Hacker News Reader

Comment by merraksh | Hacker News Reader

The article seems to point to these two as the main reasons why fruit juice is not as good as fruit:

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 — they are all good for you. That is where most of the fiber, as well as many of the antioxidants, phytonutrients, vitamins and minerals are hiding. Fiber is good for your gut; it fills you up and slows the absorption of the sugars you eat, resulting in smaller spikes in insulin.

2) when you drink your calories instead of eating them, your brain doesn’t get the same “I’m full” signal that it does from solid food, even though you wind up consuming far more calories in the process.

[edit: clarified text is quoted from the article]

View on HN

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?

I think they are talking about the more common process of leaving out the pulp and only serving the liquid.

Wouldn't that be a smoothie? I'm curious about the difference with just eating the fruit.

I've heard some claims that blending would break up the fruit in too small many pieces leading to sugars that absorb more quickly - but I've never seen anything to back these claims.

One difference is of course that when you eat the fruit, you chew it. This takes time and this may give some "food coming, hunger over" signal to the brain. Smoothies are so easy to drink that you might be getting way more fruits than you would normally eat.

What is the problem with rapid metabolism? Isn't that a good thing, so long as you have the varied nutrients to ensure the long tail of metabolism? E.g. A mixture of fructose, glucose, and more complex carbohydrates.

How does this compare to the lady in the very first part of the article who drank freshly squeezed juice?

What you're doing is not "freshly squeezed".

Why what I am doing is not freshly squeezed? What is it then?

Not a native English speaker, so trying to understand the difference.

> 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?

If you want to put on fat, a diet rich in sugary drinks will do you wonders. Doesn't have to be expensive fruit juice either. Just drink lots of soft drinks every day, like, 3 litres or more, and you're setting yourself on a solid path to obesity.

If you want to put on muscle you'll need to do better than that.

There's always GOMAD! https://stronglifts.com/gomad-milk-squats-gallon-gain-weight...

Hah remember it well when I was trying to get to 20 stone.

Yep, then spend 2 years in pain from the tendonitis and ligament damage. Those tissue have a lot less blood flow than muscle so they can't keep up with stupid fast growth. Good form to prevent injury takes practice too, years of it! But I suppose if you are taking steroids you might heal faster in the short term.

Or just gain a pound a month and talk to a therapist about your body dysmorphia. A therapist is way cheaper than a surgeon. You'll also learn a lot about the limits of your body and learn a sustainable way to build strength and muscle.

Nope. Fruit juice is mostly water. Even raw sugar is only 380 kcal/g, just a bit more than French fries (310 kcal/g).

If you're underweight, you should eat food.

Something about your numbers seem way, way off (by two orders of magnitude, actually). Could you explain better or point to references?

I think it's per 100g, not per g.

Edit: yeah. That's how dietary references are done lots of non-US places. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=calories+in+100g+of+su...

As one of the weird perpetually hungry, healthy appetite, fairly skinny person I've been told that peanut butter is among one of the better options for maximizing caloric intake. I should be eating nearly a cup of peanut butter per day it seems and the same calories would be in 8 smoothies or so.

Yes, the article thinks that as well.

Not to mention most juice is loaded with fructose.

What is the problem with fructose, do you think?

It metabolises to fat in your liver if you consume more than a tiny portion of it.

Not exactly, fructose metabolism does happen in the liver, turning fructose into DHAP and glyceraldehyde. These products are then further metabolized elsewhere in the body. The reason Fructose is used as a sugar substitute for people with blood sugar control problems is that due to the liver enzyme mediated metabolic pathway, you don't get the same instantaneous insulin spike as you do with glucose, which passes right through the liver and is metabolized directly in other tissues.

However, consuming too much fructose can lead to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease which is much like cirrhosis.

Pretty much tl;dr: all sugars are bad for you. They're better for you in fruits because they're trapped in plant fibers which slow down their absorption into the bloodstream allowing your body to spread out the load over time. Fiber also makes you feel full so you're less likely to go back for more.

[] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fructose

Problem is, that unlike glucose, consuming fructose does not make us feel full, so it is very easy to consume a lot of it.

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?

Parent's comments are direct quotes from the article.

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

Lots of people. And to clarify, a juicer refers to a device that leaves all the fiber behind, as opposed to smoothies from a blender.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com