Slashdot Mirror
Fruit Drinks Aren't Much Better For You Than Soda: Study (vox.com)
An anonymous reader cites a study on Vox: One of the biggest public health wins of recent decades has been America's slow shift away from soda. But there's pretty good evidence that Americans are still getting hoodwinked by juices and other sugary beverages. Data from Euromonitor, which analyzed U.S. retail beverage sales over the past five years, shows that while the soda category is shrinking, juice sales have held steady, and sales of energy and sports drinks have been growing. An article in BMJ Open demonstrates the extent of the problem: The researchers looked at how much of the American diet is composed of ultra-processed foods and added sugars. They found that 58 percent of total energy intake -- more than half of the calories Americans consume! -- came from foods that are packed with lots of flavors, colors, and sweeteners. And almost 90 percent of the added sugars Americans consume came from heavily processed foods -- the two main sources being soft drinks (17 percent) closely followed by fruit drinks (14 percent). (In this case, 'fruit drinks' refers to processed juices with added sugars.)
Only the Food Industry could make fruit unhealthy.
It's so easy to justify consuming almost anything, because there are thousands of web pages that say "that is good for you!"
The old standby that almost everything we eat is 'good for you' in limited quantities. A pack of cards sized steak is good for you, a couple times a week. Same with fish, chicken, coffee, wine, etc...
The problem is when you're having 24oz of soda with every meal.
Personally, from what I've read fruit drinks are basically only lacking carbonation to be a 'soda'. Even fruit drinks aren't as good as, well, eating the fruit involved because there's lots of nutrients you're losing out on that was in the pulp of the fruit, and besides, the pulp has carbs and fiber that help you feel 'full', which the juice alone will shoot through your system and not satiate you.
I don't read AC A human right
Yeah, when you see a doom-and-gloom article like this one, and one of the phrases is "heavily processed" or the new catchphrase "ultra-processed," you can safely ignore it.
"Heavily processed" is such a wide definition that it's effectively meaningless. Anything that contains extra sugar (in any amount), white flour (or any other refined grains), anything that has "artificial" coloring (even if the color comes from natural sources), refined oils (like soybean oil, which was a "health food" twenty years ago), or even low-fat foods (whether or not they're naturally low in fats).
When you get right down to it, these sorts of articles are trying to get you worked up about processed foods - in other words, ANYTHING that comes in a package. "So buy our Cool New Healthy Food, at only three times the price!"
Of course, the people who are worked up about processed foods are just the spiritual descendants of the people who used to tell you to switch to processed food because the older, natural foods were supposed to be bad for you. I remember when the health nuts told us to switch from butter to margarine because butter was bad - and now we know that margarine is immensely worse for cardiovascular health.