We all love fruit juices. We all have it guilt free assuming that there could be nothing healthier than the fruit juices.

However, remember fruit juices are loaded with sugar and lacks fiber. The sugar content in fruit juices is many times more than soft drinks. Fruit juices are missing a lot of the stuff that makes whole fruit healthy.

Remember the rule: Fructose i.e sugar from the fruit and fruit juices becomes blood sugar after digestion. Thereafter, if the liver is empty it is converted into glucose in the liver, but if the liver is full (which is after the lunch and dinner), these fats from fruit and fruit juice are converted to Adipose tissue i.e. FAT.

What we do is we eat fruit after dinner and/or go for fruit juices after dinner. Look at the juice parlours across the cities in India. Your drinking of fruit juices after the dinner is nothing but adding extra fat to your tummy. The irony is we think we have taken a healthy decision by having a fruit or fruit juice after the dinner.

Dietician Rujuta Diwekar writes in her book Don’t lose mind lose your weight,” We should eat fruits when we are in a fasting state or when our liver is empty. First thing in the morning or on an empty stomach or immediately after physical exercise.

Anytime aside from this, the body converts the fructose from the fruits into triglycerides... Not only fruit juices give you 4 or 5 times of fructose you get in one serving of fruit, it also lacks goodness of fruit fiber. Eat fruit the first thing in the morning before the breakfast not with it.”

Fruit juices are coloured water with sugar, which has lost its nutrients. During the juicing process, it is exposed to the air so it oxidized. Fruit contains antioxidants, which should be ideally oxidized inside the body.

Antioxidants are man-made or natural substances that may prevent or delay some types of cell damage. Diets high in vegetables and fruits, which are good sources of antioxidants, have been found to be healthy.(1) The benefits of antioxidants are very important to good health because if free radicals are left unchallenged, they can cause a wide range of illnesses and chronic diseases.

By drinking fruit juice we lose the antioxidant property of the fruit. We lose fiber, we lose antioxidants, we lose many minerals, and we add fat and triglycerides and perhaps some Vitamins.

Fruit juices are good only for;

• Patients, who can’t chew or are with weak digestion
• Aged people, who can’t chew
• Newborn babies, who can’t chew

Joanna Blythman, author of What to Eat The simplest way to put it is: eat whole fruit, don’t drink juice. 

Susan Jebb, a government advisor and head of the diet and obesity research group at the Medical Research Council’s Human Nutrition Research Unit at Cambridge University, in her article  How fruit juice went from health food to junk food writes, “Fruit juice isn’t the same as intact fruit and it has as much sugar as many classical sugar drinks. It is also absorbed very fast, so by the time it gets to your stomach your body doesn’t know whether it’s Coca-Cola or orange juice, frankly. I have to say it is a relatively easy thing to give up. Swap it and have a piece of real fruit. If you are going to drink it, you should dilute it.”

Experts also maintain that fructose fools our brains into thinking we are still hungry – causing us to overeat – and is addictive, making us crave more. And the British Dental Association confirms a link between fruit juice consumption and tooth decay.”(2)

Rules to drink fruit juices:

• Don’t add extra sugar to the fruit juice
• Drink first thing in the morning
• Do not keep; drink fresh, stale juice becomes more sugary.
• Say No to canned juice forever howsoever fresh or pure they may write
• Blending is better than juicing it retains the pulp and skin of the fruit and veg. (3)
• Add fats, such as chopped walnuts or flaxseeds, to slow the absorption of the sugars.
• Drink fruit juice heavily diluted with water
• Drink one glass at a time, restrict the quantity.

Next time when you think of fruit juice, remember these rules. Your fruit juices, perhaps a sign of wealth, are spoiling your health.

“For a few months, I’d have a green juice every day, but one day, I realized I’d rather eat those ingredients than drink them.” Ellie Kemper, an American actress.

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