Fruit Juice heathy?

MiloDublin

I was putting apple juice on my musli thinking it was heathier than full fat milk but it tasted overly sweet. I checked the ingredients and sure enough it was 25% sugar!
Because it's fructose is that OK sugar? Confused.

Faith

It's not pure fructose. If you read the ingredients, you'll see that there's added sugar, which is glucose.

On the whole, no, fruit juice isn't 'healthy'. It's really high in sugar (comparable with Coke etc) and much lower in fibre than just eating the whole fruit.

Milk is much healthier, and contains only naturally-occurring sugars.

Mellor

MiloDublin wrote: »

I was putting apple juice on my musli thinking it was heathier than full fat milk but it tasted overly sweet. I checked the ingredients and sure enough it was 25% sugar!
Because it's fructose is that OK sugar? Confused.

Fructose is probably one of the worst sugars tbh. A reall cheap and nasty form of sugar used in industry is high fructose corn syrup.
A bag of pure sugar is also naturally occurring sugar, albeit refined.

Obviously, fruit juice has vitamins and such additional, but the sugar alone is nutritionally, the same as most sugars.

porsche959

Faith wrote: »

It's not pure fructose. If you read the ingredients, you'll see that there's added sugar, which is glucose.

On the whole, no, fruit juice isn't 'healthy'. It's really high in sugar (comparable with Coke etc) and much lower in fibre than just eating the whole fruit.

Personally I also find some fruit juices (not all) give me horrendous heartburn.

Jawgap

Does the carton declare that sugar was added or not? And was the juice clear or cloudy?

Apple juice is naturally high in fructose and if you are only worried about sugar, it's probably concerning - but it is low in sodium, fat and cholesterol and contains decent amounts of vitamin C.

It would count as one of your five-a-day (but no matter how much fruit juice you drink it will all only count as '1' for the purposes of fruit and veg intake).

TBH, I'd be more worried about the Muesli - is it shop bought or did you make it yourself?

EDIT: From the Which? survey of breakfast cereals....

Several supermarket brands of honey nut cornflakes had 33.6% sugar. Even cereals marked as ‘healthy’ such as Kellogg’s All-Bran Flakes (22%) and Special K (17%), were high in sugar. Alpen Original Muesli had 23.1% sugar, although this included sugar from fruit, while Dorset Cereals Simply Delicious Muesli had 16.8% sugar, though this was all from fruit.

The report did not summarise cereals’ fat content but most cereals were low in fat (3% or less fat, according to the traffic light system), though several contained medium levels of fat (between 3 and 20%). Those with the highest levels were:

• Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut Clusters (15%)
• Quaker Oat So Simple (8.5%)
• Dorset Simply Delicious Muesli (7.4%)
• Alpen Original Muesli (5.8%)
• Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut Cornflakes (5%)

Several other brands and own-brand equivalents contained between 3 and 5% fat.

MiloDublin

Jawgap wrote: »

Does the carton declare that sugar was added or not? And was the juice clear or cloudy?

Apple juice is naturally high in fructose and if you are only worried about sugar, it's probably concerning - but it is low in sodium, fat and cholesterol and contains decent amounts of vitamin C.

It would count as one of your five-a-day (but no matter how much fruit juice you drink it will all only count as '1' for the purposes of fruit and veg intake).

TBH, I'd be more worried about the Muesli - is it shop bought or did you make it yourself?

EDIT: From the Which? survey of breakfast cereals....

The musli is sound enough. I checked it and there is no sugar. If you wean yourself off sugar your tastebuds get really sensitive to any amount. I read some articles about fruit juice and it seems there is a backlash and now certain schools are banning it from lunchboxes as its as unhealthy as a coke

rubadub

MiloDublin wrote: »

I checked the ingredients and sure enough it was 25% sugar

Apple juice is usually 10-11% sugar, same as coke or 7-up.

You might have read some other figure like 25% of your RDA for sugar or something, or 25grams per 250ml glass.

Milk has about 4.8% natural sugar itself, and more calories per 100ml than apple juice -not saying its better or worse, just pointing it out.

Faith wrote: »

If you read the ingredients, you'll see that there's added sugar, which is glucose.

If its labelled as apple juice it will have no added sugar, they legally have to call the diluted stuff with added sugar "apple juice drink", the key word is "drink", if you look on tesco.ie for drink you will see loads of diluted stuff. It used to be mainly tropical expensive fruits, but I see lots of apple ones now.

Jawgap

MiloDublin wrote: »

The musli is sound enough. I checked it and there is no sugar. If you wean yourself off sugar your tastebuds get really sensitive to any amount. I read some articles about fruit juice and it seems there is a backlash and now certain schools are banning it from lunchboxes as its as unhealthy as a coke

the 'unhealthiness' could be as much linked to dental health as nutritional health.


btw- chocolate milk has been identified as a good option as a post-exercise recovery drink, and some endurance athletes take Fanta or other fizzy drinks as an immediate post event drink to boost phosphate levels, all of which goes to show that really the best advice remains.......everything in moderation (even, occasionally, moderation )