Consumption of 100% Fruit Juice and Body Weight in Children and Adults

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38227336/

by lxm • 2 years ago

32 65 2 years ago

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Kirby64• 2 years ago

Is this a surprise at all? Fruit juice is just soda with maybe some different vitamins in terms of calories. No satiety, and but lots of calories.

chomp• 2 years ago

Not a surprise to anyone on this site or who has a regular access to a pediatrician, but lots of juice manufacturers play up the “100% all natural non-gmo organic pure apples” thing and updress their product to distance themselves from artificial juice, when they’re really a lot closely related in reality. This definitely fools a lot of parents.

tlivolsi2• 2 years ago

One doesn't need to consult a pediatrician to look at the nutrition table. Even wealthy, intelligent people I know consume highly-processed garbage on a regular basis without thinking twice about what they put in their bodies.

kmarc3• 2 years ago

If, in 2024, this fools a parent, then I'd rather be concerned about other aspects of their parenting, too...

During my long travels, where I meet (mostly wealthy-enough-to-travel) people I see this often: kids are sugar shocked in the early morning (fruit juice, jelly, breakfast-is-the-most-important-nonsense-cereals, snacks at 10AM, etc) and then by noon their parents are exhausted due to trying to handle the kids' hyperactivity. All I can think is that at least these kids' response is to burn those calories, and avoid being obese later (hopefully).

And not only kids. I don't know what exactly is going on in the US/Canada, but my observation is that they MUST chew every one or two hours; force feeding (comforting?) themselves. This behavior, the obsessive snacking, I never see from European / Asian travelers.

xnx• 2 years ago

Fruit juice is the type of food that is often overlooked when talking about highly/ultra-processed foods. You're much better off eating the fruit.

abdullahkhalids• 2 years ago

It's fair to label fruit juices for what they are - high sugar high calorie foods. But by the "processed" classification of food done by the UN, fruits juices are in GROUP 1 Unprocessed or minimally processed foods.

[1] https://www.fao.org/3/ca5644en/CA5644EN.pdf

jemmyw• 2 years ago

It surely depends on the juice? There's "freshly squeezed at the store as you buy it" to "long shelf life with only a passing resemblance to the original fruit taste", and a couple of in betweens.

passwordoops• 2 years ago

And drinking water

creativeSlumber• 2 years ago

That conflict of interest section is quite long, not really sure what to make of it.

KinkySumo• 2 years ago

TL:DR is the researchers may be biased in their conclusion because they've:

a) Worked at/for a clinical research company, health NPOs and others.

b) Had their education funded by the government & NPO.

c) Received research funding from NPOs, advocacy groups, research institutes.

jitl5• 2 years ago

Calorie in, calorie out. If you have more calorie than the control group, no matter what substance that is - brownies, Cliff Bar, apples picked by Tim Cook, fruit juice, or Coca-Cola, and you expend as much energy as control, you’re going to end up heavier. Where are the calories gonna go? They’re going to stay in the body. You put them in there, they didn’t, and you didn’t do more stuff to take them out.

I think the hand wringing about natural vs processed is really about how appealing a given food is - anyone is more likely to overindulge in hyper palatable foods, so if natural foods are less palatable it’s good for that reason. Fruit (juice) is an example of a natural food that can be hyper palatable. So, beware just as you’d beware of Cheetos or Almond Roca.

3abiton• 2 years ago

Intermittent fasting proved that it is not totally the case. Time plays a big role in moderating "hunger" hormones, and if fat is burned to produce keton when long periods of no glucose intake happen.

jitl5• 2 years ago

I’d like to learn more about this; does its effect show up in any human studies comparing intermittent fasting vs not for the same calorie intake?

BobaFloutist4• 2 years ago

Calories in calories out is pretty conclusively proven to not be how it works.

jitl5• 2 years ago

I’m starting to think this is somehow like the Bayesian vs Frequentist debate among people who study statistics.

My hastily assembled reading from googling “calorie in calorie out myth” mostly seems to discuss that changes in basal metabolic rate happen as you are trick calories (so, account for that in the equation) and that people eating hyper palatable foods tend to eat more of them (so, now you know to avoid those to make it easier to keep the calorie count under control). Also control for thermic effect of food. I’m not saying model the body as a gasoline engine. You need the complexity for the equation to balance.

Calorie in calorie out is not a strategy - of course there’s a wide variety of ways to make a healthy diet and the best strategy for one person might not be the same for another. I’m not a calorie counting advocate. But I struggle to understand the alternate to calorie in calorie out - like, where else will mass/energy come from or go to in the system? Mass is summoned magically by genetics from zero point energy?

Anyways, this is why I mostly look at studies that have calorie equated groups and their weight - because such a study takes into account all the little details happening inside the body, and we’re going to average the different groups to control for personal genetic and diet differences.

dorkwood2• 2 years ago

Can you explain more about this? I personally don't see anything wrong with what the original poster said, so I'd be curious to hear if I'm working with outdated information.

gitfan863• 2 years ago

Yes, all those people in concentration camps just had high metabolisms and we're not being starved by the Nazis.

And all the obese Americans eating pizza and fast food regularly just have hormone issues.

mingabunga• 2 years ago

Here, educate yourself https://open.spotify.com/episode/1MDqwjo3TfL1w7NJo1wldR?si=A...

jitl5• 2 years ago

This guy says a lot of interesting things, and I like the sound of his voice. But, googling for stuff that really quantifies these effects isn’t turning up much. Like if 130 kcal of almond get absorbed in one part of the digestive tract, and 30kcal get absorbed farther down, it still sounds like 160kcal of almond is going into the body, and has to come out somewhere else, or it’s going to stay in there.

Here’s some influencer content thats addressing that influencer content: https://youtu.be/LZPKTaVB1IU?si=AasQ6bP6WCinea_r?t=18s

dorkwood2• 2 years ago

Can you give a brief summary? This is a three and a half hour podcast.

Tepix• 2 years ago

I prefer 100% fruit juice over the kind with added sugar. If it's too sweet, add more water.

bradly3• 2 years ago

If anyone is interested in how every cup of 100% Tropicana juice tastes the same, I highly recommend this article: https://www.foodrenegade.com/secret-ingredient-your-orange-j...

dcre• 2 years ago

“Among cohort studies in children, each additional serving per day of 100% fruit juice was associated with a 0.03 (95% CI, 0.01-0.05) higher BMI change.”

Isn’t that a tiny effect? How much juice can a person drink? 5 additional servings per day of juice would be associated with at most a 0.25 BMI increase.

However, you could imagine that it affects different kids differently, and that small effect size reflects a mix of zero effect on most kids and a medium-sized effect on the kids who are more susceptible for whatever reason.

4death42• 2 years ago

I don't really think it's appropriate to draw conclusions from studies that control for caloric intake. Most people don't treat food as fungible calories. Often, drinking juice is additive in calories.

andreareina• 2 years ago

Both are important. Controlling for calories demonstrates yet again that sugar is not uniquely bad (the claim that it is is very prevalent in the health and fitness online space). Ad libitum studies demonstrate that the foods we eat have differential effects on appetite, satiety, etc.

4death42• 2 years ago

Controlling for calories demonstrates yet again that sugar is not uniquely bad

No, you can’t draw that conclusion, which is my point.

costanzaDynasty• 2 years ago

Not drinking calories is low effort high impact weight management rule. But when you’re a kid they almost force feed you juice or they did when I was young.

el_benhameen2• 2 years ago

Less so now. I’m pretty adamant about not giving my kids juice except as a special treat, and that seems to be the norm with many other parents I know.

inversetelecine• 2 years ago

Same. Typically plain water, or 90% water, 10% fruit juice at best. Rarely do they get a full strength fruit juice.

iJohnDoe• 2 years ago

What are the reasons? Calories? Sugars? Little to no health benefits?

downWidOutaFite3• 2 years ago

What's weird is that eating the fruit is healthy. Something about the fiber cancels out the effects of the sugar. I've never seen a good explanation for the mechanism of how that works.

zeronine• 2 years ago

There's no good explanation beacause fibre doesn't 'cancel out' sugar.

downWidOutaFite3• 2 years ago

Then why is eating fruit healthy?

gitfan863• 2 years ago

Water is healthy, but drowning is not.

It is the same concept, your body can only process and use a limited amount of carbohydrates before it makes you obese and give you diabetes.

You can only drink a cup sized amount of water at a time. A building sized amount of water dumped on you would kill you.

adamomada• 2 years ago

Likely the amount. How many times have you eaten eight apples in one sitting vs how many times have you had a glass of apple juice.

downWidOutaFite3• 2 years ago

Google says a cup is 3 apples. Doesn't seems too excessive.

pengaru• 2 years ago

When you remove the fiber from fruit you pull the pin from the fructose bomb within.

liquidise• 2 years ago

So a daily, single serving of 100% fruit juice results is a small-but-measurable increase in child BMI (0.01-0.05, roughly 1 ounce), and little to no measurable effect in adults. Given the middling results, i'm surprised how strongly other commenters here are taking this.

"studies that did adjust for energy intake (-0.08 kg; 95% CI, -0.11 to -0.05 kg; P for meta-regression <.001)"
"in adults, studies that did not adjust for energy showed greater body weight gain (0.21 kg; 95% CI, 0.15-0.27 kg)"
"Among cohort studies in children, each additional serving per day of 100% fruit juice was associated with a 0.03 (95% CI, 0.01-0.05) higher BMI"

lurking_swe• 2 years ago

i don’t think most adults, let alone kids, know what the “serving” is. They just don’t look at the nutrition label. Or they don’t care.

I’d bet most kids have 2-3 servings of juice without realizing it. The serving size is usually tiny. That’s not counting all the other junk they might eat in a single day, like cereal.

insickness• 2 years ago

I drank orange juice with every meal growing up. I'm not overweight but I feel like it may have contributed to the severe acid reflux I experience now as an adult.

Tade0• 2 years ago

I was surprised to note that 100% fruit juice, Coca-Cola and fruit mousse for toddlers all contain approximately the same amount of sugar(s) - ~10% by weight.

The worst offender in my cupboard is a mousse by HiPP (a brand that supposedly focuses on quality) - 12,6%. Weirdly, a juice box from the same manufacturer has just 3,7%.

In any case, except for the juice box, that's a lot of sugar.

jeffbee• 2 years ago

If a fruit mousse is the same thing in your country as it is in mine, it's just whipped fruit purée with egg whites and an arbitrary amount of sugar, because the sugar isn't serving a physical or chemical purpose the way it does in a sorbet. So if you make it at home you can make it with as little sugar as you want, and toddlers are still going to be extremely pleased.

Consumption of 100% Fruit Juice and Body Weight in Children and Adults

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