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.)
It's so easy to justify consuming almost anything, because there are thousands of web pages that say "that is good for you!" Coffee, chocolate, fruit juice, whatever. Some of these are, of course, created by the companies that sell these foods and drinks -- but I think most of it comes from the fact that everybody eats -- and while almost any other subject will only address a fraction of people, foods and drinks are obviously part of everybody's life. So, there's talk about food every day in the newspaper, on the news cable channels...and now on Slashdot.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
The article is very fuzzy when distinguishing between juice and juice drinks. It seems to claim 'orange juice' is very high in sugar, but then implies it means orange juice with added sugar, not pure OJ.
I suppose soft drink vendors could turn this around and say "as healthy as fruit juice" as show by this study.
How you get too much sugar is basically irrelevant.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Only the Food Industry could make fruit unhealthy.
Sugar is sugar is sugar. If you want fruit, eat an actual piece of fruit and get the benefits of the other raw and whole nutrients it contains. It's never a great idea to drink your calories.
.
This should not be a surprise to anyone who reads the nutrition label of what they are eating and drinking.
It seems to claim 'orange juice' is very high in sugar, but then implies it means orange juice with added sugar, not pure OJ.
Pure orange juice has about 8.5% of sugar and about 2% of other carbohydrates. That could be called 'very high'
Follow the money, as every farmer knows there is more money in processing his perfectly good produce than he'll ever see for it.
I have to watch out my sugar intake and investigated typical sugar content of several juices as I like them.
The result is there is nearly as much sugar in a good (freshly pressed) apple or orange juice than there is in the same measure of soda.
So I've moved to eating the whole fruit, it is just as or even more satisfying than drinking the juice because it fills you up and even better, you get all the vitamins, minerals and fiber that's part of the fruit.
But ultimately I drink more water, tap water as it's in this country much cleaner than the overpriced stuff from bottles.
Within two weeks my blood sugar level went from on the verge of dangerous 7+ to comfortable 4 - 4.5.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I'm not sure I'm comfortable paying for studies that 'prove' well known scientific facts. Yes.. sugar does in fact have calories and amazingly those drinks have their calories and sugar content listed on them.. as if for some divine reason. Was there really any doubt or any push back to the fact that fruit drinks have calories and those calories affect you mostly in the same way as any food or drink? Decades ago on a planet much skinner than today, people drank fruit drinks responsibly - that means in small portions or watered down. They were also more active. It's sad that decades later we are treating common dieting sense as some kind of new science that needs to still be proven.
Not really - "And even pure fruit juices that deliver vitamins and nutrients — like freshly squeezed orange juice — also deliver a lot of calories and sugar" makes it clear that all juices are high in sugar. Just, sugar-water-based "fruit drinks" are criticized for having very little/no nutritional value.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
The difference between sugar water and super clarified apple juice is pretty marginal. That's why the 100% stuff is still sweetened, it's a scam more or less. A marketing gimmick.
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.
Setting aside that whole juice vs. drink bit, which can only be used as a high level filter, processed foods have ingredient and nutrition labels. People should check them when they are buying a new product rather than depending upon manufacturer's claims.
Also learn how to check the products next to it. Those cheap alternatives are often better for you than the expensive brands.
Just go into any American Supermarket and look at the ingredients of the things that you put in your basket.
The dieticians will give a rule of thumb that says stay away from the center isles where all the processed and packaged foods are.
The outside - the walls - are usually where the refrigerated lean meats and fish, produce and dairy is. And just get whole grains: if it's brown it's good; white is bad.
The unfortunate thing is that the packaged food producers have got human tastes down to a science and know how to stimulate tastes that kept us alive when we were hunter gatherers but now make us obese.
And our modern lifestyle just isn't a healthy one either. Sometime someone made it a badge of honor to over work oneself until it has become expected that one has live to work instead of the more sane attitude of working to live. But that's a different topic all together.
IMO there's no need to qualify it with "aren't much better for you".
>"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.)"
It really doesn't matter much if the juice is 100% natural or a dilution with added sugars. It is still sugar without the rest of the fruit solids (which contains fiber, pectin, and other components). Drinking a glass of fruit juice is not a natural way to consume fruit... it is rapidly taking in a huge quantity of unregulated simple calories.
Fruit juice is just mostly sugar water. If you want to be "healthy" and/or lose weight and/or prevent insulin spikes then drink water. Then, optionally eat a single serving of WHOLE fruit (like one apple or one peach or something) if you want fruit.
Pure orange juice has about 8.5% of sugar and about 2% of other carbohydrates. That could be called 'very high'
Not only that, but it's pretty close to what most sodas are, and most juices are have similar numbers as well. It also doesn't take much juice (14 oz, even if it's "natural" or "organic" fruit juice to meet food religion requirements) to exceed the FDA recommendation for simple sugars per day, which is likely too high at this point.
Overconsumption of simple sugars are likely *THE* reason why a lot of people have high cholesterol and fatty liver, and in a 2,000 calorie diet you should probably be consuming less than 20g but ideally zero (there's no nutritional or other physiological need for it.) Cutting out dietary cholesterol and saturated fat from your diet is and always has been the wrong advice for treating these.
Slightly off-topic, but: even an home made freshly squeezed glass of fruit juice supposedly contains more sugar than is healthy for you. Think about it: on average, how much oranges would you need to squeeze for a single glass of juice ? Three or four oranges ? Might not seem like a lot, until you consider *eating* those same four oranges at once. The proclaimed result ? Eating a single orange is good for you, but taking in - the sugars of - four oranges is bad.
Yeah, fruits are high in sugar, but that doesn't mean I want even more sugar / corn syrup to make up for the bad flavor that corn syrup drink makers have to mitigate.
Fruits aren't necessarily high in sugar, but juicing typically keeps the sugar while removing a lot of other materials, making fruit juice have a higher concentration than fruit. The same applies to vegetables by the way, which is why "juicing" or "juice diets" are a pretty dumb idea if the whole point is to be healthier.
"Juicer" typically indicates that you make your own beverage from fresh fruits and veggies, which is not at all unhealthy (1)(2). "Fruit Juice" as TFA is discussing is processed fruit juice, generally chemically reduced to concentrate and added to sugar water (HFCS specifically). The primary difference between soda and 99% of the commercially produced "Fruit Juices" is the lack of carbonation in the latter. In many cases, there is more sugar added to juices than there is in soda.
1. Eating large quantities of certain vegetables and fruits will cause severe illness. Research, research, and research!
2. Juice bars have a variety of drinks, some of which contain sorbet and other sources and forms of sugar. Research is important here too!
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
If you're paying for someone's health care, it's because you offered to pay. Rescind the offer if you don't like where the money is going.
It's a democracy. I can choose to vote one way or the other, but I can't just decide not to follow the law without nasty consequences.
the source is irrelevant.
Absolute statements are never true
Humans typically starving and suffering malnutrition most of the time for over a hundred thousand years, and before that our ancestor species back more than a billion years. Our appetite craves the sugar and fat that helped humans stave off death. Now with cheap, abundant, and tasty foods everywhere through technological advances we have to deal with whole populations being over fed. People actually complain food is too easy to consume like processed and fast foods. Many poor people eat better than kings just 1000 years ago.
I love it! There simply isn't a better time to be alive. Give me diabetes and obesity any day over dying at 12 from starvation. I, for one, am grateful to our new corpulent overlords.
The story here on /. is not any better. This whole thing almost reads like a fuzzy religious argument, not a fact-based one.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
when was the last time you saw someone drink 32 oz of OJ at once. But Coke? yes.
sugar in your OJ is not OJ either.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
It's 2016! Who the hell didn't know this already?!?! WTF
What the FUCK is this doing on slashdot?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I've been hearing this shit since I was a little kid in the 70's. This country has way too many assholes making a living by spreading FUD. NEWS FLASH- IF YOU OVERCONSUME, YOU MAY DIE. Just pick something. It doesn't matter what it is. Water, aspirin, Boones Farm, eggs, republicans, democrats, salt........... Someone please lock these bastards up and throw away the key.
so we shouldn't drink anything
Check the labels. Sodas are mostly lemon and lime juice.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
No : stop obeying your moms, called Kraft Foods, Pepsi, Coca etc.
If enough people do that, then the co-pay on your healthcare could be eliminated, for example (in theory).
Vacuum steel bottles and water.
I have a one-liter hydroflask for the house and disc golf, and a 16-ounce Bubba with a barrel shape for the car (so as to fit the minuscule cupholder in my car)
Bottle water is a racket. Don't feed the plastic monster
As for soda.. completely kicked the habit after spending some time in a hospital. When I came back I found I couldn't stand the taste of any of them.. except for Boylan's Birch Beer. So I cut soda out cold turkey.
Fruit drink? Rarely. An Izze here, a smoothie there, but those are maybe one once a month.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
I can't drink that stuff, tastes like candy syrup! Pretty much the only thing I can stand to drink (apart from beer or coffee) is water or milk, or a slightly sweetened iced tea. I'll eat a fruit but I can't stand the candy drink.
Twinstiq, game news
Similar in the U.S.
Beverages that are 100% juice may be called “juice.” However, beverages that are diluted to less than 100% juice must have the word “juice” qualified with a term such as “beverage,” “drink,” or “cocktail.” Alternatively, the product may be labeled with a name using the form “diluted ____ juice,”
Other rules applies for blends and %-based mixes.
Yeah, fruits are high in sugar, but that doesn't mean I want even more sugar / corn syrup to make up for the bad flavor that corn syrup drink makers have to mitigate.
Fruits aren't necessarily high in sugar, but juicing typically keeps the sugar while removing a lot of other materials, making fruit juice have a higher concentration than fruit. The same applies to vegetables by the way, which is why "juicing" or "juice diets" are a pretty dumb idea if the whole point is to be healthier.
A lot of the "other material" is the fiber from the whole fruit, which slows the digestion of the sugars/carbs. Furthermore, a cup of orange juice contains the juice of several oranges, which would be difficult to consume from whole fruit in one sitting.
You might be interested in this (90min) video, Sugar: The Bitter Truth by Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, in which he explores the damage caused by sugary foods. He argues that fructose (too much) and fiber (not enough) appear to be cornerstones of the obesity epidemic through their effects on insulin. The video also describes, in detail, how different types of sugar are metabolized by the body - for example: glucose, entire body; fructose, only by the liver - like alcohol, but with detrimental differences.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Do you have a place to read up on the link between fatty liver, cholesterol, and simple sugar? Since complex carbs break down so quickly what's the real difference?
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Yeah, if you care about health and ingredients you have to really learn the vocabulary of food marketing in order to understand what the different things being discussed are.
"Fruit drink" and "soda" are both words for Earth Sugardrink. "Fruit Juice" is not a "Fruit drink." They try really hard to conflate this, but they are simply different products.
We already knew that adding juice to Earth Sugardrink didn't magically make it healthy; Mt Dew contains orange juice, Dr Pepper contains prune juice, etc.
Research consistently shows that processed mono-sugars are harmful in ways that fruit isn't, even where the total sugar content in the fruit is the same.
And yet, if you process the fruit to extract mono-sugars, they are just as bad as any other mono-sugar, in some cases they're in the worst group.
So it makes no sense to just measure total sugar and presume it is harmful. What appears to matter a lot more for health is added sugar and highly processed foods generally.
Just like white flour is harmful because of the mono-carbs, but whole grain isn't.
Votes don't justify bullying or oppressing people.
Problem is orange juice is bad for you.... Would you EAT 6 oranges? no. but you will happily drink 6 oranges.
The problem also stems from the fact that americans wont drink a 4oz glass of OJ.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The culprit is fructose, not simple sugar. Simple sugar is dextrose (glucose), and can be digested and used by every cell in the body. Fructose is digested in the liver and doing so burns through ATP like there's no tomorrow. Fructose digestion is amazingly similar to alcohol digestion, you just don't get the buzz you do with alcohol.
Table sugar (sucrose) is no better because it's half fructose.
Watch the video at youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
Another study that points out the obvious, but I guess it's good to get more cite-able research out there. Fruit drinks deceive people with what's known as a "health halo". Fruit sounds healthful, therefore things made from fruit or that contain fruit juice must also be healthful. Fruits are indeed good for you because they contain good nutrients and most contain a lot of fiber (the latter of which helps delay the absorption of fructose that would otherwise cause a blood sugar spike). Processed fruit juices, on the other hand, are obtained by several different but substantially similar methods: The peel or rind is removed (which strips away much of the fiber), then the fruit is pulped or crushed, then all of that material is mechanically sifted out and discarded (which removes the rest of the fiber and a large amount of the nutrients). What's left is just juice, primarily sugar water. Many manufacturers will take this a step further, by boiling or evaporating away the water. What remains is mostly just fruit sugar (fructose), with scarcely even a hint of the original fruit's flavor. They then add this sugar to beverages, and then they can truthfully say the product "contains real fruit juice!"
But they also won't drink a 64 oz glass of OJ either, but a soft drink that size is available at any US gas station.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
I put exactly one drop of grapefruit oil in each glass of my home made IPA. I count that as juice.
IT is not just processed, it is ultra processed. Ultra processed sucrose, otherwise chemically identical to unprocessed, is 10x worse that natural sucrose!
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
OJ has more sugar in it that coke. At least if you believe the label. Is is "bad" for you. Well everything is so fuck it. I will enjoy my life and not be stuck with boring food for a life time. There isn't even any evidence that you live longer with these "healthy organic(WTF does that even mean) natural diet" ...Probably feels like it however.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
Silly rabbit. As an American I can explain this to you. We don't add sugar to juice.
What some people add sugar to is water, flavored by 5 to 10% juice.
It is just a variety of Earth Sugardrink that is not carbonated. I suspect it is also sold in your country, although you may use different words for it. In fact, if you looked into it you would find that while the most popular brands of Earth Sugardrink are American, nevertheless Americans do not have the highest rate of consumption of Sugardrink.
... yet labeled as juice is the normal. Many times I picked up bottles that call itself juice and then there are no vitamins listed under the nutritional info. How Minute Maid, for instance, manages to do that while using real fruit as an ingredient is beyond me.
http://www.sgf.org/fileadmin/u... As so often in medicine, "evidence" is brought forward for and against anything.
Back in college, I tried to lose my soda habit for something healthier. Frozen concentrates were the best option, saving me from lugging bulky jugs of colored water home in my backpack. I tried "Mr. Pure Papaya Juice". Tasted like ass and made my tongue sting.
Ingredients: no actual papaya at all, just grape and apple from concentrate and tons of HFCS.
"Mr Pure", folks.
I think there's a problem with so called sports drinks, which are just sugar water with some other ingredients. Power-Ade for instance. Parents probably thinking it's ok for the kids.
Wouldn't part of the issue be the type of sugar as well? I mean sugars are, like fats, an entire subcategory of complex hydrocarbons. So to compare percentages alone is far too simplistic.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
You don't get nearly that much in the cup after you fill it with ice.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
After moving to the Midwest I couldn't find soda. I'd go to my local grocery store or Wal-Mart and ask for "soda" and people would look at me confusedly and say they don't carry it. So, I had to switch to 'pop.'
You're preaching to the choir. I had really high blood cholesterol, high triglycerides, non-alcoholic fatty liver, and was diagnosed with metabolic syndrome. I was following the advice given (and still given until 2 months ago) to avoid foods high in dietary cholesterol and saturated fats. I went on like that for years and it didn't do shit, and I was told that diet can only adjust your cholesterol numbers by about 30%, and it's likely that I was genetically predisposed to have high cholesterol and needed statin drugs.
This was odd though because nobody else in my family had any of these problems, including the more overweight members. Also this situation couldn't last because apparently my liver was being distressed by the lovastatin (my liver enzymes went up so they took me off of it temporarily.)
So I went and did my own research and found that not only was the connection to dietary cholesterol very weak at best, but the research method that recommendation was based on was flawed. I then found some further information that explained the exact metabolic process with which simple sugars get converted into solid fats (for fatty liver), triglycerides, and cholesterol. After that I simply dropped simple sugars from my diet completely, (except for the occasional fruit in a day or candy bar in a week) which mostly just meant no more soda and no more juice. Lo and behold, ALL of those symptoms went away, and furthermore I'm no longer on statins either.
I still drink diet soda though, and it doesn't cause any issues. I haven't found any credible research that shows anything bad about aspartame, which is just a combination of two amino acids (aspartic acid, phenylalinine) and methanol, all of which are found in higher quantities in "natural" foods than are found in diet sodas (fruit juice has something like 11 times as much methanol and 6 times as much aspartic acid as a diet soda, while milk has some 6 times as much phenylalinine.)
Yep. Fruit is just nature's candy bar. I remember listening to a piece on NPR in which a doctor who works with migrant laborers blames government OJ for making their kids fat.
In addition to the Robert Lustig video you linked, I would also suggest Gary Taubes's "Why We Get Fat", and Peter Attia's "Straight Dope On Cholesterol". These three together provide an excellent understanding of the big picture.
As you noted, Lustig's "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" highlights the link from fructose to metabolic syndrome and fatty liver disease. Taubes's lecture (and book of the same name) covers the link from carbohydrates in general to insulin resistance and obesity. Dr. Attia covers the nitty-gritty details of how cholesterol is produced in the body and absorbed from dietary intake. (Over 90% of serum cholesterol is produced by the body itself, only a tiny fraction comes from the food you eat.)
I would also suggest doing some research on Low-Carb / High-Fat diets (just google "LCHF") and ketogenesis.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
I still drink diet soda though, and it doesn't cause any issues. I haven't found any credible research that shows anything bad about aspartame, which is just a combination of two amino acids (aspartic acid, phenylalinine) and methanol, all of which are found in higher quantities in "natural" foods than are found in diet sodas (fruit juice has something like 11 times as much methanol and 6 times as much aspartic acid as a diet soda, while milk has some 6 times as much phenylalinine.)
It's not the aspartame that's the issue....
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
http://directorsblog.nih.gov/2...
Just another day in Paradise
We all understand that "processed" foods have lost some of their original nutrients. But there's no standard for how much of those are lost, or what "processed" even actually means. If processed foods have no nutrients, do "ultra processed" foods suck the nutrients out of you?
Just another day in Paradise
It seems to claim 'orange juice' is very high in sugar, but then implies it means orange juice with added sugar, not pure OJ.
Pure orange juice has about 8.5% of sugar and about 2% of other carbohydrates. That could be called 'very high'
Did you ever research "Natural Flavors" when used with Juices? Your pure Orange juice is really not very pure. Natural flavours is one reason why I consume washed unprocessed "raw" fruits eg, Oranges
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
It seems to claim 'orange juice' is very high in sugar, but then implies it means orange juice with added sugar, not pure OJ.
Pure orange juice has about 8.5% of sugar and about 2% of other carbohydrates. That could be called 'very high'
8.5% is pretty high. Daily intake of sugar should be around 70-100 grams maximum, depending on build, gender, age, so on and so forth. If you drink 1 x 500 ml glass of orange juice, you've just taken half your daily intake of sugar in one fell swoop.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Drink hot water and go for one hour early morning walk;
Casteism
Clearly ultra processed foods don't just suck nutrients out of you, they give you cancer, heart attacks and strokes. At the same time! Watch out for the most evil of ultra processed ingredients used in the food industry. Ultra processed water. That shit will kill you.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
OJ has more sugar in it that coke. At least if you believe the label. Is is "bad" for you. Well everything is so fuck it. I will enjoy my life and not be stuck with boring food for a life time. There isn't even any evidence that you live longer with these "healthy organic(WTF does that even mean) natural diet" ...Probably feels like it however.
Organic has a very specific legal definition and can be found easily with a simple search.
It really doesn't.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
Yes it does. Stop being lazy. https://www.ams.usda.gov/about...
Hahahahahahah HAHAHAHAHAHAH *HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH*. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
It really doesn't. For example people think organic is no pesticides. But you can use "organic" pesticides. What pesticides are organic depends on state and country. And if you bothered to even read the regulations, exceptions and well anything. You would know. Organic is a label to charge more for "feel goods". But you didn't and you won't cus your the type of class A sucker they sell this shit too.
Sucker and his money.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
It really doesn't. For example people think organic is no pesticides. But you can use "organic" pesticides. What pesticides are organic depends on state and country. And if you bothered to even read the regulations, exceptions and well anything. You would know. Organic is a label to charge more for "feel goods". But you didn't and you won't cus your the type of class A sucker they sell this shit too.
Regardless of your dislike for the definition or your other blatherings, it DOES have a specific definition.
Did you even read your own link? You didn't did you.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?