Are Fruit Juices Healthy? The Truth About Sugar, Additives, and Misleading Labels

The Perception of Fruit Juices as Healthy

Fruit juices are not only perceived to be healthy, but even claimed to be therapeutic. Proponents of raw fruit and vegetable juices even prescribe different juice formulas for different ailments. Sure, there are plus points: Fresh fruit juices have a cleansing effect and they help rid the body of accumulated toxins. This can lead to improvements in health and possibly recovery from illness. Fruits are rich in nutrients, and drinking fruit juices allows a person to benefit from a lot more of those nutrients. A glass of orange or apple juice would have been extracted from about three oranges or apples. It is much easier to gulp down a glass of juice than to eat the equivalent amount of fruit.

Overconsumption of Fruit Juice

In the course of a day, some "health-conscious" people would have drunk the equivalent of 10 to 20 servings of fruit. Such huge amounts may be okay as a short-term cleansing program, but not as a daily routine throughout life.

The Downsides of Fruit Juices

There are also reasons why fruit juices are not all that good:

• Fruit juices are digested more quickly than whole fruits, which contain fiber that slows down digestion. Drinking fruit juice thus raises your blood glucose levels faster and more sharply.
• Some "fruit juices" are so artificial and full of chemical additives that they are best avoided completely.

Fruit Juice and Children's Health

Children, in particular, should not be encouraged to develop the habit of drinking fruit juice. If they insist, dilute the fruit juice to half strength with water or vegetable juice.

Fruit Drinks vs. Fruit Juices: Sugar and Additives

Fruit drinks contain added sugar:
A popular blackcurrant drink often given to children contains even more sugar than soft drinks like Coca-Cola—slightly more, but still more. This "blackcurrant drink" actually contains only about 7 percent fruit juice. The rest is water, sugar, and chemical additives. "Reduced sugar" versions contain aspartame.

Misleading Marketing of Fruit Drinks

A powder, which is to be mixed with water into an "orange drink," is marketed as containing 100 percent of the recommended daily allowance for vitamin C. Yet it provides a mere 10 percent of the daily recommended allowance for a few other vitamins and calcium. It contains few other minerals and no phytonutrients. This is not orange powder, as what many consumers are led to think. It is sugar powder with synthetic vitamins, natural and artificial flavors, artificial colors, and other chemicals. Newer versions now contain the toxic artificial sweetener, aspartame. It does not contain orange.

Harmful Ingredients in Fruit Drinks

These are just two examples. Almost all fruit drinks are no more than harmful mixtures of sugar and chemicals. They offer little or none of the benefits of fruits.

Understanding Pure Juices and Fruit Juice Concentrates

“Pure juices" are more like syrup drinks, made from fruit juice concentrate—fruit juice that has been reduced to a thick paste—with water added back. Apple and grape juice concentrates are used to produce various types of fruit juices. Cranberry or pomegranate juice, for example, are usually made with apple or grape juice as the main ingredient, with a small amount of cranberry or pomegranate juice as flavoring.

Are Fruit Juice Concentrates Healthy?

Fruit juice concentrate is not totally “bad." The good thing is that many phytonutrients are preserved in spite of the manufacturing processes. However, some vitamins, particularly vitamin C, would have been lost. If vitamins are present, they would probably be synthetic vitamins that have been added back. The main problem, however, is the high sugar content.

The Truth About "Not From Concentrate" Juices

Fruit juices "not from concentrate" are again not as healthy as they sound. "Not from concentrate" suggests that the juice had been freshly squeezed and then packaged immediately. Not so. More likely, the juice would have been squeezed and then stored for months or years before it finally gets packaged.

Commercial Orange Juice Production Process

This is how orange juice is typically produced:

• First, the oranges are squeezed;
• Then the juice is stored in huge vats, sometimes for a year or two. To prevent spoilage, oxygen is drawn out from the juice, but this also draws out its flavor.
• Before the juice is packaged, artificial flavors are added, along with artificial colors and other chemicals.

Healthier Fruit Juice Options

With growing health awareness, some fruit juice manufacturers have begun to produce juices that are fresher and more genuine. Don't expect these to be cheap. If you enjoy fruit juice, it is better to treat yourself occasionally to an expensive, good quality juice than to gulp down large amounts of cheap, sugared drinks daily.