Nutritionists and other health professionals have long recommended that fruit juice be consumed only occasionally due to its high sugar content. Now a new review published in the medical journal JAMA Pediriatics, for which forty studies have been analyzed, has concluded that daily consumption of a glass of 100% fruit juice is associated with an increase in BMI in children.
For this review carried out by researchers from the University of Toronto and Harvard Medical School, the most extensive to date, 42 studies have been analyzed that gather data from 45,851 children and 268,095 adults. The authors observed that children who drank 100% fruit juice daily suffered an increase in Body Mass Index (BMI) of 0.03.
In the case of adults, they did not find a strong link between weight gain and consumption of this drink due to differences in the way calories are measured. But some studies in the review that did not take caloric intake into account showed a weight gain of 0.21 kilograms in this age group.
The research conclusions do not show direct causality, only an association, but the findings “are quite valid and consistent with what we see clinically,” Dr. and pediatric endocrinologist Tamara Hannon, a member of the American Academy of Medicine, told CNN. Pediatrics, which has not participated in the study.
For her part, Michelle Nguyen, lead author of the work, pointed out that “100% fruit juices are a healthier alternative to a fruit or sugary drink, such as a soft drink, but the problem with these juices is that they contain little or no fiber compared to the whole piece of fruit.”
These statements do not show anything new, since many experts have been warning for years that juice is not an essential food for the diet, although the marketing around this product promises the opposite.
Nutritionist Paloma Gil explained to the Comer channel that when converting juice into juice, part of its vitamins are also lost. “In addition, whole fruit satisfies us more, and since it takes us longer to digest it, our blood sugar increases less abruptly,” she pointed out in this report.
The doctor in Food Science and Technology, Miguel Ángel Lurueña, has also recommended on his social networks to restrict the consumption of juices and prioritize whole fruit as a result of this review. “It doesn’t matter if the juice is made at home and is 100% natural and freshly squeezed,” he said.
The expert has answered why eating fruit is not the same as drinking juice. “In an orange, the sugars are inside the cells: when we eat it, they are released slowly and we absorb them slowly. On the other hand, in a juice they are found outside the cells, in a free form.” This causes us to absorb them faster, increases blood glucose and causes the pancreas to produce more insulin. “And in the long run it can increase the risk of type 2 diabetes.”
Another difference is the way of consumption: the whole fruit must be chewed and it satiates us more, something that does not happen with juice. Lurueña gives an example: “if we bite into an orange, with one we will already be satisfied. In a juice we drink the equivalent of 3 or 4 oranges in one sitting.” As a result, we eat more sugars and calories.
Nutritionist Julio Basulto has also defended on several occasions on his blog and on social networks “that fruit juice is not fruit, not even if it is homemade.” In one of these posts he warned that “if we mistakenly believe that juice is synonymous with fruit, our consumption could increase and therefore also increase the associated population risks.”
