The Truth About Fruit Juice

A Healthy Drink Or A Sugar Bomb

For decades fruit juice has  been seen as a healthy alternative to soft drinks. But if you swapped your favourite sugary soft drink for a “fresh” juice, thinking that it is better for you, think again!

Though I applaud the effort to ditch the Pepsi, Coca Cola or Fanta, replacing it with a another sugar-bomb is not a good move. (that is, if you are trying to live a long, healthy life). Although the sugar in 100% fruit juices (organic or otherwise) is naturally occurring rather than added, once metabolised, the biological response is essentially the same. Consider it as the soft drink without the bubbles.

For example, the average 350 ml soda contains roughly 35 to 45 grams of sugar. The same amount of orange juice comes in at about 30 grams; apple juice delivers about 40 grams and pomegranate juice can top 45 grams. And grape juice beats them all, 52.8 g!!! The most popular “fresh” “Boost Energy Lift” has 54.9g of sugar in a medium 450 ml cup. That’s simply an insane amount of sugar to consume in one sitting, no matter what type of beverage it is. That amount of sugar will give you fuel to “fly” to Sydney and back!

What is an Acceptable Amount of Sugar Intake? 

Ideally, no more than 10 grams a day at the most, which certainly takes fruit juice off the table!

It is highly unlikely that you will eat three apples in one sitting, but you can very easily gulp down a glass of fruit juice from the same three apples and want more. With a sugar avalanche such as that, your body doesn’t care where it comes from.

And don’t be fooled by attractive packaging or misled by clever wording.

“No Added Sugar”, “Organic”, “Fresh”, Cold Pressed”, “ No artificial flavours”, “Juice Cleanse”, “Juice Detox”, “juice bars”, late night ads for juicing machines and the occasional celebrity endorsement, all seem to be fuelling a national juice-drinking craze. The message all these adds are trying to send is that fruit is healthy and fruit juice is a fast and convenient way to drink your nutrients.

Despite what advertisers claim, most juices are neither fresh nor natural. How could it be truly fresh all year-round, when fruit are seasonal? Sure, it may be “not from concentrate,” but raw juice is often heated, stripped of its volatile compounds and flavour-rich oils, and stored for as long as a year before it reaches the consumer.

And don’t even think you are getting much of your phytonutrients and antioxidants intake from the juice bar or supermarket, as these nutrients are temperature, light and oxygen-sensitive and their quality would be lost by the time you get to drink them.

Often, those by-products come from other countries and may contain unknown pesticide residues which producers don’t have to disclose. Sometimes there isn’t even any actual fruit in there, just chemicals that taste like fruit. These drinks are all around us and we mistakenly think they are fruit juices. In fact they contain little to no real fruit juice, sweeteners like high fructose corn syrup, artificial flavours and colours, and preservatives.

The Roller Coaster Ride After a Glass of Fruit Juice

When you eat a whole fruit, an enzyme in the saliva, called amylase, starts the breakdown and slows the digestion. Simply “pouring” fruit in a liquid form into your body, with the fibre removed, you are skipping important complex steps of your digestion, e.g. the release of digestive juices and enzymes while chewing. 

When you consume sugary foods or drinks, your body rapidly breaks down the sugars into glucose, causing a rapid increase in blood sugar levels. As a result, the pancreas releases insulin, a hormone responsible for transporting glucose from the bloodstream into cells for energy or storage. This insulin response helps bring blood sugar levels back to normal. 

Unlike glucose, fructose from fruits is absorbed rapidly causing a spike in blood sugar. It is metabolised by the liver, where it promotes the synthesis of fat. 

Our bodies do not have the same regulatory feedback mechanisms when it comes to fructose metabolism. This lack of negative feedback mechanisms can lead to unregulated fructose metabolism, potentially contributing to problems arising from excessive fructose consumption. Over time, this mechanism can wear out, increasing the risk of developing  health problems, such as insulin resistance, Type-2 Diabetes, obesity, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), and cardiovascular diseases.

Your Brain Responds to Sugar the Same Way It Would to Cocaine.

Eating or drinking sugar creates a surge of feel-good brain chemicals dopamine and serotonin. So does using certain drugs, like cocaine. And just like a drug, your body craves more after the initial high. You then become addicted to that feeling, so every time you eat or drink it you want to more.

In 2013, researchers analysed the health data of 100,000 people collected between 1986 and 2009 and found that fruit juice consumption was linked with increased risk of type 2 diabetes. They concluded that fruit juice leads to faster and larger changes in glucose and insulin levels.

Another study found a relationship between fruit juice and type 2 diabetes after following the diets and diabetes status of more than 70,000 nurses over 18 years.

French researchers from the National Institute for Health and Medical Research found the association with cancer is just as strong with fruit juices as it is with soft drinks.

Fructose metabolites are found to induce kidney damage. In healthy male adults, daily ingestion of 200 g fructose for 2 weeks appears to increase urinary stone formation. 

Fructose-contained beverage intake in infancy has been reported to be associated with worse outcomes in a later event of acute kidney injury and kidney damage during adolescence (García-Arroyo et al., 2020).

But what about Cold-Pressed Juices or Homemade 100% Fruit Juice?

Again, they are still devoid of most of the fibre, and their nutritional content—like vitamin C and antioxidants—can degrade quickly.

Remember, fruit juice consumption is not an acceptable short-cut on the road to good health. It’s more like the highway to health problems!

So grab a real, whole, preferably organic piece of fruit and start chewing! And if you still decide to have a juice:

• Focus on vegetables! Choose leafy greens and plants such as kale, spinach, celery, lettuces, collards, and herbs.
• Drink fresh juice right away to get maximum nutrient quality and content.
• Blend it! Instead of juicing, toss fruits and veggies in a blender to get all the nutrients and fibre.
• Have a smoothie instead. Add avocado, spinach, kale, nut butters and coconut oil. 
• Instead of using fruit juice as your base, just use water/ice.
• Watch the sugar content in vegetable juice and beware of fruit juice with added vegetables. Root vegetables such as carrots and beets should be treated like fruit because they have high sugar contents.
• Eat your fruit, don’t drink it.

 

References:

1. Fruit consumption and risk of type 2 diabetes: results from three prospective longitudinal cohort studies, BMJ 2013; 347 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.f5001 (Published 29 August 2013) Cite this as: BMJ 2013;347:f5001
2. Fruit consumption and risk of type 2 diabetes: results from three prospective longitudinal cohort studies, BMJ 2013; 347 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.f5001 (Published 29 August 2013), Cite this as: BMJ 2013;347:f5001 https://www.bmj.com/content/366/bmj.l2408
3. Jensen T, Abdelmalek MF, Sullivan S, et al. Fructose and sugar: A major mediator of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. J Hepatol. 2018;68(5):1063–1075. doi: 10.1016/j.jhep.2018.01.019 
4. Ramezani A., Raj D. S. (2014). The Gut Microbiome, Kidney Disease, and Targeted Interventions. J. Am. Soc. Nephrol. 25 (4), 657–670. 10.1681/asn.2013080905
5. Jegatheesan P., De Bandt J. P. (2017). Fructose and NAFLD: The Multifaceted Aspects of Fructose Metabolism. Nutrients 9 (3), 230. 10.3390/nu9030230

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