100% fruit juice associated with weight gain in children and adults, study finds

MicroWave@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 576 points –
100% fruit juice associated with weight gain in children and adults, study finds
cbsnews.com

Drinking one glass or more of 100% fruit juice each day is associated with weight gain in children and adults, according to a new analysis of 42 previous studies.

The research, published Tuesday in JAMA Pediatrics, found a positive association between drinking 100% fruit juice and BMI — a calculation that takes into account weight and height — among kids. It also found an association between daily consumption of 100% fruit juice with weight gain among adults.

100% fruit juice was defined as fruit juices with no added sugar.

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This seems like it would be really obvious, no?

If you are simply buying fruit juices at the store you are getting zero to virtually zero fiber. So you are getting a bunch of calories but without feeling any sense of fullness that you would get if you instead just ate the fruit.

Fruit is healthy but you are much better off just eating the fruit and drinking water. If you really want to drink the fruit juice you should just blend the fruit so that you are also getting all the pulp. The fiber is excellent for you and will help prevent you from turning all that juice into "empty" calories.

It's obvious to anyone who has thought about it, yes. Unfortunately there's a larger than you expect percentage of people out there who just think "fruit healthy" and that's where the thought ends

my dad, who is quite overweight, would order the sweet potato french fries at Culver's, after I told him to eat healthier. My mom even supported him - "those are SWEET POTATO fries! that's healthy!". I told them that's not how it works, and it just made them angry.

It doesn't help that government recommendations have been based on either terrible research or straight up from lobbying groups for so many decades.

The old food pyramid was insane. Nuts, beans, and red meat all being lumped in the protein category, while all fats and sweets were considered the same. Sugar was just considered a carbohydrate, whether it came from fruits or from soda (high fructose corn syrup). The categories were displayed and expressed as hard lines and there was no nuance at all. Not to mention bread, cereal, rice, pasta all being the largest category... and an entire category for just milk-based items.

For many people the government recommendation is just taken at face value, often just because that is what they're taught in school.

The update makes a bit more sense (though they are still telling you to drink milk at every meal) but I miss my 11 servings of pasta per day..

https://www.myplate.gov/myplate-plan

Check the Canadian guide, they finally did it without asking for input from the various food lobbies...

Interesting!

Surprisingly similar to the US one, just without the Milk Lobby influence. "Make water your drink of choice" would improve so many people's lives.

Digging into the US guidelines it says that "93% of Americans are not getting enough dairy." #ThatIsALie

US dairy lobby is bonkers. Not as bonkers as the corn people, but close.

Yep, the dairy lobby is still pissed about it, it's been five years now and they still say that Health Canada is biased against them... After working with them to create the guide for decades? 🤔

Milk is still pretty nutritious and a glass a day is probably very beneficial for most adults that can actually digest it.

I'm not arguing that, this is recommending a glass with every meal and giving it its own special food group requirements. The "93% are not getting enough dairy" figure is pretty absurd since in 2021 (the last time data was collected), Americans ate on average 667 pounds of dairy per year. That's 1.8 pounds per day. It's a weird measurement, since a pint of milk weighs about a pound, and a pound of cheese is 16 servings of cheese, but either way.. I think we're getting enough dairy.

https://www.foodbeverageinsider.com/dairy/dairy-consumption-hits-record-level-in-u-s-

I think it was kellogs or one of the other old school cereal brands that came up with the food pyramid just so they could sell cheap corn based shit. Greed from the very beginning.

I think children are generally taught "eat your fruits and vegetables". It should not be permitted to target children with fruit-branded junk food and mis-marketing

Unfortunately there’s a larger than you expect percentage of people out there who just think “fruit healthy” and that’s where the thought ends

Totally fair point. As usual I tend to overestimate the general public.

One of my friends was staying with me for a few days. She bought 2 half gallons of apple juice (buy one, get one) and she was saying how much she loved it, how healthy it was, and she switched over from soda a while ago. I commented that it's not really healthy per se because it still contains nearly as much sugar as soda, she didn't disagree but still said that drinking apple juice just seems healthier since it's from a fruit.

Yes you’d think that wouldn’t include researchers who do research and publish in pediatric journals though.

what does "healthy" even mean in this context exactly? like if i eat 3 apples tomorrow will i tangibly actually feel different? what about every day for a week? month? what exactly are people getting out of this other than the placebo effect from the word 'healthy'

"Healthy" most of the time means it has a range of nutrients that help your body function, and prevents a lot of bad stuff, if you eat them consistently.

These bad things include dementia, certain eye diseases, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoporosis, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, depression, pancreatic diseases, hip fractures, cancer, weight gain and diabetes.

https://www.eufic.org/en/healthy-living/article/the-benefits-of-fruits-and-vegetables

If you really want to drink the fruit juice you should just blend the fruit so that you are also getting all the pulp.

Thanks for reminding me I need to go to my local taqueria and get an agua fresca o7

this is why, while i love fruit smoothies, i also make sure to also add some granola and/or flax seed for extra fiber.

helps me save on t-p, too!

If you like banana smoothies, peanut butter is another great way to round it out a bit more. And yknow, make it taste all the better because peanut butter fucks.

Freeze the banana and then blend the frozen banana with peanut butter and a little almond/oat/other plant milk and it's like a milkshake without the dairy. Amazingly good!

Growing up we'd blend just frozen bananas and a little bit of peanut butter together. Keep it going long enough and you'll get real close to ice cream consistency with just those two things. Add a little drizzle of chocolate syrup and you've got a reasonably not unhealthy treat that's damn good.

Haven’t they known this for decades now?

Fruit juice is all the sugar in fruit but without any of the fiber.

Yeah, the US has an education problem. They kind of tell kids about this in school these days but for a bunch of years fruit was just plain sold as good for you. Kids parents were raised going oh don't drink that Fanta here drink this apple juice. When they're far too close to nutritional value for it to matter.

It's another thing they could put a label on might help a few people, it's really effing hard to put a health food label on everything that's not shit though

I do wonder if there was some truth to that, though. When I was growing up, I do remember being told fruit juice is healthy, however there was also less weight problem and there was much less availability of fresh fruits

We've also been selectively breeding fruit for years to have more sugar.

but for a bunch of years fruit juice was just plain sold as good for you.

Fruit is not just blanket good for you. Even with the fiber, it's something you only want in moderation.

Take an average medium apple. that's 19 carbs. 16 grams of sugar. it has negligible potassium and a 7% of your RDA for Vitamin C.

3g of dietary fiber isn't even all that much. They're mostly water.

A medium banana, 23 grams of carbs. 3g of dietary fiber and 14g of sugar.

potassium is a little better at 10%, C at 11%,

1c grapes 24g sugar 1.5g fiber C at 19% (best yet)

Fruits in the end are snacks. They're high in natural sugars and lack sufficient dietary nutrition to many any significant change to your diet.

Swapping a serving of snack food like pretzels or cheese-its for a piece of fruit isn't a significant difference.

Yes. Just got back from the pediatrician and the take home handout said (again) not to feed your kid juice as there's little to no nutritional value and a butt load of sugar

WATER motherfuckers, water

I know personally this tragedy all to well. My father used to drink water. He passed away just a few years ago. Then I did my research and learned that over 80% of everyone who has ever died actually drank water at least the day before.

What does that tell you about water?

Ugh... It tasted like fish.

EDIT: /s or /j added because people doesn't seem to get it's a joke.

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I have a very vivid memory of working with this girl who had a neck so large that it hung down like a bullfrog's sack. I had lost some weight myself and we were discussing nutrition and my high water consumption, and I remember she looks at me very seriously and a little exasperated and says, "I'm eating healthier too. I stopped drinking so much pop and switched entirely to juice."

People really do believe that pure fruit juice is good for your body. I think it's largely due to the average person's inability to understand caloric intake and how to decipher a nutrional chart.

I just check the orange juice I buy. Just generic supermarket branded. 45 calories per 100ml. Coca Cola is 42.

There are people are drinking several litres a day of this shit, on top of all the normal stuff they eat.

There are people are drinking several litres a day of this shit, on top of all the normal stuff they eat.

The study makes it clear that's the problem. The article is trying to spin it into fruit juice being as bad as soda.

I mean it's probably better than soda right?

In that it has more nutrients, yes. But once the fruit is blitzed, the sugars in it are just as available as any other highly processed sugar. It's a lot worse than just eating the fruit it came from.

Still, going from pop to juice is a step in the right direction. It's an early step on a long journey, but a step nonetheless.

One reason a lot of people fail to switch to a healthy diet is because they try to go straight from "whatever the hell I want to eat whenever I want to eat it" to "trendy diet full of food I hate only allowed 2 meals per day".

Switching from pop to juice is far from the last step, but it's a good conscious decision if they're committed to continuing.

Unless they think it is healthier and have no intention of quitting it, of course.

It's also expensive as hell buying healthier products to find a balance you like and is healthy. For example I'm trying to move away from white rice. (I added it to literally everything when I was poor because it was cheap and halfway nutritious.) Now I'm finding out I don't like Quinoa. So I'm going to try brown rice and whole wheat pasta. That particular exchange isn't horribly expensive but I never would have risked not liking something when I was hard up for money.

So people make this decision, check out blogs, try super expensive kale, find out they aren't in the group that likes it, and give up because they don't have the time or money to experiment properly.

Yeah, I tried brown rice as a similar step and it really doesn’t work. Maybe it’s my rice maker though, since brown rice from a restaurant is much better. At home, brown rice ends up too chewy, like it’s undercooked. I’ve tried other grains on and off but they tend to take much longer: I have a bag of Kamut I’ve never used because it’s 45-60 minutes instead of the 15-20 for rice

I really dislike a lot of the more fibrous alternatives to our diner carbohydrates. Some more expensive pasta brands can somehow 'hide' more fibre then others, but still. I do exclusively high-fibre bread now, for lunch and snack moments (i just make ham and cheese toasties whenever i feel like a snack, can't really eat more than 2-4 slices of bread that way before I feel full). I can leave my other carbohydrates as is. (for reference: i use about 60g uncooked dry paste pp per dinner)

Yes but one reason we get studies like this is fruit juice is the harm reduction for soda addicts. So BMI correlation is a poor measure.

BMI is a shit measure and studies like this are impossible to do well. That does not mean fruit juice is magically sugar-free.

I agree. The message should be; use in moderation. The message in the article and what many people are taking away though is avoid like soda and cigarettes.

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Lol, I've never seen harm reduction used in a dietary context before.

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Not enough to make a difference when concerning weight gain.

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Most people have zero clue about how nutrition works. It makes sense, educators don't really spend time teaching it. We had the 4 food groups and the food pyramid, both of which tend to favor eating a shitload of bread as your main caloric intake, which has obviously been debunked. We had the great sugar vs fat debate of the 90s. Now people are skeptical of nutrition as a concept and think "oh, fruit juice, that's healthy". Can't really blame people for not knowing everything, but damn, food is important. Garbage in, garbage out.

Precisely. My whole life I was told to stay away from fat and eat my fruits and veggies. I loooove fruits and veggies, but was only recently told they were high in carbs in my 30s. I just assumed they were healthy since that's what I was told my whole life. Kinda sucks since I'm repulsed by seafood and am not a big meat eater (I identify as flexitarian).

The closest thing to formal education about nutrition I received were the now-obsolete posters of the food pyramid randomly plastered around my middle school.

Nothing wrong with fruits and veggies at all. You need carbs to survive. It's the juice not having fiber thing that will really load you up with calories and get your pancreas working overtime. It's the complex carbs in the fruits and veg that your body really wants.

Idk it's what my endo told me. My diet is primarily whole fruits and veggies, he warned me to eat less fruit because of carbs 🤷‍♀️

If you live a semi-active lifestyle and aren't diabetic or pre-diabetic, IANAD, but I wouldn't be super concerned about eating the odd apple or banana.

If you have the time and money I highly recommend a nutrition class at your local community college.

Y'all, the study clearly says it's the calories. People see it as free calories. The article straight up lies about adults too. The study did not find the same link in adults.

Relevant bit from the study-

Among cohort studies in children, each additional serving per day of 100% fruit juice was associated with a 0.03 (95% CI, 0.01-0.05) higher BMI change. Among cohort studies in adults, studies that did not adjust for energy showed greater body weight gain (0.21 kg; 95% CI, 0.15-0.27 kg) than studies that did adjust for energy intake (−0.08 kg; 95% CI, −0.11 to −0.05 kg; P for meta-regression <.001). RCTs in adults found no significant association of assignment to 100% fruit juice with body weight but the CI was wide (MD, −0.53 kg; 95% CI, −1.55 to 0.48 kg).

Give your kids one child serving a day and fiber from elsewhere. Also make sure they get physical activity in. Done. This isn't Fruit Juice=Soda. Adults probably don't get rated as hard because a pint glass of fruit juice is a lot less of their daily intake percentage wise.

Just give them fruit.

I agree, but I'm also tired of sensationalism in nutrition news and then people asking why there's so many fat Americans.

Everyone has been on this tangent for years, this isn't exactly news. I think it's worth noting that the problem isn't really this simple. They concentrate the juice and pump it full of "juice" that is really just sugar. If you actually buy real pressed 100% blueberry juice, for example, instead of apple sugar flavored with blueberries, the sugar content is lower. And because you would never actually want to drink 100% blueberry juice because it wouldn't taste how you are expecting, you would water it down. Suddenly you have a glass of juice with 5 grams of sugar instead of 30 grams and you are fine. Additionally, no matter the type of juice, it is nearly always over concentrated because they are trying to boost the sugar content. People should really be watering down any kind of store bought juice.

No one is actually drinking "100% juice", they are drinking a product that resembles the fruit of juice. These companies are not squeezing juice into a bottle, they are concentrating fruit sugars and adding them back into water. The problem is just as much with false advertising as anything. I'm not saying freshly squeezed juice is healthy, but it as sure as shit healthier than the fraud they are selling on the shelves. As with everything, the problem is money. Companies know they will sell more if they say it's juice and then pump it full of extra concentrated fruit sugar.

Edit: I wish more companies sold actual 100% real pressed fruit juice, I would buy it and water it down with soda water. I also wish they were more honest with their labeling about what they are actually doing. Not everything needs to be flawlessly healthy, but we could take steps in the right direction. You should only be able to label something as 100% juice if it actually is squeezed out of the fruit and put in the bottle with no interference and additional processing.

Some of the best drinks I've ever had are pure fresh-squeezed juice.

For example: pomegranate juice pressed by a street vendor? Amazing. Apples from the tree in my mom's yard? Incredible when juiced. Freshly squeezed orange juice? Sign me up.

Relatively few fruits make a juice that's not good straight. Cranberry comes to mind as being too bitter. Lemon is a bit too acidic for most.

Wyman's 100% blueberry juice is 20g sugar per 250ml. Mott's apple juice is 28g for 8 oz/240ml. So blueberry juice is about 2/3 the sugar of apple juice. It's still plenty sweet.

You don't water blueberry juice down because it's not sweet enough. You water it down because 8oz of Mott's apple juice is $1.30 at Walmart, and 8oz of wymans' blueberry juice is $7.30. Blends use apple juice because it's cheap and mild, so you can layer other flavors on top.

Juice isn't bad for you because of the extra apple sugar. It's bad because you removed all the fiber. Fiber promotes sateity.

Upvoted because they are all good points. But I would say, that even these pure juice blends are absolutely concentrating the sugar, and probably using the sweetest varieties they can find. I would put money on it. I've pressed juice myself and it is never as sweet as what they sell you in the store, not even remotely close. The store juice is magnitudes more sweet because they are liars and frauds, full stop. Either way, we should all be watering it down. Unless you're desensitizing your taste of sugar by eating pixy stix every day, most juices are too sweet anyway.

I believe I have bought those same brands. If I remember, they come in 32 Oz bottles and are extremely tart. I would water them down heavily and give them to my daughter and she was able to tolerate it.

and probably using the sweetest varieties they can find.

It's probably a mix of using sweet varieties, picking at peak ripeness and quickly juicing them without much transportation.

Think of the difference in if you made tomato juice with a standard supermarket tomato vs a local in-season farmstand tomato.

Either way, we should all be watering it down.

Honestly, juice just isn't anywhere near as healthy as whole fruit.

You can water it down if you want, but either way it should be a fairly rare treat.

I see so many things blamed for weight gain, but nobody ever seems to talk about the fact that nearly everyone is staying inside more. Kids don't go outside to play like they used to. They play video games and watch YouTube instead of riding bikes and climbing trees. Adults too. The human race is becoming increasingly sedentary. The calories catch up way quicker if you aren't doing anything to burn them. And I'm not pointing fingers here. I do it too.

Easy to claim everyone is staying inside if you’re inside not seeing it or when it’s either extreme freezing or boiling..but I just saw a plethora of children sledding yesterday after a snowstorm. I just came back from a Christmas vacation with a large group of nieces/nephews skating, swimming, building snowmen, snowshoeing, sleigh rides and skiing. There was a new activity to do every day. Not one looked at their phone(not even adults) and the total of tv screen time was maybe a two hours out of their day waiting between eating meals together or physically playing together or if the weather did not permit a lot of outdoor activity. Upon which we had a lot of board games to play with each other. The kids do not do well with no activity and tend to get moody and hard to deal with so the parents do a lot to try to expend their extra energy. Having kids is a lot of work. Especially if some of the kids are on a particular spectrum in which we had two out of the group.

on one hand it’s probably the household/family type and I have no doubt there are quite a few families that definitely do need to give their head a shake but it’s not as ubiquitous and pervasive as you’re suggesting. Most parents I’ve seen biggest complaint is ‘I’m trying to tire them out.’ seems to be the catch phrase of the decade right now.

Sounds like those parents don't want to participate. Sometimes you have to go outside with them. I try, but red dead looks just like outside to a 12 year old

those parents don’t want to participate

Knock it off. Now you’re being a bad actor as My post was literally about how the parents went and did all these things with their kids. Now you’re just ignoring what was actually said and hardrailing your point into everyone else’s story I see. Welcome to my block list.

It's because of perfection of the ability to stay at home while keeping yourself entertained. The other side that nobody remembers was that their was almost nothing to do at home so you would go out because their was things to do. Now theirs so many things to do you can literally stay inside for the rest of your life and never be bored.

If the weather keeps being frozen or boiling or Smokey from fires to the point it’s dangerous to be outside for half an hour, finding stuff to do inside is a necessity.

there, there, there's

Always replace here with there if it makes sense then yes. You're incorrect. There it is vs here it is.

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Wall E was a documentary set in the future.

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Our entire food industry is dedicated to high carb foods that generate more profits. Many, many people cannot handle a high carb diet and wind up fat, or sick. A much lower carb diet, including healthy fats and lots of fiber, lessens obesity, heart problem and diabetes. Been there, done that.

My GF is type 1 diabetic so I have to be aware all the time of how much carbs are in things. It's actually insane. A glass of OJ has as much carbs and a can of soda for instance. A glass of wine has ~100-120 calories. Breakfast cereal is essential just carbs and sugar.

Breakfast cereal has evolved into a "new" market for candy makers... Reese's cereal?? Just brand it as breakfast and people somehow think they're not feeding their kids candy for breakfast... I used to buy that kind of stuff for a dessert snack lol

Yeah juice is pure fast acting carbs. It has the same effect on my blood sugar as eating sugar lol

Also sugar is a carb.

Carbs are not bad for you, obscene amounts of sugar is. Yes you shouldn't just eat nothing but carbohydrates, but your body needs carbohydrates to fuel the muscles. Around 100 grams a day is considered the minimum you need to eat typically.

Not all carbs are the same. Fruit juice is simple sugars with little to no fiber.

Carbs are carbs, sugar is sugar, high glycemic sugars need somewhere to go quickly

I have a relative, a PhD no less (albeit in English), who "only eat natural organic GMO-free" and will absolutely not accept that fruits are sweet because of sugar and count against you like any other sugar

Well, while it is a type of sugar that makes fruits sweet, it in fact does get processed differently in your body. Fructose, among other things, can't be stored in muscles. Your body also doesn't need to provide Insulin to process it.

When comparing something sweetened with Fructose and something sweetened with Saccharose, the sweet from Fructose has less negative health impacts.

Unless I misunderstood what you mean with "count against you" (I am not a native English speaker).

the sweet from Fructose has less negative health impacts.

I wouldn't call fatty liver not a negative health impact. In particular Type II diabetes is reversible, a sufficiently fucked-up liver is not.

That's why I did not wrote "a fat liver is not a negative health impact".

I wrote Fructose has less negative health impacts. This means when you count health impacts there are less (= a smaller number) for Fructose.

(= a smaller number)

Are you seriously suggesting "health impact" is a thing measured by "quantity of diagnoses that apply". I have 1000 ingrown hairs, another person has one fatty liver. Which of us is more fucked?

Health impacts.

I feel like you try to derail the conversation and move goal posts to "be right".

Fruits and vegetables contain Fructose, Fructose has a smaller number of negative health impacts than Saccharose and Fructose is metabolized differently in our body than other sugars.

The intravenous administration or other consumption of very high doses of Fructose, often in obese and/or diabetic patients in studies, has been identified as a potential risk factor for fatty liver.

That doesn't mean eating fruits and vegetables increases the risks for a fatty liver. It also doesn't mean Fructose and Saccharose are the same.

Saccharose is half fructose, half glucose. Eat enough of it and the impact on the liver is just as bad as that of fructose which is definitely worse than overeating on more or less pure glucose in the form of, among other things, starch. The body overall is way better at dealing with glucose as pretty much everything that needs energy can use it directly, while fructose first needs to be processed in the liver, which has a much more limited capacity. Ingesting fructose (also in the form of saccarose) makes sure that the liver's glycogen stores are stock-full, which means that weight loss is impossible as that storage gets used up before adipose tissue gets involved.

The intravenous administration or other consumption of very high doses of Fructose, often in obese and/or diabetic patients in studies, has been identified as a potential risk factor for fatty liver.

Dietary consumption of high-fructose corn syrup alone is a risk factor for fatty liver, get out of here with "intravenous" and "very high dose" and "in obese patients". Non-alcoholic fatty liver is a fucking epidemic.

It's not the sugar that's the problem, it's the calories.

Sure, if you're otherwise healthy, but the point is don't drink a glass of sugar water thinking it's healthy because fruits or vitamins or some bullshit, because it's not, and you probably don't need the extra calories.

Unless you do, and then you probably already know your shit anyways.

I am interested how someone is supposed to live a healthy life without fruits and vegetables. Sure, you do spare the calories that stem from the Fructose, I guess.

They don't. Keto is the most unhealthy of all alternative diets partly for that reason.

Your brain needs carbs. Without carbs, your brain rots. And your liver gets damaged.

That being said, simple carbs like table sugar, HCFS, etc. are to be avoided because they spike your blood sugar and cause inflammation which ages your body. The sugars you get from fruits and veggies are not table sugar, they're fructose and other kinds, and they're mixed in with the fiber of the fruit so you don't get the blood sugar spike when you eat them.

Eating below the number of calories you burn will make you lose weight regardless of where those calories are from.

People don't get that because they don't bother to do the research, that's all.

Yeah, I know... I've given up at that front with some of the comments here... It's unfortunate, but I feel the whole issue with many topics in nutrition is that it's unreasonable to expect for most people to read up on organic chemistry and metabolism lol And even if you have some understanding, much is still far from understood well.

So most people end up with a superficial (mis)understanding. And Fruits, Corn Syrup, fresh juice, "100 % juice but actually it's concentrate" get all tossed together in one bag because omg Fructose.

I've certainly seen an increase in people on- and offline claiming fruits are essentially death cookies. Sometimes even expanding that to peas etc. because they realised Fructose is in them.

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Proof of different types of intelligence right there.

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Hasn't this been well known for a couple decades now? Or is this just confirmation of that?

Replace fruit juice with soda in the title and no doubt it’s a slam dunk, but I personally didn’t realize how much sugar’s in fruit drinks until I entered it into a calorie tracker. I’m guessing fruit juice is slightly less bad compared to soda, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn most people are oblivious to how “not good” fruit juice is for them. Probably some, “Well, fruit is good for me, so fruit juice must be okay, too.”

This has been a pet peeve of mine for years, but I've never voiced it because I didn't feel like taking on the "you're an idiot" stares.

But seriously, I drink a diet soda and I'm supposed to feel shitty because "soda is bad" while someone chugs a sugary glass of juice and that's supposed to be healthier? Can I compromise and drink a Fresca? Lol

a drink being nutritious is not the same as being healthy

100% juice is all natural stuff that you body is used to procesing for milions of years, but yeah you're gonna get fat if you chug it like there no tomorrow

soda is some random shit thrown together, articifial sweetners, coloring etc.

Equating "natural" with "good" is called the naturalistic fallacy for a reason.

People who hate on diet soda aren't worth taking seriously.

People treating "healthy" like an essential quality something either does or does not have has irritated me for decades.

For example, one lens of "health" is "non-toxic." If you know, toxicity requires a quantity. Nobody ever talks about quantity, I swear to god.

People at the restaurant I used to work in would look me dead in the eyes and say "oHh, eating healthy today, hUH?" over a salad I'd loaded with bacon, cheese and ranch. There wasn't a single time I didn't just flatly answer "Is it?"

2010 called, they said "duh"

This is why my kids don't get juice or soda other than special occasions. They get full fat milk twice a day and water all day long.

The article doesn't accurately represent the study. The harm isn't in any amount of fruit juice like it is with corn syrup and fake sugars, it's in multiple servings of fruit juice to children per day. The operative part from the study here -

Among cohort studies in children, each additional serving per day of 100% fruit juice was associated with a 0.03 (95% CI, 0.01-0.05) higher BMI change. Among cohort studies in adults, studies that did not adjust for energy showed greater body weight gain (0.21 kg; 95% CI, 0.15-0.27 kg) than studies that did adjust for energy intake (−0.08 kg; 95% CI, −0.11 to −0.05 kg; P for meta-regression <.001). RCTs in adults found no significant association of assignment to 100% fruit juice with body weight but the CI was wide (MD, −0.53 kg; 95% CI, −1.55 to 0.48 kg).

That said. As long as they're getting actual fruit, it's not like fruit juice is a requirement.

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No fucking shit, dude.

That shit is worse for you than diet soda.

No shit, have you seen the US regulations on that label? You can just squeeze concentrate into sugar water and call it 100% real fruit juice.

Why specifically 100% fruit juice?

Edit: I learned to read. It’s because of the no added sugar.

Added sugar is a problem when it’s added to things that don’t need it. The best way to mitigate this isn’t with a sugar tax, but to tax per calorie in the finished food for any amount of added sugar.

Funny that they didn't go with the constipation angle in addition to the calories angle. You can eat all the fruit you want and pass it well, but if you do just the juice, you get no fiber and you will get blocked up.

Can you explain why that hotel continental breakfast dispenser apple juice always makes you shit your brains out then?

Contaminated maybe? Fruit products can carry things like E. coli or salmonella if exposed.

Or the machines. Those things get gross and I doubt anyone cleans them on a regular basis.

Even if they're cleaned "regularly" it's still possible a kid who just scratched their butt crack with their bare hands could have touched the nozzle for giggles right before you got there.

Do you always have it in conjunction with coffee or eggs?

Never had that problem with those dispensers personally.

BREAKING NEWS: Water may be linked with wetness, experts say

Eh. Parents don't usually give their kids soda for breakfast, even if juice has a comparable amount of sugar.

They also don't give their kids candy for breakfast, but cereal and pastries are okay.

This shouldn't have to be spelled out for you, but many people believe that juice is good for you.

"It's good for you! Here, have some more!"

-- American households with no concept of portion control

A glass of fruit juice still has calories in it. I would imagine that if you control for everything else that it's still a couple of hundred extra calories that one kid is taking in that some other kid isn't.

Not only that, it's also almost pure carbohydrates

One word solution:

Fiber

Yep this was my take. Went to Cartagena de Indias in Colombia where people kinda don't drink water, it's all juice. Guess what a week+ of juice 3x a day gets you? REALLY BAD CONSTIPATION.

Juice in Columbia is not like juice in the US though.

I feel that your comment requires explanation.

Colombian juice is thicker, still has a lot of fiber in it.

Definitely not the stuff we were drinking--it affected us both, and hubby was actually born there.

Oof well bad juice is just bad juice anywhere I guess. For the record I love Colombian juice. It was one of my favorite parts of my trip there.

Oh we loved it too, but we needed to have more fiber in our diet to compensate. Next time we'll eat more salad or something.

I was raised to dilute it with water to get "more" of it.

Something interesting is that the article doesn't differentiate between "from concentrate" and "fresh juice".

It's "no added sugar" metric is flawed too because that likely doesn't count Aspartame, or other alternative sweeteners, as the Nutrition facts do not count them as sugar either.

no added sugar is true - but it doesn't consider that 100% fruit juice has a metric SHIT TON of natural sugar in it. A glass of 100% orange juice is roughly the equivalent of something like 6-8 oranges.

That's because aspartame has not got the health impacts of sugar. It isn't sugar. So if you added aspartame, you're not adding sugar.

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This is why I treat myself to the occasional coke zero and mostly just drink water. Is it boring? I guess so. But I've lost 100 pounds in the past two years and I'd really like to stay this way.

Too many negligent parents, especially in terms of health. Although American health science is pretty much profit lead dog shit

as a teen i was nearly 250lbs. when i stopped snacking and drinking soda i went way down. now i usually hover around 170-180

Regardless of what the other dude says, I think you're doing great. Drinking water? Great! Occasional treat without overdoing it? Great! Proud of your accomplishments and motivation to continue? Triple great!

You're improving yourself and seem to be satisfied with the results, that's all that matters.

Artificial sweeteners still trigger an insulin response, just like sugar. In the absence of glucose to leech out of the blood stream that then makes you hungry.

Studies aren't really 100% conclusive yet probably largely because individual differences are high, e.g. if you drink yours with a meal that has a different result than when drinking it without one and then having an extra snack. For the whole population diet sodas might just be a tad worse for weight gain than regular sodas, what we know for certain is that they're not significantly better.

But I’ve lost 100 pounds in the past two years and I’d really like to stay this way.

0.5 to 1% of body mass per week, no more, or you're likely to bounce back because ancient circuits in your body and brain think that they need to be ready for famine. In the end all those numbers don't really do much it's "eat healthy (meaning enough micronutrients), ideally varied (that's what seasons are for IMO), and only when you're hungry". Where hungry means your body needs energy, not your stomach isn't full, or you want to distract yourself, or whatever. We all do have perfectly sufficient weight regulation circuitry, no spreadsheet needed, and if you hear someone tell you "it's all about willpower" then what they have is an intact, unobstructed, circuitry which means that they don't need willpower.

And yes profit-driven food design is notorious for kicking that circuitry out of whack, our social environment does the rest: Merely eating only consciously, bite for bite, can reset the whole thing but who nowadays has time and nerve for that -- which is why you often see it done by proxy, studies show that pretty much any type of diet restriction leads to more conscious eating and therefore better weight regulation, restriction as in what you will eat or when (e.g. only seasonal stuff), not calories. Some set of rules restricting what's available for you in particular (that is, e.g. not eating pork when noone in your country even sells it doesn't count). The reason vegans and vegetarians aren't as prone to obesity has preciously little to do with what they eat, but that on average they spend more time thinking about what they eat than the rest of the population (modulo vegan malnourishment different topic but if you're a vegan you need to know your shit, it's not optional).

Homie I didn't just stop drinking soda. I went vegetarian for two years, work out every day, and started working a physical job instead of from home. I have a diet that is actually very easy to maintain, and I recently started eating fish again to ensure I'm getting more protein to gain muscle.

Thanks for the long response, but telling people they won't keep off the weight or that their changes are not sustainable only makes you sound like a jackass.

Thanks for the long response, but telling people they won’t keep off the weight or that their changes are not sustainable only makes you sound like a jackass.

I never meant to imply that. Can't be arsed to do the maths now but 50kg over two years doesn't sound too drastic depending on starting point. Assuming 150kg starting weight 1% means 1.5kg first week, 1.485 the second, two years are 104 weeks, it adds up. If all that went along with a sustained lifestyle change frankly you should stop worrying about bouncing back. I bet you feel a hell a lot better now than back then, why would you give that up? Even if you were to let go for a while, now that you have the experience you'd spot a downward slide and already have the skill to compensate in a manner that is agreeable to you.

It's just that there's such an absolute deluge of bullshit about weight loss out there that I tend to use pretty much every opportunity to write an essay for the general audience.

Grapefruit juice is an exception to this

Make sure to check with your doctor if you’re on any meds! Grapefruit juice can cause you to absorb more of your medication and can cause overdoses.

The most common drug it messes with is caffeine. Even a little grapefruit juice will make the effects of caffeine far more pronounced.

juiced like, 80 lilikoi last week. enough for two tall lints of pure fresh lilikoi juice for me and special lady friend.

Shit went down better than the best oj you've never had. I have no idea what those two glasses of juice would cost retail, but we saved lilikoi for a week to do that.

Juices require a ton of fruit. lemmings can have some juice. as a treat.

When I was a kid my mom thought she was teaching me healthy eating habits by doing things like encouraging me to drink lots of fruit juice.

We give our kids those horizon uht whole milk drinks like everyday. It's milk which is basically sugar, fat, protein, and a few other things. Is this going to cause a similar issue? We also have the siggi yogurt...

Nutritional values are nutritional values, weight is gained by regularly ingesting too many calories, no matter the source. There's benefits to milk but if your kids have a healthy diet in general they shouldn't need to drink it.

You don't need to eat anything if you have an otherwise healthy diet

But eventually you need to eat something to have that healthy diet. Milk contains a lot of good stuff. Bodybuilders usually drink whey protein shakes that have protein made from milk. The protein in milk is some of the best you can get for muscle gain

Body builders are also burning mutiple times the average daily caloric load and specifically need extra protein. Average people should not eat like body builders or peofessional athletes. (Average people should also, like, walk around more. Maybe climb a bit. Use your body)

That's not true, each set burns like 2 calories on average. If you look at intermediate lifting routines, it's about 40-100 total sets a week.

Sure, some bodybuilders will bulk and cut, but that's hardly necessary since it's proven you gain muscle on maintenance calories if you lift

Hafthor was eating approximately 10k Calories a day at his peak. I'm not talking about a three-days-a-week gym bro I mean people whose entire life is physical strain.

More muscle mass means more calories required even at rest. You're clearly out of depth right now and should just stop.

By literally single digits of calories

When I was 191 lbs at 15.8% bf I had a maintenance of a whopping 2700 calories

Hardly double of a regular person

Still 500 or 23% more than average for a man... The difference is a single digit... That's in the third position of the number, but still, it's just one digit!

How hard is that to understand?

I did a TDEE calculation based on 3 times a week exercise and I got 2685 for a man of my weight

Basically having more muscle is a rounding error, some fat guy may be burning only 50 calories less

It's not "some of the best", it's just easy to extract and to get in high concentration in powder form. Milk contains a lot of good stuff but the same thing can be said about many things, milk isn't special. With a varied diet there's no reason why we still keep ourselves addicted to it, it's not 1927 anymore, we've got access to clean water and a variety of food that would have made emperors envious.

Milk and dairies are the number one source of saturated fats in the American diet and they're linked to many types of cancer. Lactose is sugar that's hard to digest, there's a good reason why we become intolerant to it very quickly if we stop drinking milk and it also increases our risk of getting diabetes. Let's not even talk about the quality of the US milk and all the shit there's in it. Add to all of that the environmental impact of the dairy industry and it's pretty fucking hard to defend the consumption of milk.

Hell, no other mammal drinks milk past their weaning and no other mammal drinks the milk of other species, maybe we weren't meant to either, right?

We're the only mammals capable of keeping milk-producing animals and collecting that milk. It's a lot of work. No other animal plants wheat or maintains berry patches eithet. Kind of a crap argument. We aren't "meant" to do anything in particular, but we're adapted to surviving on a huge range of food.

The dairy industry is a ridiculous monster but keep the criticism empirical.

What prevents cows from drinking the milk of other cows that are still producing? Heck, what keeps them from drinking the milk of their mother long term? If they continue to drink it the mother will continue producing it, if they have one calf a year they'll be producing pretty much non stop. We milk them longer than they would before their calves would have stopped drinking their milk, why then do they stop at a certain age?

65% of the human population has lactose intolerance. How does that fit with us being meant to continue drinking milk just because we're able to?

We started drinking milk about 9000 years ago, that's about 3% of our history as homo sapiens, these days we don't need it, we've got good water and get our nutrients elsewhere.

What prevents cows from drinking the milk of other cows that are still producing?

I don't know, why does a human baby stop breastfeeding?

65% of the human population has lactose intolerance.

You mean 35% of the population is able-bodied. Ha.

I don't know what this statistic is supposed to mean. Something like 60% of people have herpes. Does this mean we're meant to get herpes?

I believe the coccyx is proof we were meant to have tails. 😤 Look what nature has stolen from us.

Heck, what keeps them [cows] from drinking the milk of their mother long term?

The mother, usually. But then eventually it comes down to a matter of logistics.

It has some of the highest bioavailability, full of branched chain amino acids, spikes your amino acids in the blood super fast

Name anything better

Meat, eggs, soy, quinoa, buckwheat.

But hey, trust gym bros and the dairy lobby before actual nutritionists 👍

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5568273/

"We conclude that the claim that consumption of dietary BCAAs stimulates muscle protein synthesis or produces an anabolic response in human subjects is unwarranted."

Oh and just a reminder, it was an answer to someone asking for their children and I'm pretty sure they don't do bodybuilding, neither does the vast majority of the population that drinks milk instead of water.

It's easy to consume too many calories with liquids. I'm sure it's fine I'm moderation, especially so if your kids love active lifestyles.

Calories in calories out

It's not rocket science if you put in extra fuel the body will eventually turn that extra fuel into fat.

Still, since it's children we're talking about it's a bit more touchy with their growth and everything and creating dietary anxiety isn't a good idea. Keep them active, give them a variety of food and they should grow up healthy.

Have conversations like would you like cake or soda. Teach them to not over eat sugar dense foods and to limit themselvesnon those types of foods. Everything in moderation.

This just in; drinking 30 percent sugar in moments every day causes weight gain.

"I lived a year on orange juice,
Thought I was doing well;
But now they tell me orange juice
Is fattening as well!"

I read the whole article and all it says is that the weight gain is due to the lack of fibre in juice, which leads to not feeling satiated

So the weight gain is due to eating other things on top of the juice, no?

One glas of OJ is like the juice of 10 oranges. You simply wouldn't be able to eat that many because of all the bulk (fibre) that comes with it. But as juice, you can down them in seconds, giving you more sugar than a soda, which will lead to bloodsugar spikes, which will lead to Type 2 diabetis. So eat as much fruit as you like, it's super healthy, but don't drink fruit juice.

No, the weight gain is from the juice being high in sugar (like a fruit) without fiber (which a fruit has).

You're basically drinking sugar and there's nothing to slow down your metabolism or fill you up, so you take in too much sugar.

In theory if you mixed it with something fibrous like oats (that don't have their own sweatener) maybe you end up in a better place (if you drink less juice and you eat/drink less caloric beverages/food throughout your day -- i..e you trade bland oats and orange juice for a hamburger).

In general, adding things to your diet doesn't help unless you're also removing something (e.g., adding smoothies is great! ... but not if you're still having the hamburger and now also a smoothie vs water).

That seems like exactly what they said. 100 calories of fruit or fruit juice is the same in one sense. However, the fiber in the fruit makes you feel more full so you may not eat more. Being more hungry with the fruit juice could potentially make you eat more.

Yeah I drink fruit juice for breakfast but never on its own. The article is skewed I think

Hm... I think I misread/misinterpretted.

I'd still caution against the idea of eating something "bad" but making it "good" by pairing it with something "good." That's a seemingly common slippery slope.