You walk into your neighborhood market and want something cold to drink. The health-conscious, you skip the soda section and directs the healthiest juice section. There are rows of them-orange, Apple, grape ... --oh, and look, so many different milkshakes loaded with blueberries, pomegranate, strawberry, protein, acai, pineapple, kiwi, and none of them doesn't contain any added sugar. Perfect.
Stop it now! You could also back up in the soda and grab a good ' ole cola.
Why? Because juices and smoothies more juice are best for you a can of soda. Yes, you heard right. Are absolutely loaded with sugar. In fact, they have so much sugar and, in many cases more sugar, compared with an equal dose of soda.
Still scratching your head over this? A cola 16-ounce serving has a massive 13 1/2 teaspoons of sugar. Apple juice and orange juice have almost the same amount. Grape juice 20 teaspoons of sugar. A vast majority of the supposed "healthy" naked and Odwalla Fruit Smoothies have about 15 teaspoons of sugar.
Stop and think about this. Imagine buying a cup of coffee, take a step to the counter service and ripping open between 13 and 19 sugar sachets to pour coffee. If you saw someone doing this you'd be disgusted. And yet, that is exactly what you do every time you reach for a drink of juice.
The fruit smoothies are just as bad. On average they are consuming 15 teaspoons of sugar with each 16-ounce bottle. The marketing of these drinks, however, makes you believe that they are actually good for you. The label of the pomegranate Acai Smoothie offers a nude illustration showing exactly how much fruit is in each bottle: 1/3 2 Pomegranates, Acai berries, 1 95 1/3 apples, 1/2 banana, red grapes and 14 14 white grapes. All this for almost 16 teaspoons of sugar.
Here's my question: what would happen if you actually sat down and ate Pomegranates 1 2/3, 95 Acai berries, apples 1 1/3, 1/2 banana, red grapes and 14 14 white grape? Certainly it would take much more time to consume all that fruit than for drinking the milkshake, which would reduce the sugar "spike". Would you feel complete. This is a heck of a lot of fruit to eat in one sitting.
From a nutritional point of view losing juices. As author Robert Lustig, M.D., Fat Chance: The Bitter Truth about sugar says, the biggest problem with fruit juice is that are stripped of fiber. Fiber reduces the absorption of sugar, which makes you feel fuller, faster and suppresses insulin. The pomegranate Acai Smoothie, for example, has ZERO grams of fiber versus a whopping 45 grams of fiber in whole fruit. Hey! Make a giant fruit salad.
Fiber fruit you put a sugar bomb in your body.
In fact, the sugar in the juice concentrate, stripped of all fiber, makes blood sugar levels and insulin response corresponding to soar. According to Lustig, when fiber is removed the chemistry of sugar changes. In a whole fruit, sugar is sucrose, which is 1/2 glucose and fructose 1/2. However, once separated the sugar becomes 100% fructose, which is metabolized in the liver only. Instead of providing energy, generates fat and become insulin-resistant.
What does it mean? There's a host of medical problems, as described in long happy healthy life, Adventures of a medical librarian in the life of the evidence-based, associated with the consumption of fructose (Yes, juice!), including obesity, liver dysfunction, hypertension, high cholesterol, insulin resistance, systemic inflammation, increased appetite, chronic fatigue and cravings for sugar. Just a few months ago, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health, as reported in the Harvard Journal, found that higher consumption of fruit juices was associated with a higher risk of type 2 diabetes.
Think about what this means for millions of children in this country that drinking juice boxes and fruit juice glasses all day. From personal experience I can say that the fruit juices are exposed as a healthy alternative to soda and milk. The amount of sugar children are drinking is alarming and perhaps the underlying contributor to the rise of obesity in this country.
In the early childhood longitudinal study, for example, as reported by Science Daily this year, regular consumption of sugary drinks-defined as one or more servings of 8 ounces per day. --was associated with higher scores of body mass index in 4 and 5-years. An 8-ounce service? That is only one half of the typical Tropicana orange juice container! Additionally, the study also found that "5-year olds who had regularly sweetened drinks were more likely to be obese, and 2-year-olds who regularly drank sugar-sweetened beverages had largest increase in BMI over the next two years compared to 2-year-olds that had sugared drinks rarely or not at all."
Oh, I know, but they are all natural and full of vitamins. Yes, they are natural, and some vitamins. However, many of the juices that meet the recommended daily intake of specific vitamins, add vitamins to juice. For example, the nutritional Panel touts of Mighty Mango Smoothie encounter nude people 100% of the RDA of vitamin A, but is added as beta-carotene. The juice itself provides only 10% of the RDA of vitamin c. If you ate the whole fruit listed on the actual label, however, it would consume 156% of the RDA of vitamin c.
There's really no argument for drinking fruit juices. Taste? Comfort? Not worth the havoc. In fact, the damage far outweighs any positives. Some of my favorites? Almost always reach for the water, because the odds are actually thirsty. But, when I want something with taste I opt for 100% vegetable juices (although I tend to stay away from the sweetest carrots and beetroot juice), unsweetened tea and sparkling water with some fruit flavoring (check the label!). And, anyway, all drinks electrolyte replacement and vitamin waters? Most of them also contain more sugar than soda or fruit juice. Check labels carefully.
Then, the next time you join a market to get something to drink, don't be fooled by the Nice packaging and the marketing appeal of a juice "natural, vitamin-ladden". Walk from the juice and opt for something that is good for your body.