Fruit Juice

Food · Processed, Drinks & Kitchen · Drinks

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Apple
A whole apple and a glass of apple juice hold similar sugar, but the body treats them differently. In the whole fruit, sugar sits behind cell walls and pectin and is released in batches; juicing strains these away, so the sugar becomes free sugar and reaches the blood quickly. In three large US cohorts, people who ate more whole fruit had a lower risk of type 2 diabetes and people who drank more juice had a higher one; this is an observed association, but it fits the mechanism.
Sugary Drinks
100% juice is still liquid sugar: the fiber is nearly gone, and the World Health Organization (WHO) counts the sugar in juice as free sugar. But its evidence differs from that for sugar-sweetened soft drinks, and the two are not the same: in the same meta-analysis the risk estimate for juice was much smaller, and the authors judged it likely to be biased. Sweetened juice drinks belong with sugary drinks.
imamura-2015-bmj-ssds

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What juice is · a fruit stripped of its fiber

EVIDENCEGUIDE 1

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A juicer does the first step of digestion for you: it releases the sugar from the cell walls and fiber. In a whole fruit, sugar is locked behind cell walls, and your gut has to break those walls open before the sugar comes out, a batch at a time. Once the fruit is juiced, the sugar you drink is already free. The sugar is the same; its form has changed, and form decides how fast sugar reaches the blood, how your blood sugar moves, and whether you feel full. The chapter on why juice raises blood sugar fast follows that chain to the end.

So a glass of 100% juice is not a serving of fruit. Eating the whole fruit is better.

Educational content, not medical advice — consult a clinician.

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