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Natural Health, Issue #003 -- Fruit or Fruit Juice?
March 22, 2011
Hello,

Fruit or Fruit Juice, Which is Better?

Fruit packs much more nutritional punch to your diet than juice. Fruit has to protect its seeds from predators, so the skin is packed with important nutrients and potent natural compounds that are absent from juice.

Fruit has fiber, which will fill you up more so you end up eating less and of course fiber is good to keep you regular and to lower LDL, bad cholesterol.

Fruits are high in vitamin C, beta carotene, antioxidants and pectin, which helps absorb and eliminate toxins from the body.

What About Fruit Juice?

Any processed or pasteurized food loses its nutritional value. Luke Howard who studies fruit processing at the University of Arkansas, says that “juices retain less than 50% of the nutritional value found in the whole fruit,” in some studies it’s as little as 20%.”

“Once you start to process a fruit, losses are inevitable,” Howard says. Losses continue during storage. It’s especially true with tropical fruit. What you buy may have nothing left of the antioxidant activity that was there when they picked the fruit. There is less loss when a fruit is frozen. 1

What About Glycemic Food Index?

Juice spikes your glycemic level up in an instant. That’s why it’s one of the first things to give to a diabetic who is experiencing low blood glucose levels. However, it is not good to spike our glucose levels unnecessarily.

When you eat a high-glycemic meal, or sports drink, a soft-drink, or even fruit juice, it causes inflammation in the vessel lining of the artery. This is the beginning of what is now known to be the initial defect of insulin resistance. 2

Giving young children fruit juice instead of water will have them quickly become addicted to sweet drinks so that is all they want.

So go for an apple a day, add in a banana or other fresh fruits in season and drink pure water!


References:

1. David Schardt Nutrition Action, June 2009,

2. Strand, D. Ray, MD Healthy for Life, Developing healthy lifestyles that have a side effect of permanent fat loss (Rapid City, SD:Real Life Press 2005) 70.


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To your natural health!
Sue-Anne
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