Seriously, Juice Is Not Healthy
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Q: "They don't drink juice? What do they drink?"
A: "Water."
Q: "Just water?"
A: "Yep. If you want to get fancy they also drink soda water or water with lemon."
She looked judgy and baffled at how hard-ass my wife and I were about juice. But juice is straight calories in the form of sugar. There's no fibre to slow absorption like you'd get with eating the whole fruit. It's not much better, calorically speaking, than soda.
And in addition to being unhealthy, having young kids wired on sugar also makes our life harder.
I understand that when I see “cranberry cocktail”, there’s a bunch of sweet juice mixed in. I didn’t realize that drinks of other flavors have so much clandestine grape juice — which is basically sugar.
In France the wording 100% juice mans that that the liquid is directly from pressed fruit. No concentrates, nothing added. The only operation can be filtration and pasteurization.
http://www.yalescientific.org/2010/09/mythbusters-does-sugar...
Has it not been shown in the literature because no one has tried an appropriately rigorous experiment, or because the appropriately rigorous experiment showed a different conclusion?
I typically drink carbonated water with just a little juice, for flavor.
That's not a thing.
http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/sugar-and-candy-...
(From one of the co-authors of this article)
Similar to how a lot of kids are afraid of lightning because you are.
From the article:
> In my favorite of these studies, children were divided into two groups. All of them were given a sugar-free beverage to drink. But half the parents were told that their child had just had a drink with sugar. Then, all of the parents were told to grade their children’s behavior. Not surprisingly, the parents of children who thought their children had drunk a ton of sugar rated their children as significantly more hyperactive. This myth is entirely in parents’ heads. We see it because we believe it.
But regardless, the crash is horrible to behold.
It's a whole lot better nutritionally. Complete juice abstinence is silly unless your child seriously struggles with weight issues. A 6oz glass once in a while isn't going to give them diabetes.
I only drank whole milk as a kid. A glass with every meal. My parents never bought any juice or soda and me and all of my siblings grew up healthy and strong with no cavities or health issues.
It makes me cringe seeing overweight children glugging down sodas, but it makes me equally sad seeing horribly skinny children who's bones could be broken by the wind.
The article talks about this, but the reason it's so easy to binge on snack foods like juice is because they don't make you feel full and so you continue eating. Similarly, you'll feel much fuller if you drink whole milk versus skim milk, which is great for children who can't control impulses very well.
Here's a great video on the topic from one of the co-authors of this article:
On to the milk thing... Your complaint about skim milk presupposes that the whole variety is actually meant to be consumed by humans. By “meant” I assume that evolution has formulated the milk of various mamamals to the offspring of their own respective species. So for that definition of “meant”, how can one say that milk formulated for bovine offspring is meant for human consumption as is? Would not the ratios of fat, sugars, vitamins, etc. be out of balance with what a human needs? Right away, the widespread problem of lactose intolerance in humans, even many babies, upholds this view even a little. So why shouldn’t the formulation of cow’s milk as consumed by humans be altered outside of its natural state?
The thing about fat is that it can increase feelings of satiety.
Only humans of Northern European descent. Everyone else is lactose intolerant after they are weaned.
Because we literally mutated ourselves to drink the stuff? I get that a lot of people don't have the gene to process milk... But a non-insignificant amount of people do.
So, if your not lactose intolarent, we are "meant" to drink milk into adulthood.
If you think about how much fruit it takes to create a 600ml bottle of juice its crazy. If you couldn't stomach eating half a dozen oranges in a sitting, why would you think that drinking that much juice at a time (sometimes multiple times a day) would be good for you?
You know, I've almost forgotten about this problem. Buy clementines; they are a kind of orange which happen to be easy to peel. For more ease, at the store you can feel which ones have looser skin; it's no exaggeration that they are easier to peel than plastic wrappers off of processed food. They don't even make a mess - no dripping, no sticky fingers, etc. I can't recommend them enough - one of the wonders of nature, or of selective breeding.
https://twitter.com/aaronecarroll/status/1015682328411230208
My browser has to load 90 JavaScript files totaling in 20 gigabytes to display a 140 character string and fails along the way. And all the engineering brains at twitter couldn't make it so that it would just try again on its own. It's like they're trying to convince people to stay away from the platform.
When you see this headline, you’d think they might be including fresh squeeze juice from a variety of fruits and vegetables. They seem to only be talking about things like Coca-Cola’s Minute Maid and Walmart apple juice that the average American feeds their children. I thought they might be talking about juice bars. It makes me wonder, have the authors ever heard about the gigantic national trend of drinking fresh juice? Because they don’t seem to be referring to it at all.
I don’t know why they don’t suggest that you could give your kids less sugary juice, fresh squeeze juice, orange juice from things other than oranges, grapes or apples. One thing they don’t seem to realize is that many parents give their kids HFCS soda pop. I could think of many parents who believe the only reason to not give their children mountain dew is the caffeine. It is a little healthier to give them juice. Especially the 100% fruit juice they’re condemning, which is a better grade even than most juice on the shelves.
I would agree that the pasteurized, filtered, old sugary juices sold in plastic bottles in grocery stores are not very healthy. But they contain far fewer enzymes and vitamins and fiber than fresh squeezed juice. Maybe they should recommend that parents buy a juicer, and give their kids diluted juice that also includes vegetables in addition to sweet fruit.
Personally, I have been on a very restricted diet, mainly liquids all year. I don’t have been drinking fresh squeezed juice to solve my caloric deficit, but don’t binge on it or buy store juice because it’s clear to me that the main component is sugar and I don’t want to tempt type 2 diabetes. I’d much rather eat the whole fruits and vegetables if I could, but in the meantime, it’s hard to believe that the juice of 5 apples, a bunch of chard, a beet, 2 carrots, a stick of ginger and some celery would harm me or children.
Is this what each person gets or what you share with your children? That juice alone would contain around 100g of sugar, which regardless of where it comes from would be a lot for a single person, especially considering it won't be their only source of sugar in a day.
The problem with juices is that they're very easy to consume compared to their whole food counterpart and keep you full for a shorter time. I'm not sure exactly what definition you're using for fresh squeezed juice, but if you're not using the whole fruit then you're likely losing a lot of the fiber that makes whole fruit healthier
As far as 100g of sugar, yes, and that hypothetical stack of produce which is more than one person, especially a kid, would consume in a serving. And how much is in one can of Coke, which I’ve seen people give their children? 35 grams? In a far less healthy form, with anti-nutrients and no vitamins. This was the point of half my comment.
No, I would not feed that entire amount to a child at once. Yes, I would feel comfortable consuming it.
If it’s not their entire source of sugar all day - why not? Sure, some people feed their kids eat mcdonald’s ice cream while the doctors here demonize fruit. I’d think they could at least once mentioned that the 100% whole fruit juice that they are slandering is healthier than the sort of product some parents consider appropriate: http://texas-wholesale.com/images/products/80007%20-4236-BUG...
“The problem with juices is that they're very easy to consume compared to their whole food counterpart and keep you full for a shorter time. I'm not sure exactly what definition you're using for fresh squeezed juice, but if you're not using the whole fruit then you're likely losing a lot of the fiber that makes whole fruit healthier”
You just summed up this entire article, like I did. Yes, juice is high in sugar, and it’s healthier to eat whole fruit because of the fiber.
I have a severe swallowing disorder btw, so I can’t consume whole fruit at all.
Most people are there kids would never, ever sit down and eat a raw beet, two carrots, five apples, and so forth. Nutritionally, even without the fiber, the vitamins and enzymes of eating fresh raw fruits and vegetables are worth it, despite the sugar, especially for people who eat the typical awful American diet of fast and frozen food. American dietary analysis often includes a myopic focus on one or two macro nutrients, and this is a great example.
If you're thinking about a meal replacement, rather than a replacement for water, a smoothie would probably be more filling (although still not as much as fresh fruit, I don't think).
It is less true for parents giving their kid fresh carrot or beet juice, for many reasons that this article ignores because western medical orthodoxy is not interested. Vitamins, enzymes, healthier forms of sugar and other nutrients present in actual juice more than make up for the presence of sugar, in my opinion.
Of course this should be part of a truly healthy diet, which almost no parent offers their child in the US because they have no idea what it is and don't eat that way themselves.
This makes the sugar all available instantly.
When you eat the whole carrot, your digestive system has to tear away the layers of the matrix one at a time to get the sugar out. When you juice you remove the matrix mechanically.
Similar to how beets are relatively healthy and pure sugar (derived from beets) is relatively unhealthy.
I'm not sure at all what the alternative proposed for a drink is - water? tea? with no sweetener? I'm still confident that carrot, beet, tomato, whatever juice (diluted... like people normally do) is a better choice than just about anything with sweetener in it.
Whether juice bars are a trend or not is really irrelevant to the issue, and it would not be the first time someone tried to sell people things that were bad for them under the guise of it being healthy.
Juice has a lot of sugar.
Sugar is very calorie dense.
[I'm on the lookout for direct sugar-specifically-is-bad studies so I hope to get spammed with some]
Sugar causes a blood sugar roller coaster with an energy crash at 2-3 hours that appears to be specifically designed to get us to over eat. In nature sugar exists in large quantities only during the short period of fruit being in season, and thus it makes sense there would be a mechanism to get us to over eat during the limited window of fruit availability.
Sugar triggers our “eat it before it rots” mechanism.
After I have done some "research" on my own I found out that 100g Apple only contains 1g of fiber, so I guess the difference can't be that huge.
In animal testing it was found that mice who ate a diet that included apples had up to 50 percent less tumors. Now the exact same effect was achieved by giving them apple juice, with non-filtered apple juice being more effective, supposedly due to a higher concentration of Procyanidins.
The major effect isn’t how much fiber, but that the sugar is trapped in a matrix of fiber and water. Your digestive system has to tear away the outer layers to get to the sugar, this slows the absorption of the sugar and reduces the glycemic index.
In juice the matrix has been mechanically separated so the glycemic effect is almost exactly the same as eating ten spoonfuls of white sugar.
For breakfast I make juice with kale (a bunch), a cucumber, carrots, and an apple. It's a lot healthier than most other American breakfasts.
If apples or oranges can last a week in a basket, grapes, or peaches, or many other fruit would not. So it's easy to convince yourself that juice is almost like the fruit, or at least lets you feel some of its pleasant taste.
Like many things, it's higher concentration than our bodies are naturally adapted to, so it's easy to over-consume (a pint instead of a half a cup).
Right now the best are bottled teas like "Honest Tea" for $3 a pop at lunch. You can get something much better by buying some nice tea and brewing it yourself. And it probably costs only 5 cents instead of $3.
When fermented, sugars break down, hence the saying that Kombucha is vinegar soda.
- "Weed is good because it's 'natural'" "Yeah, but so are ricin, hemlock and nightshade."
- "Juice is made from fruit, fruit is good, therefore juice must be good." "Although it's not HFCS, juice has more carbs than soda."
But that doesn't mean it's a good idea to drink the latest clinically unproven science experiment like, for example, Coke Zero. Nobody has a clue what those small molecules actually do besides the obvious.