It’s made from “100% real fruits”… the only ingredients are fruits… fruit juice must be as healthy as a fruit, right? I wish.
Drink Your Way Fat
There’s nothing better than to start your day with a big glass of 100% pure orange juice, right? Not so fast.Unlike what clever advertising led you to believe, even 100% pure fruit juice isn’t anything like a whole fruit.
Fruit juice does not contain any fiber – which make it raise your blood sugar a lot more than the whole fruit. It also packs just a couple less grams of sugar than soda (22 g per cup compared to 27 g per cup for Coca-Cola). But the real problem is portion control. It’s very easy to drink 2-3 cups of fruit juice in a single sitting (consuming 44 to 66 g sugar), while most people would feel stuffed before being able to eat 3 servings of whole fruits. In plain English – drinking too much fruit juice will give you the same dangerous and fattening effect than drinking soda.
Where’s The Nutrition?
Not a lot of people know this, but frozen juice concentrate actually contains more vitamin C than the packaged kind – simply because the manufacturing process retains more of it. That number can change quickly though – once you open your orange juice bottle or prepare the frozen concentrate, the vitamin C levels drop very rapidly. But seriously… consuming 22 g of sugar for the sake of getting some vitamin C is complete non-sense. If you want more vitamin C, simply eat a cup of red bell pepper that contains 53% more vitamin C than a cup of fruit juice – and add other great sources of vitamin C like fresh herbs, dark leafy greens, broccoli, strawberries and kiwi fruits to your diet.
Arsenic In Your Juice
In 2012, Consumer Reports revealed that 10% of all fruit juices have total arsenic levels that exceed federal drinkingwater standards. Wait, it gets worse.Most of that arsenic is inorganic arsenic, a known carcinogen. While there’s no official federal limit for arsenic in foods, studies now prove that even low levels of exposure can increase risks of Type-2 diabetes and reduce brain function. And it gets even worse: Fruit juice only contributes to a small 18% of your exposure to arsenic – which means that you could potentially be consuming 5X more than you think.
Summary--> Fruit juice – from concentrated, frozen, or even the 100% pure kind – is NOT a good choice on a fat burning diet.
--> Fruit juice contains basically the same amount of sugar than soda.
--> Remember that any sugar – even sugar from natural sources – is dangerous and fattening when consumed in high amounts.
--> The vitamin C in fruit juice is not worth it because of the extra sugar; stick with whole fruits instead.
