Fruit Juice: Beyond The Label
So what is the problem with fruit juice you ask? A lot.
Instead of drinking a soda or Gatorade, most of us opt to consume the bottle of 100% fruit juice in hopes that we are making a more health conscious choice.
However, we have mistakenly associated fruit juice as being just as good as fruit in terms of nutritional content. Unknown to many is that fruit juice is not anything like the live, whole fruit that we pick off of a bush or purchase from a farmers market.
What is Fruit Juice?
Fruit is made up of two components: Sugar and fiber. The sugar in fruit tastes delicious and makes up all of the liquid that fills a Dole juice container.*
*I am writing about 100% fruit juice by the way. If it is not 100% juice then the concoction you are drinking is more than likely sweetened with high fructose corn syrup and some natural fruit juices.
For every pleasure found on earth, God made the remedy or consequence to deter us from partaking in such pleasures. The antidote if you will. Drinking alcohol = Hangover, Sex = Pregnancy and consumption of sugar is always paired with fiber (did that make sense? 
.
There is no plant on earth that creates sugar without the presence of fiber. Sugar cane contains massive amounts of fiber, apples have skin that is composed of fiber and so does every fruit that is available for our consumption.
Fiber is present for one reason, and that is to slow the digestion of sugar. Although we have difficulty digesting fiber, it forces us to become full very fast. This is very important because when consuming sugar, we want to slow down the process of digestion.
It would be very difficult to sit down and 4 apples. The fiber present in the apples would make us full far before we ever consumed a 4th apple. Now lets look at apple juice. Apple juice is essentially strained apple sauce. And according to a couple of non-authoritative apple sauce websites, we can hope to get roughly 1/2 a cup of apple juice from one large apple. And seeing that it takes 2.5 cups to fill a 20 oz bottle, we are drinking 5 apples worth of juice. And this is without any fiber!
Our body is then bombarded with sugar. We use what we need as energy and store the rest as fat. Fiber slows this process down and forces our bodies to process sugar more slowly. Which we hope will prolong the creation of love handles.
Nature has already done the hard work for us. Pairing fiber with sugar is an evolutionary circumstance that has our best interests in mind. Without fiber, morbid obesity would be so prevalent that we would be forced to call it an epidemic.
Oh wait, that already happened
Current quick and easy meals, fast food and candy all contain zero fiber. The reasoning behind this is rather simple and makes economic sense. Fiber spoils. Foods that contain fiber cannot be kept fresh and tasty for long periods of time (which is why produce rots if not eaten quickly). This does not fit well in our processed food world of long shelf lives and massive global shipping methods.
What does this have to do with fruit juice?
I hope this is obvious... there is no fiber in fruit juice. Because fiber spoils, it cannot be found in plastic containers that stay "good" for months or even years. No fiber = lots of sugar = quick digestion = increased poundage.
To go even further into fruit juice production, the majority of fruit juice that we drink must be heated to high temperatures before it's bottled and sold.
We have to remember that fresh fruits are live plants. There are living bacteria and micro-organisms in every piece of fresh produce that we buy. Because our food is alive, it must then have the power to die. This is known as rotting, or the decomposition of live food.
In order for the juice of a live plant to be sold, marketed and stay fresh in a cooler, it must be heated up to kill all of the living organisms found in it. This is also known as pasteurization and the same process that milk must undergo in order to be sold on a massive scale.
Heating up juice also does another thing. It kills phyto-nutrients. These are nutrients that have just recently been discovered. They are the micro-organisms found in fresh, live food that contribute to the many benefits that these foods bring to humans.
So what is fruit juice?
I believe it to be a dumb downed version of the tasty part of whole fruit. Their is no fiber, no live nutrients, sure there are some vitamins but the benefits of consuming these do not out way the deadly amounts of sugar that are found in these drinks.
This now brings up the argument of vitamins and minerals found in fruit. Mothers around the world have joined hands in their fight to make their kids healthier by buying Cappri Sun juice boxes and Sunny Delight coolers that are fortified with vitamins.
Sure vitamins are needed in our bodies. So is water. You don't drink a 20 oz bottle of soda so that you can get the water out of it. If you want vitamins, eat the god damned fruit. Whole foods contain much more nutrients than their watered down (literally) offspring.
If we were to take the vitamin and mineral labels and propaganda off of fruit juice bottles, we would be stuck drinking a substance that has as much sugar as the leading sports drink or soda.
And to further cement my argument, what do vitamins and minerals do that are so beneficial? They sure as shit won't help you use the 80 grams of sugar you just consumed or help you deter that sugar from becoming belly jelly.
So in my non-expert opinion I recommend that we stop drinking bottled beverages. If you want some extra flavor, grab a lemon or a lime and squeeze the juice into your glass of water*.
*It may be clear to some that I am contradicting the entire point of this article by telling you use juice from fruit to sweeten your beverage. However, the amount of lemon juice that is present in a wedge of lemon is trivially small. You will be drinking 1/4 of an ounce rather than 20 ounces of pure sugar.
Final Thought
I may sound like a raving lunatic, but drinking soda, Gatorade and fruit juice are equally terrible for our health. Regardless of the so called "healthy" nutrients that they may contain.
Ryan
The Secrets Behind What is in Your Soda
We drink soda and other sugary beverages for two reasons. They taste delicious, thanks to the massive amounts of sugar* (and artificial sweeteners) that can be found in them. We also drink soda and sports drinks for another reason, one that we often overlook, yet face on a daily basis. That is the fact that soda and sports drinks are made to make us dehydrated, and in doing so force us to drink more in order to annihilate our thirst.
*Unless the soda is diet, then switch out the enormous amounts of sugar, for huge amounts of added artificial chemicals that we cannot even pronounce and have a minor understanding of. Remember if it is to good to be true then it usually is.
This fact is often overlooked as we see soda as only being a sweet and sugary comfort beverage. There are ingredients in soda and sports drinks that actually do the opposite of thirst quenching such as caffeine and salt. These are substances that we all too often neglect to bring into the conversation.
This article will bring to light why soda is not only addictive, but is actually made never to quench our thirst and leave us wondering why the hell we are still thirsty.
1) Caffeine. Caffeine is a mild stimulant that increases blood pressure and gives us a good kick. In moderation, caffeine has been proven to have zero negative effects on human health.
Caffeine naturally speeds up the process of urine extraction. Leaving our bodies craving more liquid.
2) Salt- We often forget that salt is even in soda, because we can't taste it. There is a reason for this. Salt dehydrates the body. Which again leaves us unfulfilled in our quest to quench our thirst. Although the amount of salt found in soda is small, it still has a huge affect on our thirst systems.
The fact that salt is even in soda is evidence that soda companies are not in the business of quenching our nations thirst. Salt is found in soda to keep us thirsty and keep us drinking more, which then results in us buying more.
3) Sugar- Sugar is in soda for a few reasons. By nature it is addictive, so when we consume it our bodies crave more and in result we drink more. Also a most important reason why sugar is added is that it covers up the taste of salt. Why else would a 20 oz bottle of soda contain over 130 grams of sugar?
But Ryan, don't we drink soda to quench our thirst?
In theory yes, in reality we are simply pouring liquid into a strainer.
Our thirst can never, ever be quenched by drinking soda or sports drinks.
The caffeine forces us to speed up the process of urine extraction, which results in a need for liquid. Salt dehydrates our bodies and leaves us loathing with the feeling of thirst that we wanted to exterminate in the first place. This can only lead to one action. The drinking of more soda.
Sports Drinks
This same combination is used in sports drinks as well. Minus the caffeine. Sports drinks are incredibly sugary to cover up the salt that is present. Salt was originally put in sports drinks to replace the sodium and electrolytes that are lost while we sweat.
I am sorry to rain on the parade of those who regularly consume sports drinks after working out, but the vast majority of us "common folk" do not work out anywhere near the intensity and duration to justify the consumption of sports drinks.
You may want to drink them because Tiger Woods and Lebron James drink and endorse them, but know that you are only drinking sugar water with a splash of sodium. In the long run making you gain weight and perhaps do the complete opposite of what your end goal was in the first place.
If your body truly needs more sodium and sugar, then you will know. You may feel light headed and completely fatigued. How often do everyday people like you and me get to that level of intensity while running on the treadmill or playing pick up basketball?
Ever wonder why there is over 70 grams of sugar (34 grams of sugar and 34 grams of carbs) in a 20oz bottle of Gatorade? It sure as shit is not put there for our health. It is present to cover up the taste of the 270 mg of salt that are found there.
Why can't we taste the salt in soda and sports drinks?
If we could then nobody would buy them. I don't know about you but I think salt water tastes disgusting. Cover that salt up with lots and lots of sugar and we get a drink that is not only incapable of quenching our thirst, which was the goal in drinking the beverage in the first place, but we also get a product that is addictive and (unfortunately) down right tasty.
Drinking soda (or any other sugar containing food) is comparable to being addicted to drugs. We are happy while we are consuming them but after that initial euphoria we are left unsatisfied and feel utterly worthless. This results in the consumption of more sugar laced products. This never ending cycle is what keeps companies that produce high sugar foods in business.
If you are "addicted" to soda, do not fear, you are not alone. Millions of people across the globe drink massive amounts of soda everyday. Just know that cutting soda out of the diet could have the single most dramatic impact on your body in terms of weight loss and overall health as any other single act. Even more important than exercising.
This will not be easy. Smokers who are addicted to the nicotine found in cigarettes say that quitting smoking was the hardest thing they have ever done. Breaking the addiction to soda (sugar and also caffeine for some people) is comparable. I am not kidding. Sugar is more addictive than most drugs. Just because it is legal does not change its natural properties and how it interacts within the human body.
Don't be dumb. Drink water to quench your thirst. I don't care if you think water is boring. It has 0 calories, no sugar, salt or caffeine. Save yourself some money and self-loathing and stop drinking any kind of drink that comes in a bottle* (except for water )
* I have a feeling that many of the Snapple tea drinkers out there will argue with me that not all bottled drinks are bad. You're wrong. Next time you buy a tea beverage that comes in a bottle, check out the ingredients. High Fructose Corn Syrup is usually in the top three. The tea that comes in bottles is not real tea. No amount of antioxidants will save you from the massive amounts of sugar that are found in these beverages.
- Ryan
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