Besides the Vitamin C, which I get plenty elsewhere, what’s the difference? Last time I checked, they have the same amount of sugar. There is a miniscule amount of fiber in OJ, but I can get that elsewhere as well. My wife, and my mother before her, always yelled at me when I cracked open a Pepsi first thing in the morning. But they happily poured orange juice for me.
My guess is that it’s not how much sugar but what kind of sugar is in the respective drinks. The soft drink contains highly processed sugars that are likely much worse for you than naturally occuring sugars in the orange. Of course, that’s only if you’re drinking the no sugar added kind of juice.
Waiting to be corrected…
One word: potassium. According to this, 8 oz. of orange juice would put you right up there on the “Very Good” list, potassium-wise, along with bananas or a cup of milk. So if you “don’t eat” bananas or milk, you can get your potassium from OJ.
Orange juice also contains protein, calcium, iron, thiamine, folate, and Vitamin A.
http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts-001-02s01iv.html
Whereas pop is, basically, sugar. Period.
Your wife and mom are right. 
Drink your juice so you’ll grow up strong and healthy.
In this thread, Qadgop opines that orange juice is not really all that better for you than Pepsi.
Nutritional data for 100 grams of Pepsi
Nutritional data for 100 grams of Orange Juice
While the sugar content is comparable, the vitamin & and amino acid content of orange juice is better for you. Pepsi has none of either, while orange juice has a variety of each.
It all depends on how you feel about putting “empty calories” into your body. Pop and OJ may be more or less qualitatively the same on paper when you factor in the sugars, but pop is just “empty calories”–it offers no nutritional value at all. Whereas OJ offers a large amount of two significant and important nutritional components–potassium and Vitamin C. So, sure, you can get your potassium and Vitamin C from somewhere else and go on drinking pop, but that’s just a lifestyle decision on your part.
I personally don’t think either OJ or Pepsi is a particularly healthy thing to drink daily. The fact is it contains a ton of sugar, which most people don’t need in their diets. For nutrition and such you’d be better off eating an orange. You’d get your vitamins, plus fiber, minus a lot of the sugar.
Exactly. Fruit juice isn’t any different from soda in its sugar content. Orange juice doesn’t have a particularly large amount of vitamin C, and if you’re short on that there’s sources that are far less sugary. A piece of actual fruit provides more fiber, fewer calories, less sugar, and is liable to make you less hungry for other foods. Saying that it’s healthier than soda is akin to saying that a slice of pie is healthier than a slice of cake. It might be true, but that doesn’t mean that either can be consumed in large quantities in a healthy diet.
I think Qadgop’s point was that although OJ has nutrients not found in soda, they’re all nutrients that the average American already gets plenty of from other sources. Unless you’re suffering from scurvy, the vitamin C in OJ isn’t likely to do you enough good to offset the amount of sugar that comes along with it.
Well, there is caffeine in the soda. You may or may not think that’s a bad thing.
Other than that (but perhaps related to that), the only real nutritional difference is people generally won’t drink OJ by the liter, but they often will drink a lot of soda.
Does anybody have some good cites I can pull out for the ‘orange juice only marginally better than soda’ thing?
And what about the ‘but it’s a different KIND of sugar!’ argument?
Mind you, I am VERY ignorant on this, and I’m really interested in finding out some more on why orange juice (and I’m going to make the leap and juice most fruit juices) aren’t that great for you.
It’s BS.
Sugar is sugar, as far as your body is concerned. No significant differences.
= “And I’m going to make the leap and say most fruit juices”
sigh…it’s been a long day…and it’s only 1:30pm 
I drink Diet Rite soda which has Zero Everything. Is there still anything in there that’s bad for me?
Probably not. Coloring maybe. Not much to worry about.
That depends. Have they shown that whichever artificial sweetener it contains causes cancer yet?
What I want to know is why they don’t make soda healthier. They make enriched white bread; why not vitamin-rich soda pop?
OJ certainly has more nutrients than soda and can be one of those “other sources” that we get our nutrients from. If you have an already balanced diet, there’s no reason to get rid of soda in favor of juice. If your diet is lacking in any of these nutrients, OJ can help balance you out.
The primary problem with juices is that they are advertised as health drinks, as if we should be downing liters of juice per day to be healthy. We have kids brought up with nothing but apple, grape and orange juice as drinks, and they’re sucking down sugar calories like there’s no tomorrow. Ideally, you would be eating a balanced diet (including whole fruits), drinking water when you’re thirsty, and having soda/juice as an occasional treat.
7up has started down that road with 7up Plus, which is fortified with calcium.
Exactly. Same for the potassium. Thanks, Smeghead!
Otherwise, I’ve already said all I want to say on this topic. The phytochemical/micronutrient industry already has it in for me. And probably Anita Bryant, too. 
I remember seeing in those science fairs, experiments in which strips of metal were dipped into various drinks to see the effect after a month. I remember that all the citrus juices faired poorly, in other words, the ate the heck out of them due to their acidity.