Do pomelos have the same chemical as grapefruits? Maybe you could eat those. They are similar to grapefruits and have the added benefit of not tasting bitter and awful.
Well, if the OJ still has the pulp, it’s a decent source of fiber.
Per wiki, OJ also has: Oranges contain diverse phytochemicals, including carotenoids (beta-carotene, lutein and beta-cryptoxanthin), flavonoids (e.g. naringenin)[54] …
The issue isnt that OJ is bad for you. A nice glass of fresh-squeezed with all the pulp in the morning is fine.
But to suck juice all day gives you little more benefit and too much sugar. It’s not much better than sugared soda.
Consider also the quantities of fruit that go into a fruit juice.
I’ve made home-made fresh-squozen orange juice from time to time. A large glass of OJ (would anyone want any less?) takes six oranges. So if you drink that, it’s like eating six oranges, with six times everything that one orange has, including 6x the sugar. That seems like a lot. (Pro-tip: Like some zing in your OJ? Squeeze one-half fresh lemon in with six oranges for some serious atomic rocket fuel!)
Eat pink grapefruits instead of the yellow ones. They are sweet and not bitter, at least if you get a good one. (Hint: Don’t eat the tough skins that separate the segments. That’s where the bitter is.) Sadly for me, it doesn’t play nice with several meds I take so I’ve had to do without. I wonder if, say, one grapefruit a week would kill me?
Except you’re not getting 6x the fiber, so you’re not getting 6x everything. It would be much more difficult to eat 6 oranges than to drink the juice of 6 oranges.
Point taken. So it really is much easier to guzzle 6x the sugar than to chow down 6 oranges, and maybe not even realize the 6xmillion sugar calories you just chugged.
I cut way back on my soda consumption a while ago, and have been drinking more juice. Now I hear that juice isn’t that great, either. Is there anything to drink that is healthy?
Water. Tea. Herbal tea. A cup of coffee or two.
Dont think that juice is evil. Just make sure it’s more or less pure and you dont drink too much.
If I drink fruit juice, which is kinda rare, and then it’s only grape or orange *, I make sure it’s not concentrate
- Unconcentrate pineapple’s not available here and neither is apricot nectar in any form.
I used to drink juice, too, but for the past six or so years I drink almost only water (carbonated) and black coffee. Now I have just about zero desire to drink juice, but when I do, I can remember the sugar rush, and the almost addictive desire to drink more, even though it really isn’t quenching my thirst.
Water first and foremost. If you’re going to have juice make it V8 or tomato, but still not more than about 6 floz.
As an aside on the OJ: Just last night I saw a TV commercial for Tropicana brand OJ. The voiceover said something close to “With the goodness of 16 fresh oranges in every package!” While showing a carton small enough to fit easily in a Big Gulp cup with room for lots of ice.
Bottom line: Eat your food; don’t drink concentrated forms of it. And certainly don’t drink large quantities of concentrated food.
In the 80s and especially in the 70s, childhood obesity wasn’t like it is now, in both numbers and awareness.
Remarkably consistent, Doc. You gave me some similar advice more than a decade ago.
We’re getting old.
Moral: do not view fruit juice as a substitute for fruit itself. Drink unsweetened fruit juices, not “juice cocktails” or similar crap. Preferentially go for those juices that have demonstrated (or at least reasonably theorized) health benefits (i.e. cranberry, pomegranate, red grape).
And in moderation.
It’s cups of sugar poured into water given a fruity flavour. The game should have been up on this shit years ago.
They’ll probably also tell you it’s ‘fat free’, like that’s the problem.
Flavored, sweetened water can’t be sold as “juice.” But the point of this thread is that even actual, 100% juice isn’t all that good for you, at least if you drink a lot of it.
Yeah, and I’m sick of giving the same advice decade after decade. You’d think I’d have changed the world by now.
What’s your offspring up to these days, anyway?
Note that even “100% real juice, no sugar added” can still have a ton of sugar added. What they do is take some juice that has relatively little flavor other than sugar, like white grape, apple, or pear, concentrate it, and add that instead of refined sugar.
Cracked magazine did a pretty good video on this recently: Why Juice is secretly Terrible For You Funny and informative.
No, there isn’t more sugar in juice than there was 10 years ago. But 10 years ago everybody’s boogeyman was “added sugar”, of which most juice has none.
Then folks realized that it doesn’t matter if the sugar was added or if it is already in there. And if you look at grams of fructose per liter, … at 65.8. Minute Maid 100% Apple Juice had more than Coke or Pepsi.
Water. While Cecil has observed there really can be too much of a good thing (as it is possible to kill yourself by drinking too much water), most people don’t get nearly enough water. There isn’t much agreement on exactly how much water folks should be drinking, but there is widespread agreement that it is more than what most folks drink.
In defense of “juice coctails”: unadlterated cranberry juice is so bitter as to be intolerable. Even Ocean Spray says so (although they were trying to get out of having to put how much sugar they add on the label).
Just remember that what you’re driniking isn’t so much a “healthy beverage” as a “sugary drink with some redeeming qualities”. 
I wish I knew the name of the stand-up comedian whose bit burned into my memory. He mentioned that every product was trying to find some way to spin itself as healthy, and then said, “Twinkies, they’re … caffine free!”
“I should certainly hope so. Most petroleum byprodcuts are caffine free.”
Most people don’t drink nearly as much water as they should be getting, but that’s not a problem, because they are still getting that much water. There are plenty of ways to get water without drinking it. Almost all foods contain a significant amount of water. And all beverages except very hard booze are essentially slightly impure water. Drink a can of Coke, and yes, you’re getting a lot more sugar than you should, but you’re also getting 12 oz of water from it, too.
That said, it’s really, really hard to get too much water, so it can’t hurt to drink more (as long as you don’t mind more frequent potty breaks). And it certainly can’t hurt to replace other drinks with water, unless your diet is so unvaried that juice is your only source of vitamins.
I now only drink grape juice with the sugar removed by yeast 