Drinking one glass or more of 100% fruit juice each day is associated with weight gain in children and adults, according to a new analysis of 42 previous studies.
The research, published Tuesday in JAMA Pediatrics, found a positive association between drinking 100% fruit juice and BMI — a calculation that takes into account weight and height — among kids. It also found an association between daily consumption of 100% fruit juice with weight gain among adults.
100% fruit juice was defined as fruit juices with no added sugar.
Some of the best drinks I’ve ever had are pure fresh-squeezed juice.
For example: pomegranate juice pressed by a street vendor? Amazing. Apples from the tree in my mom’s yard? Incredible when juiced. Freshly squeezed orange juice? Sign me up.
Relatively few fruits make a juice that’s not good straight. Cranberry comes to mind as being too bitter. Lemon is a bit too acidic for most.
Wyman’s 100% blueberry juice is 20g sugar per 250ml. Mott’s apple juice is 28g for 8 oz/240ml. So blueberry juice is about 2/3 the sugar of apple juice. It’s still plenty sweet.
You don’t water blueberry juice down because it’s not sweet enough. You water it down because 8oz of Mott’s apple juice is $1.30 at Walmart, and 8oz of wymans’ blueberry juice is $7.30. Blends use apple juice because it’s cheap and mild, so you can layer other flavors on top.
Juice isn’t bad for you because of the extra apple sugar. It’s bad because you removed all the fiber. Fiber promotes sateity.
Upvoted because they are all good points. But I would say, that even these pure juice blends are absolutely concentrating the sugar, and probably using the sweetest varieties they can find. I would put money on it. I’ve pressed juice myself and it is never as sweet as what they sell you in the store, not even remotely close. The store juice is magnitudes more sweet because they are liars and frauds, full stop. Either way, we should all be watering it down. Unless you’re desensitizing your taste of sugar by eating pixy stix every day, most juices are too sweet anyway.
I believe I have bought those same brands. If I remember, they come in 32 Oz bottles and are extremely tart. I would water them down heavily and give them to my daughter and she was able to tolerate it.
It’s probably a mix of using sweet varieties, picking at peak ripeness and quickly juicing them without much transportation.
Think of the difference in if you made tomato juice with a standard supermarket tomato vs a local in-season farmstand tomato.
Honestly, juice just isn’t anywhere near as healthy as whole fruit.
You can water it down if you want, but either way it should be a fairly rare treat.