Sydney, do you have a hard time eating fruits and vegetables? You are not alone.
Less than 5 per cent of Australians eat the recommended portions of fresh produce each day (44 per cent eat enough fruit but only 6 per cent eat the recommended vegetables).
Adults should aim to eat at least five servings of vegetables (or about 375 grams) and two servings of fruit (about 300 grams) a day. Fruits and vegetables help keep us healthy because they have many nutrients (vitamins, minerals and fiber) and bioactive compounds (substances that are technically non-essential but have health benefits) that promote health without having many calories. So, if you have trouble eating eat the rainbow, you may be wondering: is it okay to drink your fruits and vegetables in a juice or smoothie? Like everything in nutrition, the answer has to do with context.
Could help overcome barriers
Common reasons for not eating enough fruits and vegetables are preferences, habits, perishability, cost, availability, time, and poor cooking skills. Drinking fruits and vegetables in juices or smoothies can help overcome some of these barriers. Juicing or blending can help mask flavors you don't like, such as the bitterness of vegetables. And it can erase imperfections such as bruises or soft spots.
Preparation doesn't require much skill or time, especially if you only have store-bought juice to serve. Addressing food safety and shipping time changes the composition of juices slightly, but unsweetened juices remain important sources of beneficial nutrients and bioactives.
Juicing can extend shelf life and reduce nutrient costs. In fact, when researchers looked at the nutrient density relative to the costs of common foods, fruit juice performed the best. So, drinking my fruits and vegetables counts as a service, right?
Juice's position in healthy eating recommendations is a bit confusing. The Australian dietary guidelines include 100 percent fruit juice with fruit, but there is no mention of vegetable juice. This is probably because vegetable juices were not as common in 2013, when the guidelines were last revised.
The guidelines also warn against consuming juice too frequently or in too large quantities. This seems to be based on the logic that juice is similar, but not as good, to whole fruit. Juice has lower levels of fiber compared to fruit, and fiber is important for gut and heart health and promotes the feeling of satiety. Juices and smoothies also release sugar from other structures in the fruit, making them “free.” The World Health Organization recommends limiting free sugars for good health.
But fruits and vegetables are more than the sum of their parts. When we take a “reductionist” approach to nutrition, foods and drinks are judged based on assumptions about limited characteristics, such as sugar content or specific vitamins.
But these characteristics may not have the impact we logically assume due to the complexity of foods and people. When humans eat varied and complex diets, we don't necessarily need to worry that some foods have less fiber than others. Juice can retain the nutrients and bioactive compounds of fruits and vegetables and even add more because it can include parts of the fruit that we don't normally eat, such as the skin.
So is it healthy?
A recent overview of meta-analyses (a type of research that combines data from multiple studies with multiple outcomes in a single article) looked at the relationship between 100 percent juice and a variety of health outcomes. Most of the evidence showed that The juice had a neutral (i.e. no impact) or positive health impact. 100 percent pure juice was linked to better heart health and inflammatory markers and was not clearly linked to weight gain, multiple types of cancer, or metabolic markers (such as blood sugar levels).
Some health risks associated with juice consumption have been reported: death from heart disease, prostate cancer, and risk of diabetes.
But all the risks were reported in observational studies, where researchers analyze data from groups of people collected over time. These are not controlled and do not record consumption at the moment. Therefore, other drinks that people consider 100 percent fruit juice (such as juices or cordials sweetened with sugar) could accidentally be counted as 100 percent fruit juice. These types of studies are not good at showing direct causes of illness or death. What's wrong with my teeth?
The common belief that juice damages teeth may not be true. Studies showing that juice harms teeth often mix pure juice with sweetened drinks. Or they use model systems like fake mouths that don't match how people drink juice in real life. Some use extreme scenarios, such as drinking large amounts of beverage frequently over long periods of time.
Juice is acidic and contains sugars, but proper oral hygiene, including rinsing, cleaning, and using straws, may be able to mitigate these risks. Again, reducing juice to its acidic level ignores the rest of the history, including the nutrients and bioactives contained in the juice that are beneficial for oral health.
Then what should I do?
Comparing a whole fruit (a food) to a juice (a drink) can be problematic. They have different culinary purposes, so they are not really interchangeable. The Australian Guide to Healthy Eating recommends water as the drink of choice, but this assumes you get all the essential nutrients from eating.
Juice's place in your diet depends on what you eat and what other drinks it replaces. Juice could replace water in the context of a “perfect” diet. Or juice could replace alcohol or sugary sodas and make the relative benefits look very different.
In balanceWhether you want to eat fruits and vegetables or drink them depends on what works for you, how it fits into the context of your diet and your life.
Smoothies and juices are not a miracle solution and there is no evidence that they work as a “cleanse” or detox. But, with the low levels of fruit and vegetable consumption in society, the option of accessing nutrients and bioactives in a cheap, easy and tasty way should not be discouraged either. (The conversation) GRS
GRS
Less than 5 per cent of Australians eat the recommended portions of fresh produce each day (44 per cent eat enough fruit but only 6 per cent eat the recommended vegetables).
Adults should aim to eat at least five servings of vegetables (or about 375 grams) and two servings of fruit (about 300 grams) a day. Fruits and vegetables help keep us healthy because they have many nutrients (vitamins, minerals and fiber) and bioactive compounds (substances that are technically non-essential but have health benefits) that promote health without having many calories. So, if you have trouble eating eat the rainbow, you may be wondering: is it okay to drink your fruits and vegetables in a juice or smoothie? Like everything in nutrition, the answer has to do with context.
Could help overcome barriers
Common reasons for not eating enough fruits and vegetables are preferences, habits, perishability, cost, availability, time, and poor cooking skills. Drinking fruits and vegetables in juices or smoothies can help overcome some of these barriers. Juicing or blending can help mask flavors you don't like, such as the bitterness of vegetables. And it can erase imperfections such as bruises or soft spots.
Preparation doesn't require much skill or time, especially if you only have store-bought juice to serve. Addressing food safety and shipping time changes the composition of juices slightly, but unsweetened juices remain important sources of beneficial nutrients and bioactives.
Juicing can extend shelf life and reduce nutrient costs. In fact, when researchers looked at the nutrient density relative to the costs of common foods, fruit juice performed the best. So, drinking my fruits and vegetables counts as a service, right?
Juice's position in healthy eating recommendations is a bit confusing. The Australian dietary guidelines include 100 percent fruit juice with fruit, but there is no mention of vegetable juice. This is probably because vegetable juices were not as common in 2013, when the guidelines were last revised.
The guidelines also warn against consuming juice too frequently or in too large quantities. This seems to be based on the logic that juice is similar, but not as good, to whole fruit. Juice has lower levels of fiber compared to fruit, and fiber is important for gut and heart health and promotes the feeling of satiety. Juices and smoothies also release sugar from other structures in the fruit, making them “free.” The World Health Organization recommends limiting free sugars for good health.
But fruits and vegetables are more than the sum of their parts. When we take a “reductionist” approach to nutrition, foods and drinks are judged based on assumptions about limited characteristics, such as sugar content or specific vitamins.
But these characteristics may not have the impact we logically assume due to the complexity of foods and people. When humans eat varied and complex diets, we don't necessarily need to worry that some foods have less fiber than others. Juice can retain the nutrients and bioactive compounds of fruits and vegetables and even add more because it can include parts of the fruit that we don't normally eat, such as the skin.
So is it healthy?
A recent overview of meta-analyses (a type of research that combines data from multiple studies with multiple outcomes in a single article) looked at the relationship between 100 percent juice and a variety of health outcomes. Most of the evidence showed that The juice had a neutral (i.e. no impact) or positive health impact. 100 percent pure juice was linked to better heart health and inflammatory markers and was not clearly linked to weight gain, multiple types of cancer, or metabolic markers (such as blood sugar levels).
Some health risks associated with juice consumption have been reported: death from heart disease, prostate cancer, and risk of diabetes.
But all the risks were reported in observational studies, where researchers analyze data from groups of people collected over time. These are not controlled and do not record consumption at the moment. Therefore, other drinks that people consider 100 percent fruit juice (such as juices or cordials sweetened with sugar) could accidentally be counted as 100 percent fruit juice. These types of studies are not good at showing direct causes of illness or death. What's wrong with my teeth?
The common belief that juice damages teeth may not be true. Studies showing that juice harms teeth often mix pure juice with sweetened drinks. Or they use model systems like fake mouths that don't match how people drink juice in real life. Some use extreme scenarios, such as drinking large amounts of beverage frequently over long periods of time.
Juice is acidic and contains sugars, but proper oral hygiene, including rinsing, cleaning, and using straws, may be able to mitigate these risks. Again, reducing juice to its acidic level ignores the rest of the history, including the nutrients and bioactives contained in the juice that are beneficial for oral health.
Then what should I do?
Comparing a whole fruit (a food) to a juice (a drink) can be problematic. They have different culinary purposes, so they are not really interchangeable. The Australian Guide to Healthy Eating recommends water as the drink of choice, but this assumes you get all the essential nutrients from eating.
Juice's place in your diet depends on what you eat and what other drinks it replaces. Juice could replace water in the context of a “perfect” diet. Or juice could replace alcohol or sugary sodas and make the relative benefits look very different.
In balanceWhether you want to eat fruits and vegetables or drink them depends on what works for you, how it fits into the context of your diet and your life.
Smoothies and juices are not a miracle solution and there is no evidence that they work as a “cleanse” or detox. But, with the low levels of fruit and vegetable consumption in society, the option of accessing nutrients and bioactives in a cheap, easy and tasty way should not be discouraged either. (The conversation) GRS
GRS
