Fruits are so good for your health, they even help reduce your risk of chronic diseases, such as heart disease and cancer. However, nowadays many people instead of eating fruit directly choose to drink fruit juice because they believe that this method can bring more health benefits. So are fruit juices good or bad?
What is juicing?
Juicing is a process that helps extract juices from fresh fruits and vegetables. The juicing process typically removes most of the solids, including the pulp and seeds, of the whole fruit. The liquid obtained after juicing will contain most of the vitamins, minerals and antioxidants found in the whole fruit or vegetable.
There are many different methods of juicing, including hand juicing and machine juicing. Currently, people often use two main types of juicers, including:
Centrifugal juicers: These types of juicers typically grind fruits and vegetables into pulp through a high-speed rotating motion with just one blade.
Cold hydraulic press: Also known as a masticating juicer, it helps crush and squeeze fruit slowly to get as much pure fruit juice as possible.
Main purposes of using fruit juice
Fresh fruit juice is often used mainly for the following two main purposes:
Purifying or detoxifying the body: Eliminating solid foods and drinking only pure fruit juice for 3 days to a few weeks is believed by many people to remove toxins from the body. However, currently there is no specific scientific evidence that proves this is completely true.
Add to your daily diet: Fresh fruit juice can be used as a useful supplement to your daily diet, helping to increase the nutritional intake of fruits and vegetables without you cannot consume.
Fruit juice helps supplement nutrients for the body
Many of us have difficulty absorbing adequate nutrients from our diet. On the other hand, today’s commercial products have much lower nutritional content than before due to processing methods and time. In addition, environmental pollution and excessive stress due to life pressure can also be the main factors causing you to lack necessary nutrients.
Fruits and vegetables are all food sources that provide many vitamins, minerals, plant compounds and beneficial antioxidants, which help protect the body against dangerous diseases.
If you find it difficult to get the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables into your diet each day, fruit juices can be a convenient way to increase your intake. .
Some studies show that consuming fresh fruit juice for 14 weeks can help you improve your body’s absorption of nutrients such as vitamin C, beta carotene, vitamin E, folate and selenium.
Does drinking fruit juice help fight disease?
Much evidence shows that eating fruits and vegetables directly can reduce the risk of disease, but research on the ability of consuming fruit juices to fight disease is still limited.
The reason, eating fruits and vegetables directly can bring many health benefits due to their high antioxidant and fiber content. The combination of these nutrients can greatly support the functions of the digestive system.
In general, whether drinking fruit juice is good for your health or not is still controversial. In fact, drinking pure fruit juice also brings many promising benefits, such as reducing the risk of heart disease, high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels in the blood.
In addition, consuming fresh fruit juice in liquid form also contributes to reducing homocysteine levels and markers of oxidative stress – key factors that increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases.
Some studies also show that the risk of Alzheimer’s disease is significantly reduced in people who regularly drink fruit juice 3 or more times per week. This is because fruit juice contains abundant polyphenols – an antioxidant that protects brain cells.
Drinking juice or eating fruit directly: What’s better?
Fruit juice advocates believe that drinking fresh fruit juice regularly is better than eating fruit directly. They believe that removing fiber during the juicing process will help the body absorb nutrients better. However, there is no scientific evidence to prove this view.
In fact, our bodies need the abundant fiber found in most fruits and vegetables. Soluble fiber intake can help reduce your risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and obesity. Furthermore, it also helps effectively improve blood sugar and cholesterol levels. In addition, consuming fiber from fruits will help you feel full longer, thereby reducing cravings.
Notably, up to 90% of fiber is removed during the juicing process. Specifically, some types of soluble fiber remain, but the amount of insoluble fiber is completely removed. Therefore, for your body to receive the full benefits of fiber in fruit, you should choose to eat fruit directly instead of drinking juice.
Does drinking fruit juice help you lose weight?
Many people use fruit juices as a weight loss strategy. However, fruit juice only provides about 600 – 1000 calories per day, leading to a serious calorie deficit and rapid weight loss.
While consuming fresh fruit juice may help you lose weight in the short term, severely restricting your calorie intake will slow down your body’s metabolism in the long run. Therefore, drinking fruit juice is not a safe and healthy weight loss method.
Should I drink fruit juice as a meal replacement?
Using fruit juices to replace meals is not good for your body. In fact, fruit juice is nutritionally unbalanced because it does not contain enough fat and protein. Meanwhile, consuming enough protein during the day is essential for the body to maintain muscle and long-term health.
In addition, adequate intake of healthy fats is also important for your body to maintain energy, balance hormones and cell membranes. Furthermore, they also help provide fat-soluble vitamins, including vitamins A, E, D and K.
Thus, although replacing meals with fresh fruit juice is not harmful, it can cause a shortage of a large amount of nutrients for the body’s growth and maintenance of energy. You can make fruit juice more nutritionally balanced by adding sources of protein and healthy fats, such as avocados, almonds, peanut butter, and Greek yogurt.
