Are Fruit Juices Good For You?

Let’s talk about fruit juices. We get so many emails about specific juices. Is Naked juice a fruit juice and is it good for me? The answer is, no. We are going to uncover why. First, let’s look at why do most people think these juices are healthy in the first place. Some boast up to 59 carbohydrates per container, and a lot of sugar. But it’s all about the marketing, because all these juices are being marketed to us as healthy. They are being labeled “super” fruits juices. They boast “greens plus flax seed” and “300 percent of your vitamin b 12 with only 80 calories per serving.” Even though there are some greens in the ingredient list, they are at the bottom of the label. So by weight, there is the least amount of greens by ingredient volume. Even with having those greens in there, you are still having to consume 30 grams of sugar to get them.

Don’t get us wrong, we love greens. We love drinking our greens. We love greens so much we have a Greens Superfood. How many grams of sugar in our greens? Our greens have 0 grams of sugar, and by volume it is all greens. So it is possible to get your greens without drowning them in sugar.

Let’s just look at one juice to break it down and show you what fruit juices contain. Naked brand juice is a good one. A lot of people know it, and they see it everywhere. When you look at the front it tells you that it is pure fruit and no added sugar. Then you flip it over it over and it lists off what amount of fruit is in it. In one particular drink there are 22 raspberries, 1 and a third banana, and nearly two apples. When our custom meal plan department writes you a custom meal plan, they are not even putting that much fruit on a plan for an entire day, much less at one time. There are 60 grams of carbohydrates in one bottle and 44 grams of sugar. That is a lot of sugar! That’s more than you should be consuming in a whole day. We are not saying fruit is bad for you. Fruits do have vitamins, and minerals. It is in the volume at which you consume that great amount of sugar that can be bad for you. We don’t want you to consume that much at once.

We see people who are having three, four, and five servings of fruit a day and think that this is healthy, but are still struggling to lose weight. We are not saying that there are not healthy benefits to fruit, but too much fructose can cause problems especially with weight loss. Let’s explore this so that we can understand why high levels of fructose all at once can hurt you.

Having vegetables and little bit of fruit together is outstanding in moderation, but all of the good stuff in these fruit drinks you can actually get from vegetables without all the sugar.

Fructose is preferential to the liver. When we digest it, our liver takes a hold of it and stores it.

It goes other places too. Our body can use it for energy, but it doesn’t want to unless we have been doing a lot of strenuous activity and we consume it in a moderate amount. If we get our activity way up and consume it moderately, the liver does not want to use it as energy stores it as fat. We don’t want to overwhelm our body.

At the end of the day while it is natural sugar, it is still fructose and will be processed in our body as sugar when we over indulge. Especially if you’re over consuming it at 4, 5, or 6 servings like people have come to us saying they do. Plus, when people juice fruit, it lacks the fiber which slows the digestion of fruit in our system and opens the doors for our bodies glycemic levels to spike.

Limit the consumption of fruit to 2 servings a day if you are trying to lose weight. You can also stick to berries because they are one of the best fruits for weight lose. They hit the glycemic index much lower and are full of antioxidants. They are also higher in fiber and lower in sugar so you get the best bang for your buck. Say no to these grab and go fruit juices and yes to a moderate amount of fruits and an abundance of greens.

Be patient, stay the course, and let’s get fit together.