From Weighty Matters: Juice is NOT a F@*#$*&g Fruit!
The following is an excerpt from Yoni Freedhoff’s article; Juice is NOT a F@*#$*&g Fruit!
We’ve featured Dr. Yoni’s material here on UltimateFatBurner.com many times, not simply because he’s a fellow Canuck, but because we love his blog and the material printed therein.
And we especially love the titles of his articles. 🙂
As you may have guessed, this article discusses fruit juice, which is a pet peeve of mine, since it is essentially pop created from fruit which just happens to contain – by sheer luck – a couple of vitamins that the equivalent sized coke does not have.
I also particularly love the fact that Dr. Yoni has called BS on the Food Guide, which I have always considered to be almost total nonsense – a road map to “smart eating” as determined by the power of the various food lobbying groups.
Anyway, enough about me. Over to you, Dr. Yoni…
In case you’re not aware, Canada’s official Food Guide formally recognizes half a cup of juice as a fruit equivalent. This of course despite both the Canadian and American Pediatric Societies putting a half cup maximum on juice consumption in young children and a full cup for everyone else.
Not surprisingly juice manufacturers hone right in on the Food Guide’s recommendations and use them as a means to market their products to parents like that seen on the advertisement for grape juice up above. And don’t forget too, children are taught the Food Guide as gospel in grade school and it serves as the backbone of any institutional food program (including daycares and preschools).
So are Canadian children drinking too much juice?
Good god yes.
A recent study published in Applied Physiology Nutrition and Metabolism set out to determine Canadian fruit and vegetable consumption.
Their findings?
The average Canadian child between the ages of 2 and 8 is consuming 50% more than their recommended juice maximums. But that’s not the whole story. Some kids are chugging tons of the stuff with the 75th percentile of 2-3 year olds drinking 2.5x as much which means 25% of Canadian preschoolers are drinking even more than that!
Juice is sugar water with vitamins. It has drop per drop the same amount of sugar as soda pop and in some cases more (like that grape juice which has double the sugar of Coca-Cola – 10 staggering teaspoons a glass). Liquid calories don’t satiate, and they don’t pack the fibre and phytonutrients of actual fruit.
Read more at Juice is NOT a F@*#$*&g Fruit!
March 26, 2013
I could’nt agree more. Juice is just as bad as soda. I can’t stand the sweetness of most juices and have’nt drank them in years.
It looks like the Canadian Food Guide needs a little update!