My grandmother would not even read this if she read that title. She was a “juice–aholic” and loved all twenty seven of her grandchildren with cold glasses of fruit juice on her back porch on Long Island on a hot summer day.
Sadly, no matter how much vitamin C or highly antioxidant fruit, it’s still quite disruptive on our blood sugar. When fruit is juiced it’s often without fibre and the fibre is what gives our sugar rich juices its blood sugar stabilising component. Yes when food is fibre dense, it can have natural sugars but the fibre will blunt the blood sugar from swinging.
When our blood sugar is stable, everything is good. Our energy doesn’t take a dive. Our brains are not fogged up. Our moods are steady. Our energy, hormones, weight and more love having blood sugar stability.
Hold up! I am not saying that having a glass of OJ is bad. I dislike any extremes. I am the modern day nutritionist, and with three teenagers I understand your desires to get your family healthy without an extreme approach.
So let me give you a quick visual.
One small glass of apple juice may be made from 4 apples, which is approximately 20g of sugar (natural sugars). This juice doesn’t have any fibre and will create a blood sugar shift. Now here’s the catch. If you ate 4 apples it would take a long time to eat them, you would get the “crunch” factor and you would have 20g of sugar but you also get the fibre so you WOULD NOT get the blood sugar swing.
Now, add another strike against juice. Recent research from Australia’s Swinburne University of Technology has found that drinking a glass of fruit juice every day is associated with heightened blood pressure.
So is it time to move off juice or is there some nutritional merit?
Unless it’s cold pressed and created in a juicer that keeps the fibre, give juice a miss. Create blended smoothies, where the fibre is kept inside the blender. Use fruit or vegtables and enjoy the sweetness, the fibre and the vitamins.
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Michele Chevalley Hedge, nutritionist, mum, Jamie Oliver Ambassador and founder of A Healthy View.
