Crap. I was afraid this would happen, despite the disclaimers!
Carbonation and the resulting acidity bother some people, so I ranked it a tad lower. But as I pointed out, it’s still in the beneficial to neutral tier overall.
I don’t exactly live on it, but I’m quite the fan of diet coke - should I be concerned?
So how does this apply to normal fruit? When I’m at home, I eat a ton of fruit, probably 7 - 8 servings a day, but all of them of different fruits. It’s always been my default go-to snack and I just always assumed that it was a healthy habit. Should I really be cutting down on the fruit?
Fruit is good. Whole fruit is good (with some exceptions, of course depending on amount, medical conditions, etc.). Don’t stop snacking on fruit unless directed to by your doc or other health care provider.
Yo, Qadgop, does the removal of pulp and fiber from fruit also result in removal of micronutrients? Is fruit juice also deficient in vitamins when compared to actual fruit?
First, better define “micronutrient”. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of agreement out there as to exactly what they are. Some sources put vitamin A, iron, and zinc in that category, others add in iodine and folic acid. Others just classify micronutrients as “vitamins, minerals, and other things” necessary in trace amounts for an organism’s health.
Assuming the last sentence as our definition, whatever you’re getting in the juice, you’re likely to get more if you eat the whole fruit. How much more depends on the fruit, the particular species, and how fresh it is. And probably other factors too.
Thank you. I just meant “not protein, lipid, or carbohydrate” which is the definition I’m familiar with. You know, vitamins and minerals.
Dammit. How about as a colonic?
I wouldn’t recommend it as a colonic. Too thick and tenacious, too good a medium for bacterial growth, and nothing about it suggests it would be helpful in clearing out impacted stools.
Also, if one had diverticulosis, I could see getting the maple syrup forced into the diverticuli, where it could ferment. That could lead to increased localized pressure, rupture of the diverticuli, and possible peritonitis.
In general, I do not recommend various foodstuffs or beverage variants be added to enema material.
Smeghead, if you have particular concerns about other colonic irrigants, feel free to ask here or email me if you’d prefer the matter be kept more private. But you may assume that most of my answers will involve the phrase “no, you don’t want to put that up your butt”.
Is the carbonation harmful to tooth enamel/promote cavities, or does damage to teeth from “drinking soda” require the sugar to really cause the cavities? My sister was told by her dentist to not drink soda but I suspect that she wasn’t a diet soda drinker and she might have meant no sugared soda.
Diet soda is acidic - both from carbonation and from the acids used in flavorings. Two of my aunts are dental hygienists and they mentioned that certain people who drink diet soda very slowly all day long are essentially irrigating their teeth in acids that eventually demineralize them and cause major, major tooth decay. In another thread, there were folks who thought this was nonsense, though it may depend on how well-mineralized your enamel is (it varies from person to person.)
Can i add a question to the list in this thread?
So, fruit juice and soda are essentially the same thing—sugar and water.
Assuming that i have a fairly healthy diet otherwise, and i want a flavoured drink occasionally just because i like the taste, is there any advantage accruing to fruit juice due to the fact that the sugars are natural to the fruit, and not refined sugars or high fructose corn syrup?
:eek:
I’ve got about the sweetest tooth known to humankind, and even i couldn’t drink maple syrup as a beverage.
I do love me some maple sugar candy, though.
I don’t know of any evidence that indicates its superiority. Certainly it has been posited that “natural fruit sugars” are healthier, but solid data to back up that assertion is lacking.
I’m not against either fruit juice or sugared soda as an occasional flavoured drink. I consume both myself (pomegranite juice, ginger beer, yummmmmm…). But what alarms me is how so many people guzzle large quantities of both beverages as their default drink, consuming far too many calories, and far too much simple carbs. Then to top that off, so many people who recognize that too much sugared soda is bad seem to get the idea that it’s perfectly ok to substitute the same quantity of fruit juice in its place as a “healthy” alternative.
So how does that work? When I eat normal fruit, I get water and sugar and fibre and presumably some nutrients. When I rink fruit juice, I get water and sugar and presumably marginally less nutrients.
The only thing that seems missing is the fibre and possibly some nutrients. If I’m already getting enough fibre in my diet and probably enough nutrients given the amount of fruit I’m eaing, then all that extra fruit is doing is giving me more sugar without any appreciable gain.
Is that right or am I missing something?
I think part of the trouble is that you can only eat so much fruit at a time. Fruit is not all that calorie-dense, and eating two or three apples will fill you up pretty effectively, which is excellent if it’s a substitute for a more calorific snack. However, you can drink glass after glass of fruit juice, and if a significant portion of your intake of liquid is fruit juice instead of water, you’re getting a ton of extra calories. You can drink a lot more fruit than you can eat.
It’s not bad for you in moderation, of course - it’s bad if you drink half a gallon of orange juice a day, just because you’re getting an enormous amount of sugar that way. You’d have a very hard time eating five pounds of oranges in a day, on the other hand.
But again, I’m saying that I eat a huge amount of fruit.
Yesterday, I ate:
1 orange
2 mandarins
1 grapefruit
2 kiwifruits
1 apple
1 banana
1 can of pineapples
1 tomato (I ate it like a fruit)
This was probably below average for me since it’s going into late autumn. During the peak of summer, I probably eat 1.5 - 2x that much. Which means that the amount of fruit I’m eating easily rivals the amount of orange juice that most typical people would drink.
I doubt very much that what you ate would be as much as the 16 oz of fruit juice liquids I’ve seen some folks knock back at a single sitting. Plus with all the fiber to slow the absorption of the sugar, blood glucose levels won’t peak like they would with just the liquid.
Shalmanese, with the pulp removed, you’re talking two glasses of juice from that - tops. And that’s if you ate the big can of pineapples.
Back when I would juice my own fruit for fun (and never more than a glass a day), my favorite was two oranges, two tangerines and one grapefruit. That was one roughly 8 ounce glass.
Are you serious? 16 ounces of juice contains all that sugar?
That’s frightening.
My packaged, not-from-concentrate OJ says 22 grams of suger per 8 ounce glass. So QtM is talking about 44 grams if sugar in one sitting. (26 carbs per 8 ounce serving, so we can guesstimate 4 grams fiber.)
44 grams was the upper **daily **limit on the Food Pyramid until the latest re-do. Not sure what they’re saying now.