Juice may taste good, but unlike the fruit, it’s not healthy

"14g raw almonds"

You probably already know this, but others reading may not:

Almonds have a glycemic index of zero.

They are a great addition to a fruit smoothie since, in addition to the fiber of the whole fruit, you knock down the (already low) glycemic index of the entire (liquid) meal.

I wonder if you've considered almond butter ? Most almond butters on store shelves contain sugar, which would disqualify them, but many grocery stores (including whole foods) allow you to grind your own in-store ... I find it much more convenient to add almond butter to smoothies rather than almonds themselves ...

a) It is a lot easier to consume much more juice than one would normally consider eating when juiced

b) just because you are consuming both the juice and the fiber still, does not make them equivalent, the post-consumption breakdown of fiber acts as a time release while pre-consumption fiber breakdown acts as a sugar dose.

Smoothies aren't as good as eating the whole fruit! Fruit is better than juice because it has fiber. The insoluble fiber becomes something like a mesh inside the intestine and prevents food from getting digested too soon. When you put the fruit through the blender, the insoluble fiber is ripped apart and you lose a lot of its benefit. Dr. Lustig, an endocrinologist at UCSF, talks about this in one of his lectures. It's on YouTube, but I can't remember exactly which lecture.

I agree that they seem to be covering "commercial fruit juice." But it's an interesting question as to how chewing fruit in its natural form compares to blending it. The second question would be: why make juice at all, then? I guess the answer there is as a vehicle for the fish oil, protein powder, etc. I'm sure there's a bit of psychology at play, too: I think our drink concoctions appeal to the alchemist in each of us.

You can do an experiment, if you eat those ingredients whole do you feel more full than when you blend them up into a smoothie?

>One of the habits that she identified as healthy was drinking freshly squeezed juice, which she saw as a virtuous food, every day.

fresh squeezed juice. They point out that the juice w/o the fiber IS the problem. So that includes smoothies with any fruit juice.

No, the articles says The truth is that fruit juice, even if it is freshly pressed, 100 percent juice, is little more than sugar water.

> If you're consuming smoothies which use the entire fruit/veggie that you'd normally eat, and you're not adding sweeteners, and you don't have any health issues that might be related to excess calories in your diet, then no need to attack the article, it's not addressing you.

Be aware that any public health organisation trying to get people to eat more fruit and vegetables will also tell people not to drink smoothies. So, this article is in fact aimed at people blending their fruit and veg.

(There's a discussion to be had about the evidence base, but that's true of most of the posts in this thread).

Here's the English version, but this is common across countries:

http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/5ADAY/Pages/FAQs.aspx#juices

> A: Unsweetened 100% fruit juice, vegetable juice and smoothies can only ever count as a maximum of one portion of your 5 A Day.

> For example, if you have two glasses of fruit juice and a smoothie in one day, that still only counts as one portion.

> Your combined total of drinks from fruit juice, vegetable juice and smoothies should not be more than 150ml a day – which is a small glass.

> For example, if you have 150ml of orange juice and 150ml smoothie in one day, you'll have exceeded the recommendation by 150ml.

> When fruit is blended or juiced, it releases the sugars which increases the risk of tooth decay so it's best to drink fruit juice or smoothies at mealtimes.

http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/5ADAY/Pages/Whatcounts.aspx

> Some portions only count once in a day:

> 150ml fruit juice, vegetable juice or smoothie. Limit the amount you drink to a combined total of 150ml a day. Crushing fruit and vegetables into juice and smoothies releases the sugars contained in the fruit and vegetables, which can cause damage to teeth.

http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/5ADAY/Pages/Portionsizes.aspx

> Unsweetened 100% fruit juice, vegetable juice and smoothies can only ever count as a maximum of one portion of your 5 A Day.

> For example, if you have two glasses of fruit juice and a smoothie in one day, that still only counts as one portion.

> Smoothies include any drink made up of any combination of fruit/vegetable juice, puree or all the edible pulped fruit or vegetable.

> Your combined total of drinks from fruit juice, vegetable juice and smoothies should not be more than 150ml a day – which is a small glass.

> For example, if you have 150ml of orange juice and 150ml smoothie in one day, you'll have exceeded the recommendation by 150ml.

> When fruit is blended or juiced, it releases the sugars which increases the risk of tooth decay so it's best to drink fruit juice or smoothies at mealtimes.

> Whole fruits are less likely to cause tooth decay because the sugars are contained within the structure of the fruit.

> Watch out for drinks that say "juice drink" on the pack as they are unlikely to count towards your 5 A Day and can be high in sugar.

Not to hyperbolize like the other commentor, but I was told harmless little lies like that as a child myself. You eventually learn otherwise, but not before embarrassing yourself in front of your peers and feeling betrayed.

Different children will react differently, of course.

I'm not quite parsing the logic of doing this.

If she is getting fooled that carbonated water is 'juice', then I'm assuming she doesn't know what juice actually is and therefore has no association of juice = sugar drink. So why the need to trick your daughter?

Couldn't you have just called it 'fizzy water', or if water is associated with 'boring', call it 'fizzy drink'. She'd still get it from the bar and have the excitement of that.

My parents did this for me for quite a long time: dried papaya was sweets, and it was a special event if little bits of dried papaya appeared in muesli.

What we do is mix juices with equal amounts of water... the 50/50 mix still taste great (better in my opinion) and it isn't as bad for you. As a small bonus, it makes it slightly cheaper..

How did your daughter get interested in (the concept of) juice? Our two-year-old has never really expressed an interest, but then we don't keep juice at home and he doesn't get it elsewhere either. He's curious about things we drink that he doesn't get (I drank a bottle of root beer in front of him the other day, he was very confused and curious), but if we put milk in front of him he's got the thing he wants most of all and ignores our drinks entirely.

There is a deeper problem here. Your child is satisfied with less when the perceived (or socially established) value is larger. It may be better to teach your child to estimate the value of things on their own, rather than rely on others.

Further down the road, you presumably don't want to have a kid that needs to wear expensive clothes to school to feel accepted. And when they are that age, you can't convince them that less expensive clothing is expensive too.

Be mindful that a lot of carbonated water can damage the enamel of her teeth.

You are doing her a massive favour for the rest of her life, its easy to underestimate the damage sugar does and after all we want our kids to be happy and sugary treats seem to make them happy

This is really messed up.

>I don't have proof for the following,

Which is true for most statements in this thread. But for no good reason. These are all verifiable/falsifiable statements. There is an obvious objective truth but everyone is just cargo culting.

Question: which vitamins are in your juices? Are these vitamins you dont get enough in your normal diet or from the sun? How much of those do you actually need and does that mean you need 1 or 2 glasses a year?

> Personally I don't understand why a person would juice a fruit when you can eat it whole?

I feel the same way about veggies. Raw veggies are awesome.

Orange juice has about the same amount of sugar as regular coke. Carrot / tomato / beet has about half of that, green veggies have very little.

It is also frustrating to see the waste produced. The machines pulverize and discard lots of fruit that would otherwise be eaten. And the employees at smoothy places end up just pouring out whatever is left in their blender that doesn't fit in the cup so even the juice is wasted.

Don't beets contain a lot of sugar? Isn't that what table sugar is refined from these days?

Whole fruits are messy and time consuming.

Juicing fruits and vegetables will always result in a product where the sugar:fiber ratio is much higher than just consuming the food whole (or blended in a smoothie).

Seconded on the + raw vegetables front. You can prise my Champion 2000 juicer from my cold dead hands...

Vegetable juice is indeed better in that it contains less sugar.

However, fruits contain acids that can be helpful in moderation for fighting free radicals etc.

Also, these days sugar is added to everything, including genetically modified plants, which is pretty much every plant you buy in the supermarket.

I'm just about as suspicious of Big Hippy as I am of traditional food companies. As in why does this organic hippy bread taste like bready cake? Oh right the processed malt and honey. Worse used to be I ate rye bread before it was 'healthy'. Now most rye bread appears to be rye flavored bread with added sugars.

Just a note, whole grain bread is not the healthy choice just the healthier compared to the alternative of plain white bread.

Vitamins, minerals, anti-oxidants, fiber (in some cases).

But yes, barring fiber, these are all micronutrients, not macronutrients.

Just looking at the nutrition label, I doubt anyone would think that. An apple is basically sugar plus a bit of fiber. A chocolate bar is probably healthier (just for balancing out the mix with fat and protein) except for the fact that people rarely binge on apples.

That sounds very inefficient, I've had yields of 2:1 with slight variations for different orange types.

Most juice is not even "juice". Some of it is concentrated juice which is then reconstituted sometimes with added sugar or fructose. Some of it is only partially juice, the rest being just water, sugar, and flavor. Some of it is freeze dried and then reflavored because freeze drying destroys its flavor, i.e. not from concentrate juice. Some of it is pasteurized which destroys the vitamin content. It is not just missing the pulp, it's also missing all the fiber that fruit has which is good for your digestive system and also keeps the glycemic load from spiking as it digests slowly. There is really nothing good about the concept of juice or juicing. Just eat fruits and vegetables like normal primates do.

(I am not a physician and this is not medical advice.)

Recommended maximum intake of sugars per day: 37.5g (men) / 25g (women)

Avg. sugars per banana: 14g Avg. sugars per orange: 9g

4 x 9g + (1 or 2) x 14g = 50-64g actual sugar intake per day from the fruits listed.

That being said, each person's metabolism behaves differently so there's no specific action that you necessarily need to take. You may wish to ask your physician do the appropriate blood tests to check for pre-diabetes at every annual physical.

http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/prediabetes/di...

one may naively think that drinking a glass of juice is 'healthier' than drinking a can of soda- when in fact the caloric values and sugar contents may be similar.

that is the important thing to take away from this article IMO.

Concept of an ingredient being healthy does not exist in science. Is diet filled with fruits and vegetables healthy? Of course. Starchy foods with high nutrients per calories ratio have super high unattainable overdose amount. That's why they are safe.

Eating 3000 kcal of bananas metabolises quite differently than 3000 kcal of glucose sugar.

Fruit is certainly nutritious. You are healthy. If you eat too much fruit, you may not be healthy. In moderation, you will still probably be healthy (and happy; fruit is delicious).

They're not telling you to run and eat HFC products. They're just saying that eating a whole fruit is healthier than just the juice. And that's something nutritionists have been saying for the last decade or more.

If I put a whole apple with its skin or raspberry with its seed, or orange in a mixer-grinder, how or when exactly do I lose the skin, seeds or membranes during the process of making juice?

> your brain doesn’t get the same “I’m full” signal that it does from solid food

Does that mean if I'm underweight, I should drink a lot of it?

Yes, the article thinks that as well.

Not to mention most juice is loaded with fructose.

I agree with your point 2, but I disagree on point 1.

> when you make juice, you leave some of the most wholesome parts of the fruit behind. The skin on an apple, the seeds in raspberries and the membranes that hold orange segments together

Since people mean one of those smoothie-like juice which you make with a blender when they talk about "healthy juice", I'll talk about that. It's actually the opposite for me. I never eat apple skin, and never really like raspberry seeds, also no grape seeds. But when I put them all into a juicer and make a juice, i drink all that.

Who drinks "squeezed juice" nowadays when they can make one with a juicer anyway?

The article actually mentions you should drink Milk but not Juice. I bet we can find a juice industry blog where they advise Juice but not Milk.

Personally I avoid both for my kids. Juice is sugar water, and my kids are not calves, so they have no need for baby cow food.

It's more a push to whole foods. Before they thought fat was the issue, so skim milk wass better than whole. But now we know that the satiating effect of fat means that whole milk is a better choice. Whole fruit, or smoothies/full pulp juices are better than the highly filtered juice.

A decent portion of the population of this planet can't digest lactose, yet they are just fine without raw milk.

Human milk or cow's milk?

The title was changed after my comment.

Forgive me, but saying "enzymes", "jumpstart", and "catalyst" of unnamed body functions triggers my bullshit filter. Could you elaborate on what body functions need jumpstarting or provide a link?

Why?

I'm not usually an authoritarian but the article seemed to provide a reasonable explanation why, and was written by three doctors working at a diabetes clinic, so "I don't think so" by anonymous internet dude is incredibly unconvincing.

Although you provided absolutely no reason why, I could provide a reason that seems perfectly reasonable to a normie, in that its well known to normies that relatively minor arithmetic mistakes by diabetics can result in a under or overdose coma related to insulin intake. Therefore if being a serving off for a diabetic can result in passing out, it seems very reasonable that junk food like juice products could be the difference between insulin and no insulin required for someone near the border. If force feeding a serving of stuff (in this case juice, but it could just as well be candy bars) would make my diabetic coworker really sick, it seems extremely reasonable that cutting out that serving from someone almost as sick, would make their doctor happier.

"Unless the patient was downing a gallon of juice every day"

A gallon of OJ contains about 2K calories. Two large 16 oz glasses per day, perhaps one with breakfast and one as a snack, adds up to a quart or 500 calories per day. If you multiply that out, that kind of intake is a gain or loss of fifty or so pounds per year, no laughing matter. A gallon of juice per day would be insane, gain a couple pounds per week.

Yes, and as a milk ad.

Milk seems to be associated with various health issues too, and that it's important for children's growth is a dubious claim.

But it's clear that drinking large quantities of liquids with a high sugar content (including milk) is not good for you.

> Unless the patient was downing a gallon of juice every day, eliminating juices—from whole fruit, not processed concentrated crap—would not solve her diabetes.

It's very possible that you're underestimating the effect that drinking 28g - 40g+ of liquid sugar, per serving, has on a diabetic's body.

If her body produces enough insulin to handle what she eats throughout the day, even if it isn't conventionally 'healthy', that is diabetes in remission. She may have a damaged pancreas that cannot produce as much insulin as a healthy person, but by virtue of not having constantly high blood sugar, she wouldn't be considered actively diabetic.

However, drinking 30-40g of sugar water requires a lot of insulin to reduce blood sugar.

It may just be those excessively sugar-rich drinks, that she drinks every day, are enough to overcome her body's natural ability to reduce her blood sugar to a safe amount.