100% fruit juice associated with weight gain in children and adults, study finds

It's obvious to anyone who has thought about it, yes. Unfortunately there's a larger than you expect percentage of people out there who just think "fruit healthy" and that's where the thought ends

If you really want to drink the fruit juice you should just blend the fruit so that you are also getting all the pulp.

Thanks for reminding me I need to go to my local taqueria and get an agua fresca o7

this is why, while i love fruit smoothies, i also make sure to also add some granola and/or flax seed for extra fiber.

helps me save on t-p, too!

Yeah, the US has an education problem. They kind of tell kids about this in school these days but for a bunch of years fruit was just plain sold as good for you. Kids parents were raised going oh don't drink that Fanta here drink this apple juice. When they're far too close to nutritional value for it to matter.

It's another thing they could put a label on might help a few people, it's really effing hard to put a health food label on everything that's not shit though

Yes. Just got back from the pediatrician and the take home handout said (again) not to feed your kid juice as there's little to no nutritional value and a butt load of sugar

For sure every doctor alwayd says BOOF it or Lose it

Watermelon juice? Okay, I’ll give it a try.

I know personally this tragedy all to well. My father used to drink water. He passed away just a few years ago. Then I did my research and learned that over 80% of everyone who has ever died actually drank water at least the day before.

What does that tell you about water?

What plant is a motherfucker, and how much water does it need?

Ugh... It tasted like fish.

EDIT: /s or /j added because people doesn't seem to get it's a joke.

I just check the orange juice I buy. Just generic supermarket branded. 45 calories per 100ml. Coca Cola is 42.

There are people are drinking several litres a day of this shit, on top of all the normal stuff they eat.

I mean it's probably better than soda right?

Precisely. My whole life I was told to stay away from fat and eat my fruits and veggies. I loooove fruits and veggies, but was only recently told they were high in carbs in my 30s. I just assumed they were healthy since that's what I was told my whole life. Kinda sucks since I'm repulsed by seafood and am not a big meat eater (I identify as flexitarian).

The closest thing to formal education about nutrition I received were the now-obsolete posters of the food pyramid randomly plastered around my middle school.

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.

Just give them fruit.

My wife and I occasionally make fresh squeezed orange juice at home... It takes us at least a dozen large oranges to get THREE - 10 to 12 ounce glasses of juice.

It probably takes more oranges than that really but it's been a while since we did it so I can't remember for sure.

Have you seen the outside they built?

Kids aren't allowed to play outside anymore anywhere but the country.

The trees have been cut down and replaced with tiny puffs of artificial grass. There are no yards, it's all just streets to play in. And the streets are now blasted through at 30mph.

Adults call the cops on children outside just anywhere but their own front lawn. There is nowhere where it is free to be, and kids aren't exactly flush with cash.

Easy to claim everyone is staying inside if you’re inside not seeing it or when it’s either extreme freezing or boiling..but I just saw a plethora of children sledding yesterday after a snowstorm. I just came back from a Christmas vacation with a large group of nieces/nephews skating, swimming, building snowmen, snowshoeing, sleigh rides and skiing. There was a new activity to do every day. Not one looked at their phone(not even adults) and the total of tv screen time was maybe a two hours out of their day waiting between eating meals together or physically playing together or if the weather did not permit a lot of outdoor activity. Upon which we had a lot of board games to play with each other. The kids do not do well with no activity and tend to get moody and hard to deal with so the parents do a lot to try to expend their extra energy. Having kids is a lot of work. Especially if some of the kids are on a particular spectrum in which we had two out of the group.

on one hand it’s probably the household/family type and I have no doubt there are quite a few families that definitely do need to give their head a shake but it’s not as ubiquitous and pervasive as you’re suggesting. Most parents I’ve seen biggest complaint is ‘I’m trying to tire them out.’ seems to be the catch phrase of the decade right now.

Wall E was a documentary set in the future.

My GF is type 1 diabetic so I have to be aware all the time of how much carbs are in things. It's actually insane. A glass of OJ has as much carbs and a can of soda for instance. A glass of wine has ~100-120 calories. Breakfast cereal is essential just carbs and sugar.

Carbs are not bad for you, obscene amounts of sugar is. Yes you shouldn't just eat nothing but carbohydrates, but your body needs carbohydrates to fuel the muscles. Around 100 grams a day is considered the minimum you need to eat typically.

Not all carbs are the same. Fruit juice is simple sugars with little to no fiber.

Well, while it is a type of sugar that makes fruits sweet, it in fact does get processed differently in your body. Fructose, among other things, can't be stored in muscles. Your body also doesn't need to provide Insulin to process it.

When comparing something sweetened with Fructose and something sweetened with Saccharose, the sweet from Fructose has less negative health impacts.

Unless I misunderstood what you mean with "count against you" (I am not a native English speaker).

It's not the sugar that's the problem, it's the calories.

Proof of different types of intelligence right there.

The article doesn't accurately represent the study. The harm isn't in any amount of fruit juice like it is with corn syrup and fake sugars, it's in multiple servings of fruit juice to children per day. The operative part from the study here -

Among cohort studies in children, each additional serving per day of 100% fruit juice was associated with a 0.03 (95% CI, 0.01-0.05) higher BMI change. Among cohort studies in adults, studies that did not adjust for energy showed greater body weight gain (0.21 kg; 95% CI, 0.15-0.27 kg) than studies that did adjust for energy intake (−0.08 kg; 95% CI, −0.11 to −0.05 kg; P for meta-regression <.001). RCTs in adults found no significant association of assignment to 100% fruit juice with body weight but the CI was wide (MD, −0.53 kg; 95% CI, −1.55 to 0.48 kg).

That said. As long as they're getting actual fruit, it's not like fruit juice is a requirement.

Inb4 Full Fat Milk now also makes you a bad parent.

The Media: Nothing you do is ever enough.

Replace fruit juice with soda in the title and no doubt it’s a slam dunk, but I personally didn’t realize how much sugar’s in fruit drinks until I entered it into a calorie tracker. I’m guessing fruit juice is slightly less bad compared to soda, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn most people are oblivious to how “not good” fruit juice is for them. Probably some, “Well, fruit is good for me, so fruit juice must be okay, too.”

That would be great, but king corn would never let that happen in the US.

Can you explain why that hotel continental breakfast dispenser apple juice always makes you shit your brains out then?

Eh. Parents don't usually give their kids soda for breakfast, even if juice has a comparable amount of sugar.

They also don't give their kids candy for breakfast, but cereal and pastries are okay.

This shouldn't have to be spelled out for you, but many people believe that juice is good for you.

xD This is good, I'll have to remember this.

Not only that, it's also almost pure carbohydrates

Regardless of what the other dude says, I think you're doing great. Drinking water? Great! Occasional treat without overdoing it? Great! Proud of your accomplishments and motivation to continue? Triple great!

You're improving yourself and seem to be satisfied with the results, that's all that matters.

as a teen i was nearly 250lbs. when i stopped snacking and drinking soda i went way down. now i usually hover around 170-180

Artificial sweeteners still trigger an insulin response, just like sugar. In the absence of glucose to leech out of the blood stream that then makes you hungry.

Studies aren't really 100% conclusive yet probably largely because individual differences are high, e.g. if you drink yours with a meal that has a different result than when drinking it without one and then having an extra snack. For the whole population diet sodas might just be a tad worse for weight gain than regular sodas, what we know for certain is that they're not significantly better.

But I’ve lost 100 pounds in the past two years and I’d really like to stay this way.

0.5 to 1% of body mass per week, no more, or you're likely to bounce back because ancient circuits in your body and brain think that they need to be ready for famine. In the end all those numbers don't really do much it's "eat healthy (meaning enough micronutrients), ideally varied (that's what seasons are for IMO), and only when you're hungry". Where hungry means your body needs energy, not your stomach isn't full, or you want to distract yourself, or whatever. We all do have perfectly sufficient weight regulation circuitry, no spreadsheet needed, and if you hear someone tell you "it's all about willpower" then what they have is an intact, unobstructed, circuitry which means that they don't need willpower.

And yes profit-driven food design is notorious for kicking that circuitry out of whack, our social environment does the rest: Merely eating only consciously, bite for bite, can reset the whole thing but who nowadays has time and nerve for that -- which is why you often see it done by proxy, studies show that pretty much any type of diet restriction leads to more conscious eating and therefore better weight regulation, restriction as in what you will eat or when (e.g. only seasonal stuff), not calories. Some set of rules restricting what's available for you in particular (that is, e.g. not eating pork when noone in your country even sells it doesn't count). The reason vegans and vegetarians aren't as prone to obesity has preciously little to do with what they eat, but that on average they spend more time thinking about what they eat than the rest of the population (modulo vegan malnourishment different topic but if you're a vegan you need to know your shit, it's not optional).

As someone who was also raised to dilute it.

Thanks to shrinkflation they are already diluting it. It tastes water thin before you water it down, and it's still all sugar water.

That's because aspartame has not got the health impacts of sugar. It isn't sugar. So if you added aspartame, you're not adding sugar.

Yep this was my take. Went to Cartagena de Indias in Colombia where people kinda don't drink water, it's all juice. Guess what a week+ of juice 3x a day gets you? REALLY BAD CONSTIPATION.

It has electrolytes.

Sugar bobs with fiber are still sugar bombs.

Make sure to check with your doctor if you’re on any meds! Grapefruit juice can cause you to absorb more of your medication and can cause overdoses.

Nutritional values are nutritional values, weight is gained by regularly ingesting too many calories, no matter the source. There's benefits to milk but if your kids have a healthy diet in general they shouldn't need to drink it.

It's easy to consume too many calories with liquids. I'm sure it's fine I'm moderation, especially so if your kids love active lifestyles.

Age matters. Milk is not juice.

Please follow professional advice and not people on Internet.

https://www.aafp.org/pubs/afp/issues/2018/0815/p227.html

Calories in calories out

It's not rocket science if you put in extra fuel the body will eventually turn that extra fuel into fat.

Please don't eat the fruit children.

Unfortunately, that realization is wrong; water makes wet, but is not by itself.

One glas of OJ is like the juice of 10 oranges. You simply wouldn't be able to eat that many because of all the bulk (fibre) that comes with it. But as juice, you can down them in seconds, giving you more sugar than a soda, which will lead to bloodsugar spikes, which will lead to Type 2 diabetis. So eat as much fruit as you like, it's super healthy, but don't drink fruit juice.

No, the weight gain is from the juice being high in sugar (like a fruit) without fiber (which a fruit has).

You're basically drinking sugar and there's nothing to slow down your metabolism or fill you up, so you take in too much sugar.

In theory if you mixed it with something fibrous like oats (that don't have their own sweatener) maybe you end up in a better place (if you drink less juice and you eat/drink less caloric beverages/food throughout your day -- i..e you trade bland oats and orange juice for a hamburger).

In general, adding things to your diet doesn't help unless you're also removing something (e.g., adding smoothies is great! ... but not if you're still having the hamburger and now also a smoothie vs water).

Drinking calories is almost always a bad idea.