There’s no lack of choices when it comes to drinking fresh fruit juice. Some of us will just go for the squeezed orange, others apple and still others a cocktail of mixed fruits for good measure.
But not commonly known to many people, there’s been some disquiet when a question is popped to someone: Is drinking that much fruit juice really good for you? Or should you be taking the fruit with all its sugar and fibre? Remember, we are not talking about the packet drink, but a cup of juice squeezed from multiple quantities of fruit rich in sugar.
Ah…and so you may have just set off a Socratic questioning that may lead to an intense discussion.
Doubtless, fruit juice is often perceived as healthy. However, fruit juice is missing a lot of the stuff that makes whole fruit healthy. The main point, according to some experts, is this… fruit juice contains no fibre and is very high in sugar. According to a report in the London Sunday Times in 2014, the Medical Research Council’s Human Nutrition Research unit at Cambridge University said that the UK government’s official advice that a glass counts towards the recommended minimum five-a-day servings of fruit and vegetables should be changed.
” Fruit juice isn’t the same as intact fruit and it has as much sugar as many classical sugar drinks, ” said the report, quoting Ms Susan Jebb, a government advisor and head of the diet and obesity research group. “Swap it and have a piece of real fruit. If you are going to drink it, you should dilute it. ”
A noteworthy point is that the fibre found in fruits, for example, is what stops you from eating three or four apples in one sitting and be overloaded with sugar. Thus eating the fresh fruit isn’t much of a sugar threat.
Other experts said juicing extracts the juice from fresh fruits or vegetables, which contains most of the vitamins, minerals and plant chemicals found in the whole fruit. However, unlike the whole fruits and vegetables, the healthy fibre is lost during most juicing.
On the flip side, some juicing proponents argue that juicing is better than eating whole fruits and vegetables. Juicing allows your body to absorb the nutrients better and it gives your digestive system a rest from working on fibre.
The long and short of it all is that there’s no sound scientific evidence that extracted juices are healthier than the juice you get by eating the fruit or vegetable itself. Rather, if you don’t enjoy eating fresh fruits and vegetables, juicing may be a fun way to add them to your diet. You can find many juicing recipes online or mix up your own combinations of fruits and vegetables to suit your daily needs. But don’t eliminate whole fruits and vegetables from your diet.
– This article first appeared in a lifestyle magazine.
