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Why you should avoid fruit juices

Why you should avoid fruit juices

Packed with vitamin C, fruit juices are often considered the healthy alternative to other sugary soft drinks.

While they may often be a better choice than fizzy drinks or squash, it’s important to know just how much sugar is found in them.

Fruit juices are popular right now – but they lack fibre, and contain almost as much sugar as fizzy drinks.

With up to 6.9 teaspoons of sugar per 200ml of juice (see chart) fruit juice can be a bad choice, despite its healthy messaging.

When it comes to protecting your teeth, it’s better to drink water so you aren’t bombarding them with the sugars that come from the juicing process.

And also remember that juices that you buy from the supermarket may have been through several processes and are often made from concentrate.

Pasteurised orange juice could be stored up for up to a year when it first began being produced, and was stripped of oxygen. Then it lost much of its taste and “flavour packs” were needed to make it taste like the orange juice we know.

Fruit juice is said to count towards the recommended five servings of fruit and vegetables we have each day. Unfortunately the high amount of sugar means that whole fruit is by far the better choice.

In whole fruit you still have the all important fibre. Fibre helps to regulate blood sugar levels by slowing the apsorbtion of sugar.  Once you strip the fibre out, the sugar left behind sends your blood sugar levels soaring.

If you are going to opt for fruit juice, juice it yourself and make sure you limit your intake.

Certainly for children, water is a far better option than a pure fruit juice – unless it’s watered down considerably.



the author

Laura Briggs

Laura is a fitness writer who loves running ultra marathons. In addition to training for her epic runs she finds time for strength training, Pilates and Yoga. .