Commercial Fruit Juices: Soft Drink's Evil Twin
(Mercola.com) -- Half of the U.S. population over the age of 2 now consumes
Many people mistakenly believe that as long as you are drinking fruit juice, it's healthy even though it's sweet, but this is a dangerous misconception that is fueling the rising rates of weight gain, obesity, fatty liver disease, high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes in the United States and other developed nations.
-- Fruit drinks often contain very little fruit juice and may contain more sugar and calories than soda, making them equally bad, if not worse, for your health
-- Sugary drinks, whether fruit juice, fruit drinks or soda, also contain fructose, which has been identified as one of the primary culprits in the meteoric rise of obesity and related health problems
-- If your fruit juice is labeled a “fruit drink,” “fruit beverage,” or “fruit cocktail,” it’s because it does not contain 100% juice and likely contains high-fructose corn syrup and flavorings
-- Virtually all sugary drinks are a primary source of excessive sugar, calories and fructose. Drink plenty of pure water as your primary beverage of choice instead
In fact, you are doing your body no favor whatsoever by swapping soda for fruit juice, and as a concise infographic posted by Discovery pointed out, oftentimes fruit drinks are actually worse for your health than soda.
One eight-ounce glass of processed orange juice has about eight full teaspoons of sugar, and at least 50 percent of that sugar is fructose. That's almost as much as a can of soda, which contains approximately 10 teaspoons of sugar. Fruit drinks, on the other hand, will likely contain high-fructose corn syrup, just as soda does. In fact, soda giants like Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Dr. Pepper are actually the parent companies to most sugary drinks on the market, and that includes commercial fruit juices!
Drinking just one eight-ounce glass of commercially packaged orange juice will wallop your system with 25 grams of fructose, which is more than you should have the entire day. Of course, many people, especially kids and teenagers, drink far more sugary fruit drinks in a day than that, and that's just what the beverage companies are banking on.
The problem is that fructose has been identified as one of the primary culprits in the meteoric rise of obesity and related health problems, and while the majority of the problem is caused by the large quantities of high fructose corn syrup added to so many processed foods and sweetened beverages, naturally occurring fructose in large amounts of fruit juice is also a problem.
Around 100 years ago the average American consumed a mere 15 grams of fructose a day, primarily in the form of whole fruit. One hundred years later, one-fourth of Americans are consuming more than 135 grams per day (that's over a quarter of a pound!), largely in the form of soda and other sweetened beverages.
Fructose at 15 grams a day is harmless (unless you suffer from high uric acid levels). However, at nearly 10 times that amount it becomes a major cause of obesity and nearly all chronic degenerative diseases.
-- Fructose is also a likely culprit behind the millions of
U.S. children struggling with non-alcoholic liver disease, which is caused by a build-up of fat within liver cells. Fructose is very hard on your liver, in much the same way as drinking alcohol.-- After eating fructose, 100 percent of the metabolic burden rests on your liver—ONLY your liver can break it down. This is much different than consuming glucose, in which your liver has to break down only 20 percent, and the remaining 80 percent is immediately metabolized and used by the rest of the cells in your body.
--Many people are now conscious of the health risks of drinking soda. I suggest you add fruit drinks and fruit juice to this category, as they are really one in the same. These types of sugary drinks are a primary source of excessive fructose. Instead, drink plenty of pure water as your primary beverage of choice.
As for fructose, I recommend you get serious about restricting your consumption of fructose to no more than 25 grams per day, with a maximum of 15 grams a day from fresh fruit (not fruit juice). If you're already overweight, or have diabetes, heart disease or cancer, then you're probably better off cutting that down to 10-15 grams per day, fruit included.
I do realize that reducing sugar/fructose in your diet can be tough for some people. After all, sugar is
just as addictive as cocaine! But it is possible, and Dr. Johnson provides helpful guidelines for doing so in his book, The Sugar Fix.Fructose is also converted into fat that gets stored in your liver and other tissues as body fat. Part of what makes fructose so bad for your health is that it is metabolized to fat in your body far more rapidly than any other sugar. Under normal circumstances, if you eat 120 calories of fructose, 40 calories are stored as fat. But if you eat the same amount of glucose, only 6 calories gets stored as fat.
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