To reach 5 fruits and vegetables per day, are you relying on fruit juices? Bad idea according to a study which links fruit juice consumption and weight gain, particularly among younger people.
A fruit juice in the morning, before going to school, then at snack time, just to stock up on vitamins… Parents try to adopt the right reflexes to ensure that they provide energy – and the right nutrients – necessary for the activities and needs of their offspring. We know that fruits and vegetables are essential for the proper functioning of the body, and essential to fight obesity, in association with regular physical activity, but they are not necessarily beneficial in all forms. Juices, for example, are associated with weight gain in children.
Fruit juice associated with weight gain in children
The meta-analysis, published Tuesday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, analyzed 42 studies from the MEDLINE, Embase and Cochrane databases: 17 conducted on 45,851 children aged 1 to 15 years and 25 studies on 268,095 adults aged from 25 to 61 years old.
However, in children, each additional daily serving of 100% fruit juice (one serving being equivalent to 237 ml of drink) was associated with a change in body mass index, or BMI (+ 0.03). Another observation is that the youngest children, under the age of 11, gained more weight than adolescents.
As for adults, if initially, the researchers had found no correlation between fruit juice and their weight; When a subset of 25 studies were considered, and calories were examined, the results showed a slight change in BMI (+0.02).
“The potential mechanism linking 100% fruit juice to weight gain is the consumption of liquid calories, which has been shown to lead to greater weight gain than the ingestion of solid calories. Compared to whole fruits, 100% fruit juice contains less dietary fiber, leading to rapid absorption of fructose in the liver“, explain the researchers.
Limit the intake of fruit juices that are too high in sugar
Even if the consumption of fruit juice “100% pure juice“can be a convenient way to meet daily fruit and vitamin recommendations, they’re packed with”free sugars“, notes the study, or the sum of added sugars and sugars naturally present in juices.
Furthermore, even if the weight variations recorded by scientists appear tiny, “theWhen you look at a small amount over the entire global population, it has a huge impact, especially since most people don’t just drink 4 ounces of juice per day (that’s 30 ml), which is a standard portion”told Dr. Tamara Hannon, pediatric endocrinologist and member of the nutrition committee of the American Academy of Pediatrics, to CNN.
“Instead, they drink 16, 20, or even 24 ounces of juice per day, which in this case is associated with a significant increase in BMI“, she said. “My advice ? (…) don’t consider juice a healthy drink when you are thirsty”, she proclaims. “Our results support recommendations to limit fruit juice consumption to avoid excessive caloric intake and weight gain.”.
Choose fruit over fruit juice
An opinion shared by our nutrition expert, Raphael Gruman: “Fruit juices unfortunately make you gain weight and this also applies to homemade fruit juices. When you squeeze fruit, you actually recover the sugar but not the fiber. Result: sugar passes very quickly into the blood and into the cells, which will transform it into fat. It is better, in fact, to bite into a fruit to limit these effects.warns the dietitian.
“Another important point, often forgotten: you often have to squeeze 2, even 3 oranges to obtain a glass. However, this is a huge sweet and caloric intake for a child. If he consumed the whole orange; he would only take half, or even one, at most. I therefore recommend water for toddlers, which can be flavored with mint, lemon, fruit… This way, they will have the flavors, without the sugar.”
In Europe, the “Eat, Move” public health campaign recommends “getting children used to eating fruits and vegetables at every meal.” And to specify: “Fruit juice of any kind cannot count as a serving of fruit. They are very sweet and low in fiber. The same goes for fruit-flavored drinks, sodas or fruit nectars. If you drink it, it is recommended not to consume more than one glass per day and to have a squeezed fruit instead. And even when pressed, a juice cannot systematically replace whole fruits, which are more beneficial for chewing, fiber intake and the satiating effect.“.
Slide: The richest fruits in fiber
