The invention relates to a process for preparing a reduced calorie beverage orfood productemploying fermentation of a plant-derived juice or liquid and removing theethanol therefrom.The process involves first converting at least some of the sugar in a plant-derived juice or liquidby fermenting it with yeast to produce a fermentation product containingethanol andsubsequently removing at least some of the ethanol from the fermentationproduct, whilemaintaining the fermentation product at a temperature of less than fifty-fivedegrees Celsius toproduce the reduced calorie beverage or food product. The alcohol removal stepis performed attemperatures of less than seventy-five degrees in order to reduce the impactupon flavour andnutritional properties, relative to conventional alcohol removal at or nearboiling temperatures.This invention also relates to an apparatus for performing the process forpreparing a reducedcalorie beverage or food product and to the reduced calorie juices and juiceproducts createdusing this process and apparatus.
