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Comment by voidmain0001 | Hacker News Reader

I don't have proof for the following, but I think the article should qualify the type of juice being consumed. I regularly make juice from raw vegetables (ginger, cucumber, carrots, beets, celery, parsley, cilantro, yams, kale, chard, brussel sprouts etc) and I suspect that the sugar content is less than fruit juice. Personally I don't understand why a person would juice a fruit when you can eat it whole? Fruits are so stupidly delicious when eaten whole. In the end, everything in moderation...

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>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?

All of your questions are actually unanswerable with certainty from the current state of nutritional science if you replace the word 'vitamin' with 'nutrient'.

Actual plant food or fruit is loaded with phytochemicals like polyphenols, carotenoids, flavonoids, etc. most of which we seem to be able to survive without, but at the same time exert real testable effects on our metabolism and immune systems.

But we don't know in detail what those effects are yet since there are literally tens of thousands of these compounds, and we've only just started to scratch the surface.

>All of your questions are actually unanswerable with certainty from the current state of nutritional science if you replace the word 'vitamin' with 'nutrient'.

Well, my questions were open ended in nature. "We don't know" would be a perfectly objective thing to say about a lot of stuff.

But even if there are very few 'confirmed' food facts (i.e. we dont know anything), that does not exclude the possibility that there are many 'rejected' food beliefs, since those statements are not open questions.

For example: many people belief that the more vitamins they eat the healthier they get. Every scientific experiment falsified this statement! That doesn't mean we know what makes people healthy, but we can still know that 'health is a proportional relationship to vitamin intake' is a bullshit belief not backed up by any experiment.

Science can and has rejected hypotheses, without the requirement that they replace it with anything. "We don't know" is perfectly acceptable. "Drink this high vitamin juice, it will make your life last longer" means the person uttering those words is either a fraud or an idiot.

Although going to the other extreme and equating truth with scientific verification is also not a helpful belief system.

There are plenty of things that are true that haven't been subject to rigorous, peer-reviewed scrutiny, because of the lack of practicality or the cost associated with it.

I realize this is an argument from authority, but it still holds sway with me: My cell bio professor (M.D./Ph.D from Harvard) used to emphasize often the fact that 90% of vitamins end up in your toilet. Not a crowd-pleasing thought, apparently.

Many vitamins function as catalysts rather than (or in addition to) functioning ad reaction participants, so even if 100% passed out without undergoing any chemical change, they could still be useful. The statement may not be inaccurate (I don't know what the real number is), but it's something of a non-sequitur in the discussion of whether vitamins are useful, or of whether vitamin supplements are useful.

> 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.

Touché. Excellent point.

Some need to be cooked to become edible, others at least fermented; granted many could be eaten raw, just not "all".

And I generally think most vegetables taste terrible. What's the point of going on about personal preferences here?

When I used to juice I did a combo. I would eat some raw veggies while cutting them up for juicing. Then, I would eat a can of rinsed beans for protein(warmed with pepper).

I've tried to eat the same quantity of raw veggies as what I would juice; LOTS OF WORK.

Did I need that much juice? Was I getting the equiv or better of benefit from drinking juice as I would have eating entirely raw? IDK.

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.

There is a big difference in natural sugars contained in orange juice (and I'm talking about self made orange juice here, not these boxed juices you can buy at a store) than the white, processed, probably also containing high glycose syrup -sugar you find in a coke.

Neither has pulp, and the various sugars are free-floating. With no fiber to slow its absorption or to make you feel full. If you extracted the sugar it'd be white too.

Oranges contain glucose, fructose and sucrose.

The ratios of fructose and glucose are pretty much the same in both fruit and table sugar. Most fruits are 40 to 55 percent fructose (there’s some variation: 65 percent in apples and pears; 20 percent in cranberries), and table sugar (aka sucrose) is 50/50. [1] Your Coke is 42-55% fructose. [2]

Are there differences in vitamins and minerals? Yep. Fiber? Nope. Sugar? Nope. And the latter two are the biggest deal IMO.

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/29/fruit-sugar-versus-...

[2] https://examine.com/nutrition/is-hfcs-high-fructose-corn-syr...

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.

I bake cookies out of the pulp

In my experience, if you're on good terms with the staff at your juice place, they'll often put the extra in a second cup for you.

Edit: I agree that the waste is ridiculous

On the other hand, if you buy it in a store it's likely made from fruit that didn't look good enough to sell.

Smoothies and juice are different. If you are juicing something, you are straining out all of pulp and just ending up with a liquid. For a smoothie, the pulp is still in the drink, just pulverized.

> If you are juicing something, you are straining out all of pulp

No, that's not part of the definition of juicing, and juicing oranges, especially, without straining out all the pulp is common.

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

They must. I add them occasionally to sweeten the end product.

There are vegetable beets (really purple, starchy) and sugar beets.

Sugar beets account for a significant chunk of sugar production but not a majority.

Ah! Thanks for the clarification!

Also, I screwed up when I said table sugar. I meant commercial sugar used in things. Table sugar still comes from sugar plants.

It's just sucrose, lots of table sugar does come from sugar beets.

There are also golden beets: http://imavex.vo.llnwd.net/o18/clients/urbanfarm/images/Beet...

Interestingly and somewhat related conversation-wise, for people with diabetes sweet potatoes are a better choice than regular potatoes. A sweet potato (48) has a lower glycemic index and more fiber than regular white flesh potatoes (76).

Also interesting is a banana (52) should be eaten in moderation by anyone with diabetes, moderate index but less fiber? I have relatives with diabetes but needed to eat a banana for the potassium but all they were allowed was half a banana.

My skinny vegetable eating family on my mom's side have type 2 diabetes mainly the women of the family. My overweight, ex-smoking, little to no exercise family on my dad's side don't have type 2 diabetes except one.

And sugar doesn't cause diabetes like so many people seem to say on the Internet. You certainly crave sweets but sugar isn't the cause of type 2 diabetes.

Eating lots fiber for slowing sugar absorption and for feeding your good gut flora in your microbiome seems to be the key to many things in life and health.

Isn't type 2 diabetes among skinny people with "good" diets rare?

If it is it's not for my mom's family. My grandmother had type 2 she died in the mid 1990s but she had type 2 since she was quite young not a kid but early on as an adult.

She lived on a farm, ate only vegetables except the occasional roast on Sunday, walked everywhere, very little sugar, ate locally grown food, no McDonalds or fast food at all in this isolated rural area in the 1940s even 1950s and 1960s, a healthy lifestyle didn't help.

One of my aunts (mother's side) died of pancreatic cancer. So it seems there is some genetic problem for pancreases (sp?) and women on my mom's side.

All fruit has an exorbitant amount of sugar. Carbs are carbs, regardless of whether the 'fruit is good for you.'

When people talk about trying to lose weight by eating more fruit, you can guess the outcome of how well they do.

Whole fruits are messy and time consuming.

You must be kidding

Eating an orange involves a great deal of time and effort, and results in a lot of mess and stickiness.

Sure but the journey has a value of its own. I find preparing food, particularly monotonous peeling and chopping to be almost zen like.

That's highly subjective. I don't, for example.

Sure it's very subjective.

On the other extreme I think something like Soylent is downright terrible.

And I love it! I'm enjoying some right now, while my coworkers argue about where to go and spend $10 for lunch.

Messy, sure, but 'a great deal of time an effort'? Really? It takes a matter of seconds to peel an orange.

Do you also avoid going to the bathroom and brushing teeth? These activities seem on the same level of time and effort and also can involve a lot of mess and stickiness.

Find me a faster and cleaner way of keeping my teeth clean or my bowels/bladder empty,and I'll be throwing cash at you faster than you know what to do with.

Shower orange. Look it up on reddit :)

Eating an apple is messy? And if you don't have time to take a minute or so to eat and apple, you are way too busy and you need to change your life style.

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.

> Also, these days sugar is added to everything, including genetically modified plants

Citation needed

Here are some references - perhaps you will rethink that downvote:

Corn is in many things: http://fooderyboston.com/corn-is-everywhere/

Corn has tons of added sugar through genetic tinkering, as well as many other plants: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/opinion/sunday/breedin...

Within one generation, the new extra sugary varieties eclipsed old-fashioned sweet corn in the marketplace. Build a sweeter fruit or vegetable — by any means — and we will come. Today, most of the fresh corn in our supermarkets is extra-sweet. The kernels are either white, pale yellow, or a combination of the two. The sweetest varieties approach 40 percent sugar, bringing new meaning to the words “candy corn.” Only a handful of farmers in the United States specialize in multicolored Indian corn, and it is generally sold for seasonal decorations, not food.

We’ve reduced the nutrients and increased the sugar and starch content of hundreds of other fruits and vegetables. How can we begin to recoup the losses?

>Here are some references - perhaps you will rethink that downvote:

Yeah, i'm actually surprised about this. Im not in the US, so i don't know how well it all compares with the supermarket here.

As for rethinking my downvote. It seems i can't un-downvote you. Maybe there is a time-limit?

The sugar content in the fruits we eat today is the result of selective breeding, not GMO. Everything is bred to look delicious and have a high sugar content. Other qualities (such as taste) are sadly secondary. The Golden Delicious apple might be the best example.

Apples are an interesting case though, since they don't breed true at all. What happens is that lots of trees are allowed to grow from promising parent stock and then occasionally a new marketable apple is discovered. That tree is then cloned by grafting cuttings to established roots.

Fuji and Gala are quite sweet, but they also stay quite crisp a long time compared to older varieties, so it isn't just sugar content. Same with Granny Smith, which are popular because they are relatively tart (while still being fairly sweet for apples).

Okay, but in a sense it is also GMO correct?

In fact it is exactly this sense that is used when people say "nearly everything is GMO these days".

https://www.cagw.org/media/wastewatcher/almost-everything-ge...

This is nothing new. Nearly all of the food we eat didn't exist in that form a few thousand years ago. "Selective breeding of both plants and animals has been practiced since early prehistory; key species such as wheat, rice, and dogs have been significantly different from their wild ancestors for millennia, and maize, which required especially large changes from teosinte, its wild form, was selectively bred in Mesoamerica." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_breeding#History

GMO are a modern, accelerated way to achieve similar goals (or ones that were previously unattainable, such as pesticide resistance). The criticism is that adding genes from other plants may have unforeseeable, potentially undesirable side effects.

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