Often people suggest that instead of soft drink, they will have a juice. I’ll put it out there – I hate juice. It provides a false sense of security as it comes from something healthy like fruit. However, when you look at how many teaspoons of sugar a juice has, you may think again!
A freshly squeezed medium sized fruit juice typically contains around 11 teaspoons of sugar, and while it may be natural and not refined cane sugar, ultimately, it’s still sugar with none of the fibre you’d get from eating the whole fruit. I always like to think about how many oranges you would need to juice to get a glass of juice – would you eat that many oranges in one sitting? I would say probably not!
Just as a side note, the type of juice we are talking about here, is not your popular juice bar smoothies. Smoothies from these shops can have up to 30 teaspoons of sugar in a serve!! (eeek!) That is astounding – especially considering they are marketed as a healthy product! The worst of these are those that are based on frozen yoghurt, sorbet, fruit concentrates and syrups.
If you choose to buy a juice, get one which is freshly squeezed, stick to a small size and combine the fruit with even more vegetables. If you must buy supermarket juice, choose those that have no added sugar and include the pulp – however keep you serve to 1/4 of a glass and dilute it with lots of water!
Another even better alternative, why not make your own Green Smoothie at home! For information about Green Smoothies head to my blog post all about them here.