Health myth of the juicing craze

The Telegraph

It is a trend driven by celebrities and the perceived health benefits of making drinks with entirely natural ingredients. But “juicing” could actually be bad for you, experts have warned.

Drinking smoothies and blended fruit juices can have the unintended consequence of massively increasing the amount of sugar a person consumes, said scientists.

Retailers have reported a boom in the sale of juicers as part of a trend that began in California and grew with the endorsement of celebrities including Gwyneth Paltrow, the actress, and James Cracknell, the Olympic rower.

Juicing, which is different to blending or pulping, extracts the water and nutrients from a fruit or vegetable while discarding the tough fibre which aids the digestive system.

Barry Popkin, a professor at the department of nutrition at the University of North Carolina, and Dr George Bray, an American physician, said people were deceiving themselves about their sugar intake by swapping fizzy drinks for juices and smoothies.

For example, one smoothie from Innocent — “pomegranates, blueberries and acai superfood”— contains 34.3g of sugar in a 250ml bottle, while a 500ml bottle of squeezed orange juice sold at Pret a Manger contains 51g of sugar. This compares with 39g of sugar in a 330ml can of Coke.

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