Take an apple. Now take a clone of that apple, juice it, and still throw all the fiber remnants into the juice. Even then the solid apple is a better choice because the larger surface area of the apple chunks and the intact cell walls act as a natural time-release to the sugars in the fruit. The juice will cause an insulin spike in response to the rapid release of sugar into the bloodstream causing these sugars to be converted to glycogen and then fat if necessary. Since your body didn’t evolve in a place and time when sugars were so easily assimilable it will typically overproduce insulin eventually making your blood sugar too low - and then you end up hungry again.
Another mistake is drinking juice when your thirsty. You can be full from a meal but still be thirsty - and drinking liquid won’t make you feel any less comfortable because it falls between the cracks. Since your already full, why add more calories when your only trying to quench your thirst?
Vegetable juices are lso much better due to fiber content, and to the fact that there’s very little sugar in the vegetable juices, just more complex carbs that don’t spike the blood glucose levels up the way fructose and sucrose do.
Phytonutrients may help in reducing long-term cancer risk, but they don’t add (or detract) much to daily nutrition.
What would you folks think about homemade juices/smoothies, e.g., a whole apple or orange, whole frozen strawberries, some ice or water, thrown into a blender and liquify? Good/evil?
First, read my post.
Second, it depends. If your currently drinking milkshakes then it’s a step forward. If your currently eating fruit and drinking water then it’s a step backwards. If it’s a choice between eating fruit that way or not eating fruit at all then I’d go the route of your shake. If your trying to lose weight then I believe the single most important thing you can do is maintain stable blood sugar - and your shake is not gonna help you there.
What about fortified juices? One of my favorites, especially when I’m sick, is Musselman’s “Breakfast Cocktail”-orange apricot juice drink. It’s only 10 percent juice, but the label says it’s “fortified”, so maybe vitamins are added?
I have to say, when I have a cold, that’s all I want in the world.
I tried lookin up nutrician values for Tropicana Orange Juice (my usual brand) to see if there was much fiber difference between the pulpy and pulpless versions. Couldn’t find any details on the tropicana web pages, but was interested to learn that they are part of the Pepsi group. Anyway checking the labels, especially the Nutrition Facts part especially taking into account the serving size value, seems to be the way to go.
Any one looking for pure unsweetened juices (other than the common Orange and Grapefruit) might try Traider Joes, as they have the best prices I can find locally for Cranberry, Cherry, and Passionfruit, unsweetened fruit juice. Allways check the juice is 100% fruit juice, and contains only the fruit juice of the fruit you want (avoid grape/pear/apple juice added products).
By a strange coincidence, “none at all” was precisely the amount of suspicion I had that commercially sold fruit juices were virtually no healthier than sodas. (OK, lame attempt)
Actually, I just came in here to ask a slightly off-topic question. Just the other day a friend mentioned that it’s silly that people actually believe that eating grapes is healthy because they are like little concentrated balls of sugar. When I mentioned the fiber she sorta made it sound like the fibre was negligible (though she didn’t really say it). ?
I just want to remind you that having an amount of fiber and juice in “juice” form is significantly different than the equivalent amount of each in it’s natural form.
In what way? The fibre is non-digested, so it cannot be a situation like vitamine pills in it being inefficiently absorbed when taken as a single concentrated dose. And what are the nutritional differences between frshly squeezed juice and pastursed comercial fruit juices like Tropicana? Please explain why you believe they are both significantly different even if the concentrations of vitamins/fiber etc. are the same?
I should probably make the disclaimer that I’m neither a doctor nor a nutritionist- just a dilletante.
I refer you to my post right above Quadgop’s as to how whole fruits are different than their juices. Yes, the fiber will slow digestion giving the nutrients more time to absorb. Fiber is better than no fiber. I didn’t previously comment on the difference between types of juices - just juices vs. the fruit itself.
On the difference between fresh and processed juices:
I don’t know what processes other than pasteurization Tropicana’s juices are put through, but pasteurization is enough to destroy a good deal of the micronutrient content. Sometimes companies will add back some of the vitamins destroyed by pasteurization and other processes and label the product “Fortified.” I don’t know if Tropicana is fortified but it would say so on the label. In either case I really doubt that they add back all the various micronutrients that are destroyed and those that they do are probably poor facsimiles of the original. A lot of different things can pass for Vitamin C on a label but they aren’t equally assimilable.
Just a note: Don’t forget that fiber comes in two forms, soluble and insoluble. Oranges are a better source of the former. They are equally important, but soluble fiber is traditionally associated with benefits to blood cholesterol and heart disease prevention while insoluble fiber (roughage) is typically associated with prevention of colorectal cancer.
Fortification isn’t nearly as sketchy with vitamins as it is with minerals but:
The FDA defines Vitamin C as ascorbic acid. The debate isn’t centered around the bioavailability of natural vs. synthetic ascorbic acid but rather which substances are really producing the benefits we typically associate with vitamin C. Naturally ocurring vitamin C is usually found in tandem with bioflavonoids and other phytonutrients. Because phytonutrients aren’t considered chemically “essential” (Your body doesn’t NEED them to complete a function) they’ve been ignored by the FDA. We all know that there is a pretty big gap between what is essential and what is ideal. While phytonutrients may not be essential in and of themselves, they have been shown to protect nutrients that are essential as well as act as anti-oxidants and anticarcinogens.
This is my understanding: Not from concentrate means pure orange juice. From concentrate means pure OJ, and lot’s of synthesized sugar water added. Hmmm. Which is going to have more antioxidant effects? Which is going to have more phytochemicals and natural nutrition?
Healthy has more to do with calorie content. Plus, calories are good if you are exercising… something that most people do when they care enough about health to ask about the nutrition of juices. I thought that was the point of this question.
Fuel: “From concentrate” strictly means that the juice had a good deal of the water removed from it to make transportation cheaper (the water is added again at the packaging plant). It has no bearing on other ingredients, such as sweeteners. Those other ingredients would be listed on the label (a 100% pure orange juice from concentrate, for instance, would only have orange juice concentrate and water in the ingredients list).
For example, a carton of orange juice labeled “100% orange juice from concentrate” would logically contain concentrated orange juice (juice with less water) mixed with (reasonably) pure water, giving something that is the same as “not from concentrate.” The reason juices need to be labeled as from concentrate, WAG, is that the process of concentration changes the subjective (and maybe objective) quality of the juice. The reason I use the term “logically” is because I do not know the actual food-label laws of the US.
