The healthy fruit juice myth

It’s a common sight at hospitals to find patients being given fruit juices. You also find health conscious parents giving their kids fruit juices instead of aerated drinks. There are even complete diets dedicated to drinking only fruit juices. What if you were told that fruit juices are not actually healthy? Here are the three essential facts that make fruit juices grossly unhealthy:

Nothing but sugar: Fruits consist of the naturally available sugar known as fructose. Even without added sugar, fruit juice is essentially nothing but sugar syrup. Further, liver has trouble metabolising fructose efficiently, and only adds to the trauma and to a rapid rate of fat accumulation.

Wholesome vs juiced: A whole fruit as available in nature would have given your body a few sugars and a bunch of fibers, and involved chewing and a slower digestion process making even a single fruit quite satiating. But when you juice a fruit, you take away the natural process of consumption and all the fiber and effort of eating and digestion, and pump in only the sugars. So what your body could consume only in ones and twos, you are now consuming in fives and 10s — just because you juiced it.

No value-addition: It is common for people to believe that fruit juices are power houses of nutrients and minerals. Yes, they do contain nutrients and minerals — but the same nutrients and minerals can be consumed from better, wholesome foods that do not smuggle so much useless sugar into your body.

Now, let’s be honest, most of us drink juices as an entertainment food. You may enjoy it as a treat but don’t fool yourself and others into believing that it is anything healthy. If you truly want a healthy alternative to aerated drinks, try a simple salted lemonade or jaljeera or buttermilk.

Pushkaraj S Shirke is a K11 trained fitness consultant

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