Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Seriously, Juice Is Not Healthy

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 147 posts

Re: Seriously, Juice Is Not Healthy

#111

Post by orev »

code_duck wrote: post #47

Seems like a drastic way to say like that juice is not as healthy as eating fruit, and is not a substitute for solid fruit. Also that it has a lot of sugar. When you see this headline, you’d think they might be including fresh squeeze juice from a variety of fruits and vegetables. They seem to only be talking about things like Coca-Cola’s Minute Maid and Walmart apple juice that the average American feeds their child…

The process of juicing any fruit means breaking down and often removing the fiber, which leads to free sugars that are easily and quickly absorbed into the blood. Even if the fiber remains, it is no longer enclosing the sugar so any benefit is removed. That is the entire problem with juice and most any drink that contains large amounts of sugar. The process of digesting whole fruit is slow and difficult and causes the sugar to be released slowly, which is what avoids the health problems associated with sugary drinks. This is why juice is essentially the same as soda in this regard.

Whether juice bars are a trend or not is really irrelevant to the issue, and it would not be the first time someone tried to sell people things that were bad for them under the guise of it being healthy.

Re: Seriously, Juice Is Not Healthy

#112

Post by forapurpose »

phs318u wrote: post #36

For breakfast, my wife and I squeeze a single grapefruit and single orange (the old fashioned, manual and unfiltered way, keeping any "bits") and split and drink that. It's not much to look at - a little over half a short glass each. Basically we have the juice and some of the fibre from a single piece of fruit each. If you think about how much fruit it takes to create a 600ml bottle of juice its crazy. If you couldn…

Serious question: Why not eat the grapefruit and/or orange? That seems like less work, more food, and healthier (and personally I think it tastes better, but YMMV).

Re: Seriously, Juice Is Not Healthy

#113

Post by burntrelish1273 »

I'm continually amazed when people make obviously horrible assumptions:

- "Weed is good because it's 'natural'" "Yeah, but so are ricin, hemlock and nightshade."

- "Juice is made from fruit, fruit is good, therefore juice must be good." "Although it's not HFCS, juice has more carbs than soda."

Re: Seriously, Juice Is Not Healthy

#114

Post by User23 »

burntrelish1273 wrote: post #113

I'm continually amazed when people make obviously horrible assumptions: - "Weed is good because it's 'natural'" "Yeah, but so are ricin, hemlock and nightshade." - "Juice is made from fruit, fruit is good, therefore juice must be good." "Although it's not HFCS, juice has more carbs than soda."

I'm also disgusted by the "it's natural" platitude some persons spout.

But that doesn't mean it's a good idea to drink the latest clinically unproven science experiment like, for example, Coke Zero. Nobody has a clue what those small molecules actually do besides the obvious.

Re: Seriously, Juice Is Not Healthy

#115

Post by dingaling »

gnicholas wrote: post #49
kareemm wrote: post #13

I love the strange looks we get when we tell extended family that our 1.5y old and 4y old kids don't drink juice. I had this exact conversation with a cousin of mine last week. She checked in with me before giving my child juice. When I told her we didn't give our kids juice this is how the conversation went: Q: "They don't drink juice? What do they drink?" A: "Water." Q: "Just water?" A: "Yep. If you want to get fan…

Yeah, when our toddler is given juice, we dilute it with water for her. We’re trying to teach her that plain fruit juice is too sweet when drunk alone. I typically drink carbonated water with just a little juice, for flavor.

I think the 'for flavor' is the problem, though. There's no reason that a drink needs to have a flavour; it's an acquired desire.

Re: Seriously, Juice Is Not Healthy

#116

Post by m_mueller »

emodendroket wrote: post #45
m_mueller wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calories in - calories out. However, what goes out (urine, stool) depends on the type of nutrition and in what combination it is eaten. carbohydrates are the easiest to absorb, followed by fats and last protein.

I'd say accounting for hunger is also important since few people are going to be able to stick to a diet where they're hungry all the time.

Sure, though I think that’s already covered in the ‚calories in‘ part, it just shows that it‘s a non-linear system (which is generally hard to reason about outside of science & engineering contexts).

Re: Seriously, Juice Is Not Healthy

#117

Post by ofrzeta »

I had that discussion several times. Last time I was told that apple juice is less healthy than apples because of the fibres (missing in the juice).

After I have done some "research" on my own I found out that 100g Apple only contains 1g of fiber, so I guess the difference can't be that huge.

In animal testing it was found that mice who ate a diet that included apples had up to 50 percent less tumors. Now the exact same effect was achieved by giving them apple juice, with non-filtered apple juice being more effective, supposedly due to a higher concentration of Procyanidins.

Re: Seriously, Juice Is Not Healthy

#119

Post by emodendroket »

anothergoogler wrote: post #77
kareemm wrote: post #13

I love the strange looks we get when we tell extended family that our 1.5y old and 4y old kids don't drink juice. I had this exact conversation with a cousin of mine last week. She checked in with me before giving my child juice. When I told her we didn't give our kids juice this is how the conversation went: Q: "They don't drink juice? What do they drink?" A: "Water." Q: "Just water?" A: "Yep. If you want to get fan…

> It's not much better, calorically speaking, than soda. It's a whole lot better nutritionally. Complete juice abstinence is silly unless your child seriously struggles with weight issues. A 6oz glass once in a while isn't going to give them diabetes.

The whole point of the linked article is that juice is basically nutritionally equivalent to soda.

Re: Seriously, Juice Is Not Healthy

#120

Post by emodendroket »

orev wrote: post #110
Puer wrote: post #34

Next, let's dispel the notion that fat is bad for you. It's the strangest thing to me to see parents feeding their kids "skim milk", which is really just milk flavored water, because whole milk "has fat" and therefore must make their children fat. I only drank whole milk as a kid. A glass with every meal. My parents never bought any juice or soda and me and all of my siblings grew up healthy and strong with no caviti…

You’re rolling too many things into one here. The concept that fat makes people fat as a direct consequence is false, but only if the calories gained from that fat are reduced elsewhere. Fat contains very dense calories, so consuming fat can lead to too many calories which leads to getting fat. That is not to say that a diet should be devoid of fat and replaced with sugar, just that the overall diet needs to be balan…

Milk is homogenized so I am not sure how close 3.5% is to ideal. But I would say that humans are probably pretty well adapted to drinking their milk because they've been doing it for millennia.

The thing about fat is that it can increase feelings of satiety.

Post reply on HN