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Is 100% Fruit Juice a Healthy Drink?

Is 100% Fruit Juice a Healthy Drink?

In a word, no.

This is heresy, you think!

Maybe, but it is still true.

Researchers found that drinking fruit juice or soda increases your risk of diabetes by as much as 30%.

In a 2008 study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers concluded, “Drinking sweetened soft drinks or fruit drinks was associated with an increased risk of developing diabetes.”

The process of making fruit juice reduces the nutrients and the fiber content. (No you can’t drink your juice and “balance” it with a shot of Metamucil.)

Eating a whole apple gives you nutrients plus 4 grams of fiber to slow the digestion of the carbs. A glass of apple juice requires about 4 apples, so you get four times as many carbs but are missing out on 16 grams of fiber.

 So what?

The sugar is rapidly absorbed into the blood stream… Carbs turn into sugar in your body.

An apple would be fine, but 4 apples (or a glass of juice made from 4 apples) would really shoot your blood sugar up. There is no fiber in juice to slow the absorption of the sugar and the nutrients have been damaged in the process of making the juice.

Alissa Hamilton, author of Squeezed: What You Don’t Know About Orange Juice, states:

 “In the process of pasteurizing, juice is heated and stripped of oxygen, a process called deaeration, so it doesn’t oxidize. Then it’s put in huge storage tanks where it can be kept for upwards of a year. It gets stripped of flavor-providing chemicals, which are volatile. When it’s ready for packaging, companies such as Tropicana hire flavor companies such as Firmenich to engineer flavor packs to make it taste fresh. People think not-from-concentrate is a fresher product, but it also sits in storage for quite a long time…”

 

Fruit juice is really a glass of sugar water. (heresy)

Yes, it is better than drinking coke, but that’s not the point!

The point is: Drink water and eat whole fruit.

Store-bought juice has been pasteurized and cooked at such high temperatures that all enzymes have been destroyed. Without the fiber, the sugars in the juice are quickly absorbed, spiking your blood sugar level.

Our glasses of juice have grown from tiny 2 ounce glasses of fresh-squeezed to a 12oz sugar rush (10 tsp. of sugar in the body!! ).

We’re not just drinking a glass of juice at breakfast. The bagels, cereal, toast, pancakes etc. are all simple carbs that rapidly convert to sugar.

How much sugar are you really eating at breakfast?

Give little Suzy a bowl of cereal, a piece of toast and a glass of juice for breakfast and you will send her off to school jacked up on about 30 tsp of sugar.

Hello? This is just breakfast. What’s Suzy eating the rest of the day?

Anyone want to guess why 67% of Americans are obese and overweight?

Mainly, it is the simple carbs. Eating whole fruit provides enzymes and nutrients plus the needed fiber to slow the absorption of sugar.

No, fruit juice is not a healthy drink, instead eat limited whole fruit to enjoy the taste, nutrients, and health benefits.
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Photo source “Real Florida: Put Out to Pasteurization”

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