I’m trying to lose a few pounds so paying quite close attention to what I consume. I recently bought a green juice but was shocked to see it had nearly the same amount of calories as a can of coke!
I specifically chose a green juice without a fruit base so I cannot for the life of me understand where the calories might come from.
Posting photo of the ingredients below, does this seem weird to anyone else? AFAIK these ingredients should barely have any calories.
If you look at the nutrients, in a full bottle you have:
4g sugars
10g protein
22g carbs with 10g of that being fiber
1g fat
All of those components are 4 calories per gram, with exception of the fat which is 9 calories per gram. The sugars and carbs don’t surprise me, but the 10g of protein does.
I don’t see water on the ingredients list.
So if it’s nothing but the juice of all those veggies, then for that amount of ounces I can see 120 calories.
Celery juice has a fair amount of carbs.
Calories in 100 ml of Celery Juice and Nutrition Facts (fatsecret.com)
Now, I believe the rules on the Nutrition Facts display are that ingredients have to be listed in descending order of amount, so in theory the first ingredient (celery) should be the single largest ingredient. Now because the math is much easier, I’m going to just assume the density of this green liquid is the same as water, and thus assume it weighs 474 g. Below I’ve listed each ingredient, (its kcal per 100g), a potential guesstimate as to how many grams of the food are in the liquid, and the resulting calorie total.
Celery (13) - 105g = 13.65 kcal
Cucumber (10) - 90g = 9 kcal
Spinach (23) - 85g = 19.55 kcal
Kale (49) - 75g = 36.75 kcal
Parsley (36) - 60g = 21.6 kcal
Dandelion (33) - 59 = 19.47 kcal
13.65 + 9 + 19.55 + 36.75 + 21.6 + 19.47 = 120.02–pretty damn close to that 120 listed on the bottle. So in essence, assuming celery is the number one ingredient by weight, and the known nutrition value per gram of the remaining vegetables, you can easily show mathematically there is no reason at all to question how the 120 kcal came to be. Note particular weight should given to Spinach / Kale / Parsley / Dandelion, while they are the bottom four ingredients by weight, they are far more energy dense per gram than the top two ingredients (celery / cucumber), so most likely the lion’s share of the calories come from those. If I actually knew the relative price of the input vegetables, I could make a better guess as to the distributions, since I’m sure most of the calorie padding comes from the cheapest, densest of the ingredients.
The problem with any fruit or vegetable juice is that you’re getting all the calories without the fiber and bulk that would normally fill you up. For instance, you’d need to eat about 20 medium stalks of celery to get 120 calories.
Celery does have Calories. It just doesn’t have very many. But you can always take whatever it does have, and concentrate it.
Ding ding ding. This is the answer right here. Juice is, I think, one of the biggest health scams there is. In general, it’s far better to eat the whole fruit or vegetable rather than the juiced-out carbs of them without the fiber.
Smoothies may be better in that you’re blending the whole fruit or vegetable into a drink, not juicing it, but even so you’re creating a way to easily consume a lot of something at once. Plus there’s the tendency to add sugary yogurt and such to the mix to make the smoothie more palatable. As a rule of thumb it’s probably best to eat your fruits and veggies, not drink them.