Can Fruit Juice Damage Your Health?

I am posting an article by Francois Lubbe, UK Editor at the HSI (Health Sciences Institute), as not only does it “spell out” loud and clear the problems associated with routine fruit juice consumption, and the important difference between “extracted” fructose and fructose found in whole fresh fruits, it’s a common practise amongst many, and a common misconception that fruit juice is a healthy drink! Here’s the article…

Can Fruit Juice Damage Your Health? By Francois Lubbe

You’re in the supermarket and you stand in front of a wide selection of fruit juices. Which one are you going to choose? The ‘100 per cent pure juice’ or the ‘not made from concentrate’? Both are a very healthy option, right?

Think again. The truth is, neither of these two options is healthy… In fact, most store-bought fruit juices have a secret ingredient that doesn’t resemble anything found in nature!

Take orange juice for instance. Making a glass of OJ is fairly straight forward, right? You pick the oranges. Squeeze them. Put the juice in a glass and voila! Not if you produce OJ on a massive scale, in which case, there is an important in-between stage, which is kept secret from Joe Public.

Once the oranges are squeezed, the juice is stored in giant holding tanks and, critically, the oxygen is removed from the juice to allow the liquid to keep longer (for up to a year) without spoiling. The only difference is, that liquid that we think of as orange juice tastes nothing like the ‘100 per cent pure juice’ that we’d make at home from fresh squeezing fresh oranges. In fact, it’s quite flavourless, because when the juice is stripped of oxygen it is also stripped of the chemicals that give it flavour.

This is where that magical secret ingredient makes its entrance: “flavour packs” to re-flavour the de-oxygenated orange juice. These are flavours, uniquely manufactured by ‘flavour companies’ — similar to the ones that formulate perfumes for Dior and Calvin Klein — which are added back to the juice to make it taste ‘fresh’.

Of course, Joe Public is unaware of this because flavour packs aren’t listed as an ingredient on the label because technically they are derived from orange essence and oil.

Noticed how I used the word ‘technically’. That’s because nothing that’s inside those flavour packs resembles anything found in nature. In fact, they tend to contain high amounts of ethyl butyrate, a synthetic chemical found in the fragrance of fresh squeezed orange juice.

There’s more still, because you may have noticed that some orange juices taste different from others. That’s because flavour packs are manufactured to cater for different markets… call it a subliminal trademark exercise. So, juices sold in Brazil or Mexico will have other chemicals in them, like valencine, which makes it taste different because the people in those countries have different palates.

Clever, isn’t it?  Not! It’s down right deceiving, especially if that same chemical- induced juice is sold as ‘100 per cent pure’!

How to solve a problem like OJ

Having said that, some doctors actually recommend that you don’t drink orange juice at all, whether it is store-bought or freshly squeezed. Even more so if you’re overweight, or have diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, gout, heart disease or cancer.

While oranges and freshly squeezed orange juice can be a good source of vitamins and other nutrients, they’re also very high in fructose. However, fructose is only good for you for as long as it is part of the whole fruit!

Not many people know this, but when the sugar (fructose) is combined in its natural form in the whole fruit, it poses far less of a health risk, because the fibre in the fruit tends to slow its absorption and prevents over consumption. But once you remove the fibre (which is what happens when fruit is juiced), you end up with a different product.

Too much fructose can lead to insulin resistance, which is not only an underlying factor of type 2 diabetes and heart disease, but also many cancers. It also metabolizes into fat and leads to weight gain and abdominal obesity, which in turn decreases HDL ‘good’ cholesterol, increases LDL ‘bad’ cholesterol, elevates triglycerides, elevates blood sugar, and causes high blood pressure — classic metabolic syndrome.

Apart from that, it also contributes to the development of gout by increasing the levels of uric acid in your body. Not to mention the fact that fruit loses a lot of its antioxidant power during the juicing process — especially if it has been pasteurized, which most store bought juices are.

It seems to be much healthier to avoid drinking fruit juices altogether, as they will spike your insulin to a far greater degree than a piece of whole fruit. In fact, a 2008 study made the following conclusion with reference to the difference between whole fruits and fruit juices: “Consumption of green leafy vegetables and fruit was associated with a lower hazard of diabetes, whereas consumption of fruit juices may be associated with an increased hazard…”

A study by University of Toronto has found that eating health foods including fermented soy reduces cholesterol far quicker than avoiding saturated fats. Patients on a “dietary portfolio” of oats, fermented soy, tempeh and nuts saw their cholesterol fall by 13 per cent over six months – and it cut their ten-year heart disease risk by almost 11 per cent. Victoria Taylor, dietician at the British Heart Foundation, said the findings were “encouraging”.

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