It seems hard to believe, but one of our five-a-day could be worse for us than drinking sodas. Pure orange juice, that glass of goodness that so many of us look forward in the morning has been described by an Obesity expert, Prof Robert Lustig, as basically sugar and therefore “poison”.
An article in the English newspaper The Telegraph talks about the professor’s new book “Fat Chance: The Bitter Truth about Sugar” and some of the cases he has dealt with in his childhood obesity clinic in San Francisco.
Apparently, the basic problem with the juice is the lack of fibre. When you eat an apple the fibre slows the time taken for the sugar to get to your liver, when you juice the apple the fibre is pretty much obliterated and the liver gets the fully sugar hit in one go.
Another disturbing fact highlighted in the article is that the recommended dose of fruit juice for children has increase from approx 50ml in the 1920’s to 200ml today. That’s quite an increase. So what can you do? The simplest solution is to dilute the juice with water, which has the added benefit of making it go further.