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Consumption of 100% Fruit Juice and Body Weight in Children and Adults
- Kirby64 3y agoIs this a surprise at all? Fruit juice is just soda with maybe some different vitamins in terms of calories. No satiety, and but lots of calories.
- chomp 3y agoNot a surprise to anyone on this site or who has a regular access to a pediatrician, but lots of juice manufacturers play up the “100% all natural non-gmo organic pure apples” thing and updress their product to distance themselves from artificial juice, when they’re really a lot closely related in reality. This definitely fools a lot of parents.
- tlivolsi 3y agoOne doesn't need to consult a pediatrician to look at the nutrition table. Even wealthy, intelligent people I know consume highly-processed garbage on a regular basis without thinking twice about what they put in their bodies.
- bradly 3y agoThis is specifically about juice that is 100% juice. Reading the ingredients label isn't going to help which is kinda the point of the study. Edit: It looks like you changed your comment to reference nutritional table instead of ingredients list. See other comment on why that still is problematic.
- kayodelycaon 3y agoI think they meant the nutrition table that’s usually above the ingredients.
- tlivolsi 3y agoThat is what I meant. Thanks. I updated my comment.
- bradly 3y agoThe nutritional label doesn't provide clarity either. It doesn't differentiate between types of sugars, and although there is the newly required "Added Sugars" category, it doesn't include sugars from concentrated fruit juices, which can be misleading since these are technically added sugars too.
- jokethrowaway 3y agoWealthy and intelligent people make plenty of suboptimal choices. Ironically the fittest people I know with the best diet (they eat like their grandmas used to) are quite rural and don't know anything about nutrition. If they did they would probably fare worse. I obsessed over diet, spent countless hours studying thr subject and reviewing the latest in nutrition science. I wonder how much of that was funded by Nestle. I tried a processed vegetarian diet for a decade before having health issues and ending up eating only meat. After 1 year of that I was able to reintroduce small amounts of carbs / veggies without having adverse reactions, but at this point I don't even care about doing it.
- kmarc 3y agoIf, in 2024, this fools a parent, then I'd rather be concerned about other aspects of their parenting, too... During my long travels, where I meet (mostly wealthy-enough-to-travel) people I see this often: kids are sugar shocked in the early morning (fruit juice, jelly, breakfast-is-the-most-important-nonsense-cereals, snacks at 10AM, etc) and then by noon their parents are exhausted due to trying to handle the kids' hyperactivity. All I can think is that at least these kids' response is to burn those calories, and avoid being obese later (hopefully). And not only kids. I don't know what exactly is going on in the US/Canada, but my observation is that they MUST chew every one or two hours; force feeding (comforting?) themselves. This behavior, the obsessive snacking, I never see from European / Asian travelers.
- jokethrowaway 3y agoYou can see it in Europe too, albeit less so. We're catching up in terms of obesity too. Kids do eat a lot because they're growing but if you start feeding them meat (fat particularly) they will feel full earlier and stop munching sugar (fruit included) every 30m. I eat once a day on a carnivore diet and I don't experience hunger. The grain industry really brainwashed everyone.
- pfannkuchen 3y ago> The grain industry really brainwashed everyone Pretty sure pre industrial agricultural groups had a higher average grain to meat ratio than today though? I think grain just scales better than animals.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y agoThe real issue isn't grains imo, it's grains that had all the fibre removed. White bread is terrible for you. Brown bread is good for you, good for cholesterol(due to soluble fiber), has a low glycemic index(due to insoluble fiber), and has much more protein, vitamins and minerals than white bread. I honestly believe white flour is much more responsible for lifestyle related health issues in the US than anything else. Turns out, stripping the nutrients out of your food is bad.
- xnx 3y agoFruit juice is the type of food that is often overlooked when talking about highly/ultra-processed foods. You're much better off eating the fruit.
- abdullahkhalids 3y agoIt's fair to label fruit juices for what they are - high sugar high calorie foods. But by the "processed" classification of food done by the UN, fruits juices are in GROUP 1 Unprocessed or minimally processed foods. [1] https://www.fao.org/3/ca5644en/CA5644EN.pdf https://www.fao.org/3/ca5644en/CA5644EN.pdf
- jemmyw 3y agoIt surely depends on the juice? There's "freshly squeezed at the store as you buy it" to "long shelf life with only a passing resemblance to the original fruit taste", and a couple of in betweens.
- passwordoops 3y agoAnd drinking water
- Jakesjeff 3y ago[dead]
- Tepix 3y agoI prefer 100% fruit juice over the kind with added sugar. If it's too sweet, add more water.
- creativeSlumber 3y agoThat conflict of interest section is quite long, not really sure what to make of it.
- KinkySumo 3y agoTL:DR is the researchers may be biased in their conclusion because they've: a) Worked at/for a clinical research company, health NPOs and others. b) Had their education funded by the government & NPO. c) Received research funding from NPOs, advocacy groups, research institutes.
- jitl 3y agoCalorie in, calorie out. If you have more calorie than the control group, no matter what substance that is - brownies, Cliff Bar, apples picked by Tim Cook, fruit juice, or Coca-Cola, and you expend as much energy as control, you’re going to end up heavier. Where are the calories gonna go? They’re going to stay in the body. You put them in there, they didn’t, and you didn’t do more stuff to take them out. I think the hand wringing about natural vs processed is really about how appealing a given food is - anyone is more likely to overindulge in hyper palatable foods, so if natural foods are less palatable it’s good for that reason. Fruit (juice) is an example of a natural food that can be hyper palatable. So, beware just as you’d beware of Cheetos or Almond Roca.
- 3abiton 3y agoIntermittent fasting proved that it is not totally the case. Time plays a big role in moderating "hunger" hormones, and if fat is burned to produce keton when long periods of no glucose intake happen.
- jitl 3y agoI’d like to learn more about this; does its effect show up in any human studies comparing intermittent fasting vs not for the same calorie intake?
- BobaFloutist 3y agoCalories in calories out is pretty conclusively proven to not be how it works.
- jitl 3y agoI’m starting to think this is somehow like the Bayesian vs Frequentist debate among people who study statistics. My hastily assembled reading from googling “calorie in calorie out myth” mostly seems to discuss that changes in basal metabolic rate happen as you are trick calories (so, account for that in the equation) and that people eating hyper palatable foods tend to eat more of them (so, now you know to avoid those to make it easier to keep the calorie count under control). Also control for thermic effect of food. I’m not saying model the body as a gasoline engine. You need the complexity for the equation to balance. Calorie in calorie out is not a strategy - of course there’s a wide variety of ways to make a healthy diet and the best strategy for one person might not be the same for another. I’m not a calorie counting advocate. But I struggle to understand the alternate to calorie in calorie out - like, where else will mass/energy come from or go to in the system? Mass is summoned magically by genetics from zero point energy? Anyways, this is why I mostly look at studies that have calorie equated groups and their weight - because such a study takes into account all the little details happening inside the body, and we’re going to average the different groups to control for personal genetic and diet differences.
- bradly 3y agoIf anyone is interested in how every cup of 100% Tropicana juice tastes the same, I highly recommend this article: https://www.foodrenegade.com/secret-ingredient-your-orange-juice/ https://www.foodrenegade.com/secret-ingredient-your-orange-j...
- dcre 3y ago“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.” Isn’t that a tiny effect? How much juice can a person drink? 5 additional servings per day of juice would be associated with at most a 0.25 BMI increase. However, you could imagine that it affects different kids differently, and that small effect size reflects a mix of zero effect on most kids and a medium-sized effect on the kids who are more susceptible for whatever reason.
- 4death4 3y agoI don't really think it's appropriate to draw conclusions from studies that control for caloric intake. Most people don't treat food as fungible calories. Often, drinking juice is additive in calories.
- andreareina 3y agoBoth are important. Controlling for calories demonstrates yet again that sugar is not uniquely bad (the claim that it is is very prevalent in the health and fitness online space). Ad libitum studies demonstrate that the foods we eat have differential effects on appetite, satiety, etc.
- 4death4 3y ago> Controlling for calories demonstrates yet again that sugar is not uniquely bad No, you can’t draw that conclusion, which is my point.
- costanzaDynasty 3y agoNot drinking calories is low effort high impact weight management rule. But when you’re a kid they almost force feed you juice or they did when I was young.
- el_benhameen 3y agoLess so now. I’m pretty adamant about not giving my kids juice except as a special treat, and that seems to be the norm with many other parents I know.
- inversetelecine 3y agoSame. Typically plain water, or 90% water, 10% fruit juice at best. Rarely do they get a full strength fruit juice.
- iJohnDoe 3y agoWhat are the reasons? Calories? Sugars? Little to no health benefits?
- el_benhameen 3y agoYep! All of the above. I’m less concerned about a few excess calories in childhood and more about instilling a habit of needing every drink to taste like something.
- downWidOutaFite 3y agoWhat's weird is that eating the fruit is healthy. Something about the fiber cancels out the effects of the sugar. I've never seen a good explanation for the mechanism of how that works.
- zeronine 3y agoThere's no good explanation beacause fibre doesn't 'cancel out' sugar.
- downWidOutaFite 3y agoThen why is eating fruit healthy?
- timbit42 3y agoThe fibre reduces the amount of sugar you absorb from the juice in the fruit.
- gitfan86 3y agoWater is healthy, but drowning is not. It is the same concept, your body can only process and use a limited amount of carbohydrates before it makes you obese and give you diabetes. You can only drink a cup sized amount of water at a time. A building sized amount of water dumped on you would kill you.
- adamomada 3y agoLikely the amount. How many times have you eaten eight apples in one sitting vs how many times have you had a glass of apple juice.
- downWidOutaFite 3y agoGoogle says a cup is 3 apples. Doesn't seems too excessive.
- pengaru 3y agoWhen you remove the fiber from fruit you pull the pin from the fructose bomb within.
- liquidise 3y agoSo a daily, single serving of 100% fruit juice results is a small-but-measurable increase in child BMI (0.01-0.05, roughly 1 ounce), and little to no measurable effect in adults. Given the middling results, i'm surprised how strongly other commenters here are taking this. > "studies that did adjust for energy intake (-0.08 kg; 95% CI, -0.11 to -0.05 kg; P for meta-regression <.001)" > "in adults, studies that did not adjust for energy showed greater body weight gain (0.21 kg; 95% CI, 0.15-0.27 kg)" > "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"
- lurking_swe 3y agoi don’t think most adults, let alone kids, know what the “serving” is. They just don’t look at the nutrition label. Or they don’t care. I’d bet most kids have 2-3 servings of juice without realizing it. The serving size is usually tiny. That’s not counting all the other junk they might eat in a single day, like cereal.
- insickness 3y agoI drank orange juice with every meal growing up. I'm not overweight but I feel like it may have contributed to the severe acid reflux I experience now as an adult.
- Tade0 3y agoI was surprised to note that 100% fruit juice, Coca-Cola and fruit mousse for toddlers all contain approximately the same amount of sugar(s) - ~10% by weight. The worst offender in my cupboard is a mousse by HiPP (a brand that supposedly focuses on quality) - 12,6%. Weirdly, a juice box from the same manufacturer has just 3,7%. In any case, except for the juice box, that's a lot of sugar.
- jeffbee 3y agoIf a fruit mousse is the same thing in your country as it is in mine, it's just whipped fruit purée with egg whites and an arbitrary amount of sugar, because the sugar isn't serving a physical or chemical purpose the way it does in a sorbet. So if you make it at home you can make it with as little sugar as you want, and toddlers are still going to be extremely pleased.