Oh, but it’s natural sugar syrup. :rolleyes:
Nearly one third of children in the USA are considered obese and probably should be eating carrots for snacks.
So - whole foods, healthy snacks and save the prepackaged processed stuff for treats - if you could call all those chemicals a treat.
This is also more economical.
Pear juice is sugar syrup with Vitamin C and Potassium, at least.
Paging Cyn to GQ.
She is involved in lead level monitoring in preschool age children…
Pear juice is sugar water. Sugar syrup, especially heavy syrup, is several servings of pear juice. Furthermore, the sticky syrup sticks to the fruit and is eaten: thinner juice in more likely thrown away.
Just because 16 oz of juice every morning is a bad idea (which it is) does not mean that 2 oz of pear juice is also a bad idea.
Thanks Manda JO. I decided to look up the numbers.
Peaches in heavy syrup, 128g:
Calories 100
Sodium 10mg
Sugars 23.0g
Peaches in pear juice, 150g:
Calories 50
Sodium 5mg
Sugars 10.0g
So, yeah, like I said, bonus points for pear juice. Even a larger serving size is fewer calories, less sodium and less sugar than the heavy syrup stuff. So :rolleyes: right back atcha, pericynthion. I never said a word about “natural” being better, thanks.
Still don’t know if canned peaches have more lead in them than fresh ones, though. (Even I could even get a fresh one that tasted of peach around here, which I can’t.)
Pear juice also contains a pretty good amount of fibre. The sugar content of natural fruit juices has an upper limit. Not so for sucrose syrups that fruit is often preserved in. (well, you know what i mean…)
That’s probably enough for me to vote in favour of pear juice.
Borrowed from a posting of mine elsewhere:
I’m going to speculate about mode of contamination; I’d be interested if someone knows better. I do know for a certainty that before the introduction of organic (chemical sense, carbon-containing) pesticides, the pesticides used on orchards were often lead-, copper-, and arsenic-based. I also know that these remain for years in many soils. (I think that really sandy soil may leach clean.) The good places for orchards aren’t all that common. If something is an orchard now, there’s a good chance it was in the bad old days and has contaminated soil.
I have heard that most fruit trees are pretty good in not taking up metals. The thus fruit won’t be contaminated by the tree itself. However, any dirt that gets onto the fruit will be lead-laced; probably arsenic-laced too. The answer may be nothing more complex than some contamination with orchard-floor soil.
Cite? OJ has almost 0 fiber, unless it has all the pulp. Pears have a decent amount of fiber, I doubt if pear juice does.
This site:
http://www.dietaryfiberfood.com/low-fiber.php
shows pears in juice to be only 1.5 grams, while whole pears have 6gr. I suspect pear juice to have almost none. To be fair, that’s true of most juices- appleas have a fair amount of fiber, but apple juice has little:
*"The chart compares the fiber content in a medium-sized, raw apple with skin; 1/2 cup of applesauce and 3/4 cup apple juice.
raw apple - 3.25 grams fiber
applesauce - 1.5 grams fiber
apple juice - .33 gram fiber*"
They are using (from what I can tell) the non-clear apple juice, as *clear *apple juice has no real fiber at all.
I suspect that pear juice has about 1/10th the fiber as a whole pear with skin, just as with apples. Or even less.
You are comparing Heavy Syrup to light syrup, the heavy stuff simply has less water. Try comparing light corn syrup to honey. Honey has far more calories per cup, as it has less water.
I don’t understand your comment. Of course heavy syrup has less water than pear juice (I never mentioned light syrup, actually). That’s why it has more calories and sugar, gram for gram.
I’m comparing peaches in heavy syrup to peaches in pear juice, two common forms of canned fruits available in the grocery store which are often eaten by children. It was suggested I had a problem with fruit in heavy syrup because the sugar in it is not “natural” - which is absurd, of course it’s natural. Corn syrup and granulated sugar are both “natural”, and I have no beef with chemical ingredients, per se, anyhow. I prefer fruit in pear juice because it has less calories, sodium and sugar than fruit in heavy syrup, per serving size.
[quote=“DrDeth, post:29, topic:543312”]
Cite? OJ has almost 0 fiber, unless it has all the pulp. Pears have a decent amount of fiber, I doubt if pear juice does.
Good point – have no cite other than the following:
My wife was recently in a hospital – maternity ward. The staff there recommended unclarified pear juice as a source of fibre and it was made readily available. The whole pregnancy/birth thing is a bit rough on the digestive system and fibre was seen as part of the solution.
[quote=“j_sum1, post:32, topic:543312”]
Ah, note “unclarified pear juice”. It’s not a bad source, neither is OJ with all the pulp. Neither are used in kids drinks.
WhyNot, yes, but it’s not due to the pear juice, it’s due to the amount of water. Try peaches in *light *syrup.
150 grams of pears in light syrup: 80 calories, 5 mg sodium, 15 grams sugar.
That’s 60% more calories than the pears in pear juice. You are right, it’s all about water content, but that’s pretty much always true: you could say that chocolate has more calories than carrots because it has less water.
Giving your kid apple juice instead of coke is not doing him many favors. Giving him fruit in juice instead of syrup is a significantly different substitution.
D’oh! You guys switched to peaches at some point!
But the numbersare the same.
Do you have a cite for that? It just seems completely uneconomical to ship fish 15-20k miles round trip just to gut & clean them.
Because you haven’t made any effort (based on this hyperbole, anyway) to rank all the other risks in your family’s lives and decide where this level of lead exposure falls, relatively speaking.
While it’s fun to panic about all these assorted environmental “toxins,” it would not appear they are anything close to ordinary risks, such as riding around in cars or sitting on one’s fat ass (not necessarily yours) drinking raw milk, or listening to the “non-profit” Environmental Law Foundation.
I say you should be worrying about the urchin’s exposure to school bus diesel, or else his predilection for potato chips. It’s a toxic jungle out there.
Not specific to your point but highlights the issues.
Here in the UK we have scampi (langoustines / prawns) which are caught in Scotland then shipped to Thailand for processing before being shipped back to Scotland for distribution in the UK.
That’s a round trip of 12000 miles, but it works out much cheaper to send the scampi all that way for hand-peeling rather than employing local workers in Scotland.
Utter madness but such is the world.
Well, that’s the thing…I’m trying to *determine *what level of risk this actually is, so I can do that. Thus far, I’ve discovered that lead exists in all fresh produce at a level that the FDA says is not worth worrying about. OK, so I won’t, unless someone can show me they’re wrong. According to the regulations set by California, many of the products exceed what they consider to be a safe level. Is that level truly a realistic harm? That’s what I still don’t know. I want someone who knows more than I do to weigh in on:
A) is the California lead level limit reflective of that set by the FDA? If not, is it a realistic level reflecting health risks the FDA is glossing over, or is it an unrealistic level that’s not truly attainable??
B) Is it likely that there was some testing error here, based on the technique or reputation of this lab?
C) Is the level of lead in these processed products more or less than the level of lead in the source foods, or greater?
D) If yes to C, why or how did the excess lead get there? Concentration? Contamination?
I absolutely understand that I can’t reduce my child’s (or my) risk to zero, and I’m not interested in doing so. I am interested in reducing it as low as practically possible. Considering that I live in a large city in a series of old buildings for the last 10 years, I expect our heavy metal exposure is already higher than average, so I want to make the best food choices possible so as not to add to that load more than I have to.
And yes, the title was hyperbole, of course. That’s what makes it an attention getting title, to draw people who might actually know more about this stuff when I do.
I would imagine shipping to countries that are net exporters is really very, very cheap: all those containers have to go back anyway, to get filled up with $4 T-shirts and toys. And if “normal” shipping charges back are efficient for $4 t-shirts, why not fish and prawns?