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The Secret Ingredient in Orange Juice

foodrenegade.com

211–220 of 281 posts

Re: The Secret Ingredient in Orange Juice

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, my wife works for Martinelli's - and it definitely doesn't take 2+ apples to make a cup of apple juice. (I'm not saying that apple juice should be your first choice.) They also carefully monitor "brix", which is the amount of sugar in their juice. They have acceptable targets for that as well as other measures (including John Martinelli tasting the product almost daily.) Personally, I use my Vitamix to make my…

But I'm skeptical about the "juice is bad" meme. It is and for a simple reason that we've known about for a long time: glycaemic index. If the sugars (fructose) are locked in a matrix of cellulose (AKA dietary fibre) they're released gradually as your body digests the bulk matter. If you plot the blood sugar concentration of the person consuming a solid piece of fruit you see a nice curve where the levels rise, peak,…

> If you plot the blood sugar concentration of the person consuming a solid piece of fruit you see a nice curve where the levels rise, peak, and non-violently fall.

There's nothing wrong with this except that it probably makes you feel more hungry and eat more. But the blood sugar surge isn't really unhealthy in normal people, it's usually the subsequent behavioral impact (the low that makes you feel hungry) that causes the real harm (ie: the total sugar matters more directly than the glycemic index).

Re: The Secret Ingredient in Orange Juice

#213
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're going to eat something sweet, it's far better for you if it comes combined with fibre. My question is if the fibre has to be whole or not. If I put an apple into a high powered blender, it will get pulverized, but I'm not removing any fibre from it the way I would if I were running it through a juicer. Does the "slowing" factor of the fibre depend on it being in clumps (i.e. a chunk of apple digests slowe…

Whole, chewed fruit is much slower/evenly absorbed than sauced/pureed fruit... Once pureed, it's closer to juice.

You still get the benefit of eating the whole fruit though. None of the nutrients are removed, and you're less likely to eat 6 apples worth of puree than to drink 6 apples worth of apple juice.

> slower/evenly absorbed

Also, I'm curious what you mean here by "evenly absorbed." Even in what sense?

Re: The Secret Ingredient in Orange Juice

#214
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you dont mean pure h2o because that's dangerous.

Not really. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distilled_water#Drinking_disti...

Distilled water is not "pure H2O." If I'm not mistaken there is only a few facilities in the world that can make pure H2O. Pure H2O has no flavor and will kill you if you drink too much of it. Distilled water or reverse osmosis machines only remove -most- things from water.

I believe there is an episode on National Geographic channel from the show "Going Deep With David Rees" where he visits a lab that makes Pure H20. He is only allowed to sip it. The episode was about creating ice without impurities. (it was found that pure H2O is not necessary to creating perfect ice, not is it made for human consumption.)

Re: The Secret Ingredient in Orange Juice

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I'm skeptical about the "juice is bad" meme. It is and for a simple reason that we've known about for a long time: glycaemic index. If the sugars (fructose) are locked in a matrix of cellulose (AKA dietary fibre) they're released gradually as your body digests the bulk matter. If you plot the blood sugar concentration of the person consuming a solid piece of fruit you see a nice curve where the levels rise, peak,…

> If you plot the blood sugar concentration of the person consuming a solid piece of fruit you see a nice curve where the levels rise, peak, and non-violently fall. There's nothing wrong with this except that it probably makes you feel more hungry and eat more. But the blood sugar surge isn't really unhealthy in normal people, it's usually the subsequent behavioral impact (the low that makes you feel hungry) that cau…

There's nothing wrong with this

I agree there's nothing wrong with the part quoted. That's an ideal outcome. And the surge of blood sugar concentration from juice wasn't the part I was concerned about (unless it results in a child going into a hyperactive transdimensional shit-fit). The blood sugar crash is the significant part: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypoglycemia#Signs_and_symptom...

Low blood sugar also plays a major part in decision fatigue. Do you make dinner after work or buy something on the way home? Making a healthy dinner is the better decision but right now you want satiety. Do you do the washing or sit in front of the TV? You don't just have decision fatigue, you're out of energy - the real deal.

This is in contrast to a low GI meal where the energy supply is provided over a longer period at a stable rate, providing the stamina to make good decisions and act on them.

Re: The Secret Ingredient in Orange Juice

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, my wife works for Martinelli's - and it definitely doesn't take 2+ apples to make a cup of apple juice. (I'm not saying that apple juice should be your first choice.) They also carefully monitor "brix", which is the amount of sugar in their juice. They have acceptable targets for that as well as other measures (including John Martinelli tasting the product almost daily.) Personally, I use my Vitamix to make my…

But I'm skeptical about the "juice is bad" meme. It is and for a simple reason that we've known about for a long time: glycaemic index. If the sugars (fructose) are locked in a matrix of cellulose (AKA dietary fibre) they're released gradually as your body digests the bulk matter. If you plot the blood sugar concentration of the person consuming a solid piece of fruit you see a nice curve where the levels rise, peak,…

I've never understood the glycemic index stuff. It didn't seem to fit my experience. I just researched this, and I came upon this article: http://www.foodrenegade.com/glycemic-index-vs-glycemic-load/

I had never heard of glycemic load before today, and I'm always reading articles about nutrition science. It seems like fruit and veg have relatively high glycemic indices, but low glycemic load--which means that they're fine, which makes sense. Who here can imagine a doctor telling anyone on earth not to eat more carrots?

EDIT: I also found this article: http://www.calorieking.com/learnabouts/The-Glycemic-Index-Th... which had this quote: The glycemic load (GL) goes a step further than the GI by taking into account the amount of carbohydrate in a food. A weak point of the GI is that it fails to do this.

For example, carrots have a high GI of 47, but you have to eat a pound and a half of them for there to be a steep rise in blood sugar.

This completely meshes with my experience.

Re: The Secret Ingredient in Orange Juice

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, my wife works for Martinelli's - and it definitely doesn't take 2+ apples to make a cup of apple juice. (I'm not saying that apple juice should be your first choice.) They also carefully monitor "brix", which is the amount of sugar in their juice. They have acceptable targets for that as well as other measures (including John Martinelli tasting the product almost daily.) Personally, I use my Vitamix to make my…

But I'm skeptical about the "juice is bad" meme. It is and for a simple reason that we've known about for a long time: glycaemic index. If the sugars (fructose) are locked in a matrix of cellulose (AKA dietary fibre) they're released gradually as your body digests the bulk matter. If you plot the blood sugar concentration of the person consuming a solid piece of fruit you see a nice curve where the levels rise, peak,…

As I understand it, the process you describe is true of glucose but actually not fructose. Glucose gets absorbed into your blood, causes your pancreas to start releasing more insulin into the blood, which causes basically all the cells in your body to start absorbing glucose.

Fructose on the other hand can only be processed by your liver, so all the fructose you eat just kind of queues up for your liver to process it. It doesn't cause you to release insulin so it has a low glycemic index. Your liver can convert fructose to glycogen and then to glucose to feed your cells if you don't eat any carbs or glucose. But if you already have more than enough carbs/glucose, your liver instead converts the fructose to fat and stores it. This can lead to fatty liver and somewhat interestingly can also lead to insulin resistance which then makes you worse at processing glucose. Alcohol also gets processed exclusively in your liver and can cause fatty liver, so it is true that juice and beer can do a similar kind of damage.

Anyway, on the bigger point I 100% agree that juice is bad for you. It's sad to see it so often touted as healthy.

EDIT: One thing I do wonder about, people always point to fiber as a reason why fruit is ok but fruit juice isn't. It seems like it would be a lot easier to get people to start taking fiber supplements than to stop eating sugar, so why don't we ever hear that advice?

Re: The Secret Ingredient in Orange Juice

#218
post #191
post #150

This author has a history of being on the wrong side of science, and fear mongers on the harms of GMO. For example: http://www.foodrenegade.com/peru-bans-monsanto-gmos/ Just google GMO and this blog: https://www.google.com/search?q=GMO+site%3Afoodrenegade.com

Being Anti-GMO doesn't make someone on the wrong side of science. The dangers of GMO from a economic perspective are worthy of worry on their own. If you haven't seen Food Inc, then I would recommend that as a starting point to learn how dangerous the monopolisation of the food industry can be to society. The farmers in Peru want to protect their existing biodiversity, something North America has lost thanks to Monsa…

Can you please go into further detail and provide evidence (preferably not an emotionally written wordpress blog post) for your claim regarding the wind-born (blown) cross pollination resulting in patent fees? This is something I have heard again and again but googling for "Monsanto wind blown seeds" [1] seems to return a fair amount of articles/research not supporting your statement.

[1] - https://www.google.com/search?q=monsanto%20wind%20blown%20se...

Re: The Secret Ingredient in Orange Juice

#219
Very interesting reading. I've gotten many migraine headaches over the years that I can only correlate to having consumed major brand name orange juices. Minute Maid, Tropicana, that kind of stuff.

Since realizing this, I've stuck to plain old oranges and fresh squeezed OJ and not had a problem. The link between consumer OJ and my migraines, if one exists at all, never made sense ("it's just crushed oranges, after all") until now.

So, theoretically at least, my body could have a bad reaction to whatever is in the flavor packs that are used to make the tasteless juice taste more like real orange juice.

Re: The Secret Ingredient in Orange Juice

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I'm skeptical about the "juice is bad" meme. It is and for a simple reason that we've known about for a long time: glycaemic index. If the sugars (fructose) are locked in a matrix of cellulose (AKA dietary fibre) they're released gradually as your body digests the bulk matter. If you plot the blood sugar concentration of the person consuming a solid piece of fruit you see a nice curve where the levels rise, peak,…

As I understand it, the process you describe is true of glucose but actually not fructose. Glucose gets absorbed into your blood, causes your pancreas to start releasing more insulin into the blood, which causes basically all the cells in your body to start absorbing glucose. Fructose on the other hand can only be processed by your liver, so all the fructose you eat just kind of queues up for your liver to process it…

Fructose on the other hand can only be processed by your liver

You're correct and my original post is incorrect with regards to fructose. Thanks for pointing this out - it's better to be wrong but enlightened.

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