.

4. Vitamin C and iron absorption

Vitamin C increases the absorption of non-haem iron, the form iron takes in plants, and that relationship is assessed and authorised in the EU. [6] It is the most immediately practical item on this list, because it is about combinations rather than doses: a vitamin C-rich drink alongside a plant-based meal changes how much of the meal’s iron is taken up. The same mechanism reappears, less comfortably, in the cautions below.

5. Carotenoids

The hip is among the more carotenoid-rich fruits, and unusually it carries lycopene as well as lutein and zeaxanthin. In the Lithuanian comparison, measured on a dry-matter basis, R. rugosa ran roughly three times higher in β-carotene and in lycopene than R. canina grown beside it, while R. canina was slightly higher in lutein and zeaxanthin. [2] In the German ripening series the carotenoids moved with the colour, accumulating as the hip reddened — the opposite direction to vitamin C. [4] One honest gap: carotenoids are fat-soluble pigments, and no measurement of them in pressed rosehip juice has been published in any unit. What the fruit contains is documented; what survives pressing is not.

6. Polyphenols and acids

Here a juice figure does exist, and it is high: 272.93 mg of total polyphenols as gallic acid equivalents per 100 ml in that same 100% R. rugosa juice, at pH 3.45 and 21.6 °Brix. [8] In the fruit, citric acid dominates the organic acid profile ahead of malic and quinic — 6.05 g, 1.55 g and 0.68 g per 100 g of freeze-dried R. canina powder. [9] That profile is why rosehip tastes sharp rather than merely sweet.

7. Joint pain — what the trials actually tested

Rosehip’s clinical literature is almost entirely about osteoarthritis, and almost entirely about a powder. A 2008 meta-analysis pooled three randomised trials in 306 participants taking 5 g a day of dried Rosa canina hip powder for a mean of 3.3 months: effect size for pain 0.37 (95% CI 0.13 to 0.60; p=0.0019), odds ratio for response 2.19 (1.38 to 3.48; p=0.00089), number needed to treat 6 (4 to 13). The independent reviewers who appraised it noted that with so few trials and participants the conclusion may not be reliable, and all three trials were manufacturer-sponsored and run in Denmark and Norway. [10] [11] [12] The preparation turns out to matter more than the result. When the dose was reduced — 5 g a day for three weeks, then 2.5 g for nine — the trial failed, and failed instructively: WOMAC pain fell from 17.97 to 16.57 on rosehip (p<0.141) and from 17.96 to 14.41 on placebo (p<0.001), the placebo group improving more. [13] In rheumatoid arthritis, 10.5 g a day of powder for 28 days changed neither C-reactive protein nor antioxidant enzyme activity. [14] All of this concerns 5 g or more of dried whole fruit, seeds included, taken in capsules. No trial has tested rosehip juice on joints, and the galactolipid this research points to is a lipid concentrated in the shells and seeds — not what a press extracts.

8. Cholesterol and blood pressure — one drink trial, and why it is not a juice trial

The closest thing to a beverage trial ran 31 obese non-diabetic adults through a randomised, double-blind crossover: 500 ml a day of a rose hip drink against a matched control drink, six weeks each. Total cholesterol fell 4.9% (p=0.0018), LDL cholesterol 6.0% (p=0.012), the LDL/HDL ratio 6.5% (p=0.041), systolic blood pressure 3.4% (p=0.021) and the Reynolds risk score 17% (p=0.007), with no effect on body weight, glucose tolerance, HDL cholesterol, triglycerides or inflammatory markers. [15] The drink was built from 40 g a day of ground whole Rosa canina fruit — eight times the dose used in the joint trials — blended with apple juice, citric acid and sugar, and it delivered around 31 g of fibre a day. That is a fibre-rich purée, and the fibre is exactly what pressing takes out.

What happens to vitamin C in the bottle

This is the finding with the most practical consequence for anyone who sells rosehip juice. A Chilean study followed rosehip juice through eight months in three arms — unpasteurised refrigerated, pasteurised refrigerated, pasteurised at room temperature. Initial ascorbic acid was almost identical in all three, between 1154.56 and 1190.01 mg per litre, so pasteurisation itself cost very little. Storage cost nearly everything: ascorbic acid “decreased considerably, disappearing at week six” in every arm, and total phenolics fell by an average of 57% across the eight months. [16] A vitamin C figure measured on the day of pressing describes that day and no other.

What European regulators have concluded

There is no authorised EU health claim for rosehip, and there has never been a scientific assessment of one. Rosehip’s claims were submitted under Article 13 of Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006 before 2008 and sit among roughly 2078 botanical claims still pending; a 2021 review of fifteen years of the regulation records that “no risk management decision on how to move forward with these claims is expected any time soon”, and notes that such claims may still be used commercially even though they have not been assessed. [17] Nor is there a European Union herbal monograph for rosehip fruit: the only Rosa monograph covers the petals of Rosa gallica, Rosa centifolia and Rosa damascena, for mild inflammation of the skin and mouth. [18] So everything defensible here rests on vitamin C, which has been assessed and authorised, and on describing the plant accurately.

What has not been studied

There is no clinical trial of rosehip juice — not one, for any outcome — and no human study of Rosa rugosa for any endpoint. Beyond vitamin C and polyphenols, nothing has been measured in pressed rosehip juice: not carotenoids, not tocopherols, not minerals, not individual sugars, not pectin. The fruit’s figures for those cannot be carried across to a bottle. One more distinction is worth holding: rosehip seed oil is a different product from rosehip fruit. Its high tocopherol and α-linolenic acid content belongs to the seeds, where fat makes up 5 to 16% of the dry weight and polyunsaturated fatty acids 74 to 80% of the fatty acids, [19] and none of that transfers to a pressed juice.

Safety, and who should be careful

In the pooled osteoarthritis trials the adverse effects were mild and did not differ from placebo: gastrointestinal discomfort and acid regurgitation in both arms, with one trial also recording frequent voiding, diarrhoea, constipation and a brief episode of mild urticaria. [10] A safety review of Rosa canina ingredients found no genotoxicity, and no adverse findings in human oral studies at 100 mg a day for twelve weeks or 2.5 g a day for six months — while stating plainly that reproductive, developmental and carcinogenicity data do not exist. [20] Allergy is the one concrete hazard. Rosehip is a Rosaceae fruit and cross-reacts within that family, with apple, peach and apricot. Among 13 workers exposed to powdered rosehip, nine developed asthma and five rhinitis, seven of them with rosehip-specific IgE; [21] a case of anaphylaxis after drinking rosehip tea, with a positive prick test and specific IgE, is also on record. [22] Rosehip is not on the EU list of allergens that must be declared, but anyone with a known Rosaceae fruit allergy should treat it as one. Two gaps are better stated than papered over: no oxalate measurement for rosehip fruit or juice has been published, and there is no published case of a rosehip–warfarin interaction — what exists is a single case report of high-dose ascorbic acid supplementation blunting warfarin, the INR rising to 15.4 once the supplement was stopped, which is about a supplement and not about this fruit. [23] There is likewise no authoritative position on rosehip in pregnancy, breastfeeding or childhood, because no body has issued one and the toxicology has not been done — an absence of information, not a reassurance. And the juice is acidic, around pH 3.45, [8] so the ordinary advice for acidic drinks applies: with a meal, rather than sipped through the day.

Scientific References

1. USDA Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central: Rose hips, wild (Northern Plains Indians). FDC ID 168998.
2. Medveckienė B, Kulaitienė J, Jarienė E, Vaitkevičienė N, Hallmann E. Carotenoids, polyphenols, and ascorbic acid in organic rosehips (Rosa spp.) cultivated in Lithuania. Applied Sciences. 2020;10(15):5337. doi:10.3390/app10155337
3. Medveckienė B, Kulaitienė J, Levickienė D, Hallmann E. The effect of ripening stages on the accumulation of carotenoids, polyphenols and vitamin C in rosehip species/cultivars. Applied Sciences. 2021;11(15):6761. doi:10.3390/app11156761
4. Al-Yafeai A, Bellstedt P, Böhm V. Bioactive compounds and antioxidant capacity of Rosa rugosa depending on degree of ripeness. Antioxidants. 2018;7(10):134. doi:10.3390/antiox7100134
5. EFSA Panel on Dietetic Products, Nutrition and Allergies. Vitamin C and contribution to the normal function of the immune system: evaluation of a health claim pursuant to Article 14 of Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006. EFSA Journal. 2015;13(11):4298. doi:10.2903/j.efsa.2015.4298
6. Commission Regulation (EU) No 432/2012 of 16 May 2012 establishing a list of permitted health claims made on foods, other than those referring to the reduction of disease risk and to children’s development and health — Annex.
7. Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 on the provision of food information to consumers, Annex XIII Part A; and Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006 on nutrition and health claims made on foods, Annex.
8. Cendrowski A, Przybył JL, Studnicki M. Physicochemical characteristics, vitamin C, total polyphenols, antioxidant capacity, and sensory preference of mixed juices prepared with rose fruits (Rosa rugosa) and apple or strawberry. Applied Sciences. 2024;14(1):113. doi:10.3390/app14010113
9. Igual M, García-Herrera P, Cámara RM, Martínez-Monzó J, García-Segovia P, Cámara M. Bioactive compounds in rosehip (Rosa canina) powder with encapsulating agents. Molecules. 2022;27(15):4737. doi:10.3390/molecules27154737
10. Christensen R, Bartels EM, Altman RD, Astrup A, Bliddal H. Does the hip powder of Rosa canina (rosehip) reduce pain in osteoarthritis patients — a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Osteoarthritis and Cartilage. 2008;16(9):965–972. PMID 18407528
11. Winther K, Apel K, Thamsborg G. A powder made from seeds and shells of a rose-hip subspecies (Rosa canina) reduces symptoms of knee and hip osteoarthritis: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial. Scandinavian Journal of Rheumatology. 2005;34(4):302–308. doi:10.1080/03009740510018624
12. Rein E, Kharazmi A, Winther K. A herbal remedy, Hyben Vital (stand. powder of a subspecies of Rosa canina fruits), reduces pain and improves general wellbeing in patients with osteoarthritis. Phytomedicine. 2004;11(5):383–391. doi:10.1016/j.phymed.2004.01.001
13. Marstrand K, Warholm L, Pedersen F, Winther K. Dose dependent impact of rose-hip powder in patients suffering from osteoarthritis of the hip and/or knee — a double blind, randomized, placebo controlled, parallel group, phase III study. International Journal of Complementary & Alternative Medicine. 2017;7(1):62–65. doi:10.15406/ijcam.2017.07.00210
14. Kirkeskov B, Christensen R, Bügel S, Bliddal H, Danneskiold-Samsøe B, Christensen LP, Andersen JR. The effects of rose hip (Rosa canina) on plasma antioxidative activity and C-reactive protein in patients with rheumatoid arthritis and normal controls: a prospective cohort study. Phytomedicine. 2011;18(11):953–958. doi:10.1016/j.phymed.2011.02.008
15. Andersson U, Berger K, Högberg A, Landin-Olsson M, Holm C. Effects of rose hip intake on risk markers of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease: a randomized, double-blind, cross-over investigation in obese persons. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2012;66(5):585–590. doi:10.1038/ejcn.2011.203
16. Peña F, González F, Jiménez-Aspee F, Bustamante L, Ruiz A. Stability of bioactive compounds and antioxidant activity in rosehip juice (Rosa spp.). Molecules. 2024;29(11):2448. doi:10.3390/molecules29112448
17. de Boer A. Fifteen years of regulating nutrition and health claims in Europe: the past, the present and the future. Nutrients. 2021;13(5):1725. doi:10.3390/nu13051725
18. European Medicines Agency, Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products. European Union herbal monograph on Rosa gallica L., Rosa centifolia L., Rosa damascena Mill., flos. EMA/HMPC/137299/2013, adopted 10 September 2014.
19. Kulaitienė J, Medveckienė B, Levickienė D, Vaitkevičienė N, Arlauskienė R, Jarienė E. Changes in fatty acids content in organic rosehip (Rosa spp.) seeds during ripening. Plants. 2020;9(12):1793. doi:10.3390/plants9121793
20. Cosmetic Ingredient Review Expert Panel. Safety assessment of Rosa canina-derived ingredients as used in cosmetics. Washington DC: Cosmetic Ingredient Review; 2016.
21. Kwaselow A, Rowe M, Sears-Ewald D, Ownby D. Rose hips: a new occupational allergen. Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. 1990;85(4):704–708. doi:10.1016/0091-6749(90)90187-9
22. Lleonart R, Corominas M, Lombardero M. Tea infusion, another source of Rosaceae allergy. Allergy. 2007;62(1):89–90. doi:10.1111/j.1398-9995.2006.01260.x
23. Sattar A, Willman JE, Kolluri R. Possible warfarin resistance due to interaction with ascorbic acid: case report and literature review. American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy. 2013;70(9):782–786. doi:10.2146/ajhp110704