6 ms·

"Juice removed from the fruit is just concentrated fructose without any of the naturally-occurring fiber, pectin, and other goodies that make eating a whole fru

by beloch 11y ago

"Juice removed from the fruit is just concentrated fructose without any of the naturally-occurring fiber, pectin, and other goodies that make eating a whole fruit good for you. Did you know, for example, that it takes 6-8 medium sized apples to make just 1 cup of apple juice? You probably wouldn’t be able to eat 6-8 medium apples in a single sitting. (I know I can barely eat one!) But you can casually throw back a cup of apple juice, and you would probably be willing to return for seconds. That’s why fruit juice is dangerous. It’s far too easy to consume far too much sugar." This paragraph is, arguably, far more important than all the hysteria about flavor packs, but it's only partially correct. Fibre does help provide satiety but, in and of itself, it isn't what's good for you about eating whole fruit unless you simply aren't getting enough fibre and have issues with constipation. What fibre does do is reduce the rate at which we absorb sugar. Apple juice will give you a nice fast sugar high and then a low, much like candy. An apple will give you a gradual surge of energy for a while. If you're going to eat something sweet, it's far better for you if it comes combined with fibre. So don't go searching for juice that doesn't use flavor packs. Don't buy a juicer and juice your own either, because you're still throwing away what separates fruit from candy. Don't mess around with fermenting juices and all that probiotic jazz. If you simply must drink your fruit, use a blender.

avar 11y ago
Does the fiber need to come with the sugar? What if I drink the equivalent of the apple juice in a couple of apples and chew on some lettuce which would contain the same amount of fiber as the apple?
- beloch 11y ago
  I'm no dietician, but I'd imagine it would be fine to do this. Of course, it takes about four cups of lettuce to give you the same amount of fibre as an apple. Multiply that by the number of apples it took to make your juice and that's a lot of lettuce even if you happen to really love lettuce.
- chrismartin 11y ago
  Not an expert but I believe this does not work. Sugar bound up in fiber (as is the case with natural fruit) is not immediately bioavailable. Your GI tract needs to break down the fiber in order to release the sugar, which takes time. The sugar is absorbed by your small intestine more slowly, causing a gentler glycemic response. This is analogous to 'extended release' medication, where the dose is delivered slowly over a longer period of time. Separating the sugar from the fiber (as with juicing) means that all the sugar is bioavailable more or less immediately after you consume it, Causing the blood sugar high followed by the insulin spike. Adding fiber to your sugary meal does little to slow this down.
cobweb 11y ago
Fibre is more than roughage, it helps nurture the microbiome.
MrTonyD 11y ago
Well, my wife works for Martinelli's - and it definitely doesn't take 2+ apples to make a cup of apple juice. (I'm not saying that apple juice should be your first choice.) They also carefully monitor "brix", which is the amount of sugar in their juice. They have acceptable targets for that as well as other measures (including John Martinelli tasting the product almost daily.) Personally, I use my Vitamix to make my own "apple juice smoothy" and routinely ferment fruit for the probiotics. But I'm skeptical about the "juice is bad" meme.
- leephillips 11y ago
  That stuff is delicious. I don't drink fruit juice, but I put Martinelli's in a different category.
  - tedmiston 11y ago
    As you should at $25/gallon [1]: 5x the price of Mott's for example. 1: http://store.martinellis.com/products/jaj128.shtml http://store.martinellis.com/products/jaj128.shtml
- el_duderino 11y ago
  Can you ask your wife what the stuff that appears to be floating in my Martinelli apple juice is? It's a cloud looking like substance in my juice. Does that mean it's been sitting too long? Fermented apple by chance? Smells almost like alcohol when opening it.
  - MrTonyD 11y ago
    I may know what the cloudy stuff is. First, if the juice is outside the "best buy" date, just throw it away. The "cloudy juice" problem happened when they moved to a new production line in Watsonville. They discovered that as juice aged it got cloudy and then started to grow a "tree looking" like thing inside the bottle. It took them months to figure out that the big warehouse doors where they brought in apples was allowing mold spores to blow into the air and contaminate the juice. You've probably been holding on to that bottle for a while. (Some other brands don't filter their juice, and will appear cloudy.) This isn't a problem that anyone should be seeing anymore. (I should add that many, many bottles were tested and the mold wasn't a harmful mold. Many skeptical customers even arranged their own testing.)
tmerr 11y ago
It sounds reasonable that fiber could reduce the rate of aborption of sugar. But I lose you when you start talking about sugar highs. I thought that was dispelled as a myth after a number of placebo controlled studies.
- tracker1 11y ago
  The affects of a "high" feeling, or rush is somewhat exaggerated, what it does to your blood glucose levels, and what that does to your body is well documented.
pyre 11y ago
> If you're going to eat something sweet, it's far better for you if it comes combined with fibre. My question is if the fibre has to be whole or not. If I put an apple into a high powered blender, it will get pulverized, but I'm not removing any fibre from it the way I would if I were running it through a juicer. Does the "slowing" factor of the fibre depend on it being in clumps (i.e. a chunk of apple digests slower than apple sauce)?
- lnanek2 11y ago
  It's definitely true that finely ground flour digests faster (more surface area, less breakdown needed, etc.). Effect probably exists for apples too.
- tracker1 11y ago
  Whole, chewed fruit is much slower/evenly absorbed than sauced/pureed fruit... Once pureed, it's closer to juice.
  - pyre 11y ago
    You still get the benefit of eating the whole fruit though. None of the nutrients are removed, and you're less likely to eat 6 apples worth of puree than to drink 6 apples worth of apple juice. > slower/evenly absorbed Also, I'm curious what you mean here by "evenly absorbed." Even in what sense?
    - tracker1 11y ago
      I mean it doesn't spike your blood glucose as much.
- eadz 11y ago
  Chewing is part of the digestive system ( Saliva contains digestive enzymes ), so you're missing out on that.
tracker1 11y ago
A blender still isn't that much better than juicing as you've already done a lot of the breakdown work that your digestive system does allowing for more absorption, which in and of itself isn't too bad. For the most part, once you have enough protein in your diet, calories are calories. If you're predisposed to diabetes you're better off getting those calories from low glycemic sources. That doesn't make it easy to avoid too much of the good^Wbad stuff. However, you should also avoid getting more than 100g of sugar a day, though I try to stay under 100g of net carbs/day.
- mrfusion 11y ago
  I'd like to see a citation on that. I researched that issue a while back and the best I could determine is that no one has ever done a study on blending vs chewing.
ams6110 11y ago
Modern fruit has been selectively bred for higher sugar content. If it doesn't taste tartly sour, it's probably more sugar than your body really is evolved to consume.
Shivetya 11y ago
One of the dangers with juicers is that you end up making too many sweet drinks because they simply taste so good. Having both the auger style and centrifugal led me into the trap that auger was making better meals because it extracted more. Yet it was simply good at taking nearly all the solids out. Many of the recipes for these machines rely on fruits and they can be more addictive than other vices. Going back to whole fruits the key I found was remembering those lessons as a kid, chew your food. This means even with fruits to make sure you don't just chew two or three times and swallow. That can lead to some gastric problems which turns many off to certain types of fruits. Better is to each vegetables, combined together they can be nearly as sweet tasting without the sugar
agumonkey 11y ago
> You probably wouldn’t be able to eat 6-8 medium apples in a single sitting. I recently had to discover this, for any kind of raw food actually, even carrots. Anything 'processed' (either industrial pre-made meals, or even home made sauced/whatever) will tease your mouth and brain in an incomparably different manner. You can eat at least 3 times more of anything if it's dipped into fat/sugar/spices. Without these, your brain will very clearly and very quickly tell you "enough". Even delicious strawberries have enough acid, sour in it to make you sick pretty fast.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
kevin_thibedeau 11y ago
You do realize that the concept of a "sugar high" is fictional propaganda invented to help enforce sugar rationing during WW2. Painting juice consumption as dangerous is silly. Not everyone is an incipient diabetic.
- outworlder 11y ago
  Having a diabetic brother made me research a lot of stuff so I beg to differ. If nothing else, high and uneven sugar levels are a recipe for getting fat and to get insulin resistance. Excess glicose floating around in your bloodstream is harmful. You want a constant, baseline level, but the rest should be removed asap.
- alrs 11y ago
  I realize no such thing. http://mic.com/articles/88015/what-happens-to-your-brain-on-sugar-explained-by-science http://mic.com/articles/88015/what-happens-to-your-brain-on-...
afroviking 11y ago
Steve Jobs was a fruitarian for a while iirc and he died from pancreatic cancer. I wonder if all the fruit juices he drank had something to do with him getting cancer of the organ that creates a hormone to control blood sugar.
mokkol 11y ago
I highly recommend to watch the documentary 'That Sugar Film'. It explains this in perfect detail and more aspects of sugar intake and the sugar industry.
TurboHaskal 11y ago
> juices considered harmful Nutrition threads in HN never fail to crack me up. Excess fiber consumption is exactly reason why I have a juicer, and because it tastes delicious. Stop scaring people. Try doing some sports or having a walk instead of reading paleo/keto propaganda blogs for a change. Maybe that way you'll all be able to handle sugars just like any other healthy individual does.
anticitizen 11y ago
>Don't mess around with fermenting juices and all that probiotic jazz. Fermenting reduces the sugar in the beverage.The sugar is processed by the cultures.

by beloch 11y ago

avar 11y ago

Does the fiber need to come with the sugar? What if I drink the equivalent of the apple juice in a couple of apples and chew on some lettuce which would contain the same amount of fiber as the apple?

beloch 11y ago
I'm no dietician, but I'd imagine it would be fine to do this. Of course, it takes about four cups of lettuce to give you the same amount of fibre as an apple. Multiply that by the number of apples it took to make your juice and that's a lot of lettuce even if you happen to really love lettuce.
chrismartin 11y ago
Not an expert but I believe this does not work. Sugar bound up in fiber (as is the case with natural fruit) is not immediately bioavailable. Your GI tract needs to break down the fiber in order to release the sugar, which takes time. The sugar is absorbed by your small intestine more slowly, causing a gentler glycemic response. This is analogous to 'extended release' medication, where the dose is delivered slowly over a longer period of time. Separating the sugar from the fiber (as with juicing) means that all the sugar is bioavailable more or less immediately after you consume it, Causing the blood sugar high followed by the insulin spike. Adding fiber to your sugary meal does little to slow this down.

cobweb 11y ago

Fibre is more than roughage, it helps nurture the microbiome.

MrTonyD 11y ago

Well, my wife works for Martinelli's - and it definitely doesn't take 2+ apples to make a cup of apple juice. (I'm not saying that apple juice should be your first choice.) They also carefully monitor "brix", which is the amount of sugar in their juice. They have acceptable targets for that as well as other measures (including John Martinelli tasting the product almost daily.) Personally, I use my Vitamix to make my own "apple juice smoothy" and routinely ferment fruit for the probiotics. But I'm skeptical about the "juice is bad" meme.

leephillips 11y ago
That stuff is delicious. I don't drink fruit juice, but I put Martinelli's in a different category.
- tedmiston 11y ago
  As you should at $25/gallon [1]: 5x the price of Mott's for example. 1: http://store.martinellis.com/products/jaj128.shtml http://store.martinellis.com/products/jaj128.shtml
el_duderino 11y ago
Can you ask your wife what the stuff that appears to be floating in my Martinelli apple juice is? It's a cloud looking like substance in my juice. Does that mean it's been sitting too long? Fermented apple by chance? Smells almost like alcohol when opening it.
- MrTonyD 11y ago
  I may know what the cloudy stuff is. First, if the juice is outside the "best buy" date, just throw it away. The "cloudy juice" problem happened when they moved to a new production line in Watsonville. They discovered that as juice aged it got cloudy and then started to grow a "tree looking" like thing inside the bottle. It took them months to figure out that the big warehouse doors where they brought in apples was allowing mold spores to blow into the air and contaminate the juice. You've probably been holding on to that bottle for a while. (Some other brands don't filter their juice, and will appear cloudy.) This isn't a problem that anyone should be seeing anymore. (I should add that many, many bottles were tested and the mold wasn't a harmful mold. Many skeptical customers even arranged their own testing.)

tmerr 11y ago

It sounds reasonable that fiber could reduce the rate of aborption of sugar. But I lose you when you start talking about sugar highs. I thought that was dispelled as a myth after a number of placebo controlled studies.

tracker1 11y ago
The affects of a "high" feeling, or rush is somewhat exaggerated, what it does to your blood glucose levels, and what that does to your body is well documented.

pyre 11y ago

> If you're going to eat something sweet, it's far better for you if it comes combined with fibre. My question is if the fibre has to be whole or not. If I put an apple into a high powered blender, it will get pulverized, but I'm not removing any fibre from it the way I would if I were running it through a juicer. Does the "slowing" factor of the fibre depend on it being in clumps (i.e. a chunk of apple digests slower than apple sauce)?

lnanek2 11y ago
It's definitely true that finely ground flour digests faster (more surface area, less breakdown needed, etc.). Effect probably exists for apples too.
tracker1 11y ago
Whole, chewed fruit is much slower/evenly absorbed than sauced/pureed fruit... Once pureed, it's closer to juice.
- pyre 11y ago
  You still get the benefit of eating the whole fruit though. None of the nutrients are removed, and you're less likely to eat 6 apples worth of puree than to drink 6 apples worth of apple juice. > slower/evenly absorbed Also, I'm curious what you mean here by "evenly absorbed." Even in what sense?
  - tracker1 11y ago
    I mean it doesn't spike your blood glucose as much.
eadz 11y ago
Chewing is part of the digestive system ( Saliva contains digestive enzymes ), so you're missing out on that.

tracker1 11y ago

A blender still isn't that much better than juicing as you've already done a lot of the breakdown work that your digestive system does allowing for more absorption, which in and of itself isn't too bad. For the most part, once you have enough protein in your diet, calories are calories. If you're predisposed to diabetes you're better off getting those calories from low glycemic sources. That doesn't make it easy to avoid too much of the good^Wbad stuff. However, you should also avoid getting more than 100g of sugar a day, though I try to stay under 100g of net carbs/day.

mrfusion 11y ago
I'd like to see a citation on that. I researched that issue a while back and the best I could determine is that no one has ever done a study on blending vs chewing.

ams6110 11y ago

Modern fruit has been selectively bred for higher sugar content. If it doesn't taste tartly sour, it's probably more sugar than your body really is evolved to consume.

Shivetya 11y ago

One of the dangers with juicers is that you end up making too many sweet drinks because they simply taste so good. Having both the auger style and centrifugal led me into the trap that auger was making better meals because it extracted more. Yet it was simply good at taking nearly all the solids out. Many of the recipes for these machines rely on fruits and they can be more addictive than other vices. Going back to whole fruits the key I found was remembering those lessons as a kid, chew your food. This means even with fruits to make sure you don't just chew two or three times and swallow. That can lead to some gastric problems which turns many off to certain types of fruits. Better is to each vegetables, combined together they can be nearly as sweet tasting without the sugar

agumonkey 11y ago

> You probably wouldn’t be able to eat 6-8 medium apples in a single sitting. I recently had to discover this, for any kind of raw food actually, even carrots. Anything 'processed' (either industrial pre-made meals, or even home made sauced/whatever) will tease your mouth and brain in an incomparably different manner. You can eat at least 3 times more of anything if it's dipped into fat/sugar/spices. Without these, your brain will very clearly and very quickly tell you "enough". Even delicious strawberries have enough acid, sour in it to make you sick pretty fast.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

kevin_thibedeau 11y ago

You do realize that the concept of a "sugar high" is fictional propaganda invented to help enforce sugar rationing during WW2. Painting juice consumption as dangerous is silly. Not everyone is an incipient diabetic.

outworlder 11y ago
Having a diabetic brother made me research a lot of stuff so I beg to differ. If nothing else, high and uneven sugar levels are a recipe for getting fat and to get insulin resistance. Excess glicose floating around in your bloodstream is harmful. You want a constant, baseline level, but the rest should be removed asap.
alrs 11y ago
I realize no such thing. http://mic.com/articles/88015/what-happens-to-your-brain-on-sugar-explained-by-science http://mic.com/articles/88015/what-happens-to-your-brain-on-...

afroviking 11y ago

Steve Jobs was a fruitarian for a while iirc and he died from pancreatic cancer. I wonder if all the fruit juices he drank had something to do with him getting cancer of the organ that creates a hormone to control blood sugar.

mokkol 11y ago

I highly recommend to watch the documentary 'That Sugar Film'. It explains this in perfect detail and more aspects of sugar intake and the sugar industry.

TurboHaskal 11y ago

> juices considered harmful Nutrition threads in HN never fail to crack me up. Excess fiber consumption is exactly reason why I have a juicer, and because it tastes delicious. Stop scaring people. Try doing some sports or having a walk instead of reading paleo/keto propaganda blogs for a change. Maybe that way you'll all be able to handle sugars just like any other healthy individual does.

anticitizen 11y ago

>Don't mess around with fermenting juices and all that probiotic jazz. Fermenting reduces the sugar in the beverage.The sugar is processed by the cultures.