Starting the day with a glass of orange juice and a bowl of cereal. It has gone out of fashion with many people these days as they make their own smoothies, but for those out there that do, is it part of a healthy diet? Or is it just another sugary drink adding to the obesity epidemic?
That was something that 3 researchers from Nottingham in the UK were interested in investigating and their results are published this month in the journal Food and Function.
They recruited 36 overweight men with elevated total cholesterol who normally did not drink orange juice. They then split them into 2 groups, gave one group a daily 250ml glass of orange juice and the other group received a drink that matched the energy and sugar composition of the orange juice.
After 12 weeks they observed that there was no weight gain or decrease in insulin sensitivity during the intervention. The daily dose of juice did not adversely affect fasting blood lipids and the group drinking the juice showed the greatest reduction in triacylglycerol concentration, seen as a contributory factor in heart disease.
Their research was funded by the Florida Department of Citrus but i don’t think we should hold that against them.
So should we have a daily glass? This research finds no reasons why not.