Everybody loves juice for breakfast. You go to your fridge every morning and grab a nice glass a orange juice, the healthy stuff though (the not from concentrate). There is one thing that is completely incorrect about that statement.
Notice I said healthy. Juice by nature is not all that healthy and even the “not from concentrate” stuff is horrible, in particular if you have a few extra pounds around the waist.
The Peel is the Best Part For You…
Oranges are full of simple sugars. When you remove the “white stuff” around the outside of the orange and the peel. This is typically where all of the nutrients are stored
When you squeeze the juice out, you are essentially getting water and sugar out of the orange. I read a statement once that was pretty profound changed the way I think of fruit:
“Fruit was made to taste good so you would eat the entire thing.”
When you eat only the “taste good” stuff, you are leaving behind the real nutrients.
Coca Cola or a Morning Juice? How Dare I Compare…
Sugar is sugar is sugar…in particular when you are trying to lose weight. Simple sugars like that of which are in juices and pop metabolise within your system very quickly. This in essence means that if you are not burning enough calories in a day, these sugars are quickly stored as FAT.
More sugar = More fat.
In a glass of not from concentrate orange juice, there are 26g of sugar.
That is in less than a cup, most people on average will drink a full 160z (500ml) glass of orange juice in the morning, meaning they are drinking 52g of sugar.
And what most people are doing by grabbing the “healthy” juice and drinking on average 500 ml (20% of your recommended daily sugar intake), you are starting your day off on the wrong foot.
Would I say orange juice is bad for you? Not compared to pop which is pure sugar with no nutrition (and added chemicals), but there are definitely much better alternatives and juice is actually one of them. Huh?
I Don’t Hate Juice Though, I Drink it Every Morning!
I want to be completely honest with you, I drink juice every morning. Not the normal type of juice, I drink blended fruits. There is a big difference. I am putting the skins, the peels and often times the cores and seed of the fruit in my body. This is where the fiber and the nutrients lie. More fiber, less hunger.
Here is an example shake that I actually made this morning in my Vitamix blender.
I drink one of these every morning with my breakfast. This particular shake has apple (with skin), orange/lemon/lime all with the “white” part, watermelon, frozen cherries, and spinach. This is FULL of fiber and the nutrition is totally retained because I am in essence, drinking the entire fruit (many different types) along with some added spinach for popeye health.
Most people think that orange juice is full of Vitamin C and why wouldn’t you. Every OJ you have every picked up in the grocery store has shown you 100% of your daily Vitamin C intake. This is deceiving though because these juices are PUMPED full of unnatural vitamin C.
If you eat the entire fruit, there is more nutrients but the average orange has less Vitamin C than:
- Berries
- Cherries
- Guavas
- Black Currants
- Kiwi
- Kumquats
- Cantalopue and Honeydew
That is the reality. We are predisposed to false information every day and one of them is that “not from concentrate” is really good for you. It simply isn’t and there are excellent alternatives to it.
Trading Juice for These Will Lead to 2lbs of Weight Loss!
If you just have to have something with your breakfast in the morning or you are snacking on juices throughout the day, you need to truly consider a no sugar, no calories replacement. These include:
- Water.
- Coffee.
- Green Tea.
A reasonable size glass of juice is approximately 200 calories, if you multiple that by one glass every day that is 6,000 additional calories to your diet. If you simply replace this with water, you would be automatically losing 2lbs of FAT (there are just over 3,000 calories to a pound of fat) every single month…by trading your high sugar juice for water.
Simple as that! Next time you grab for the “not from concentrate” orange juice (or any juice for that matter), do realize there are much better alternatives out there.
Jenny
Gotta have my daily juice! I totally get what you are saying Kyle but my kids and I really love this stuff.
What would you recommend as an alternative for a kid? Obviously they won’t be drinking coffee or tea and water might turn into a drawn out fight with them!
Kyle
Kids are typically quite active and there is nothing wrong with giving them juice in the morning. It is a good start to their day. Obviously a juice like the one I have shown with the skins and partial peels (with some vegetables) would be a better and more healthy option, but if you are giving your kids not from concentrate OJ, that is perfectly fine.
However as we grow older and our metabolism is not kicking along at such a high rate (plus we have a sit all day job), we don’t need these sugars in our diet and they can and should be avoided altogether. Let your kids do the OJ drinking and stick to your black coffee or tea (2-3 calories) or water (0 calories).
Chris
Hey kyle, awesome post man, was a good read.
I was actually surprised that the average orange has less VC than the 7 other fruits you mentioned.
I’ve been going for the more concentrated juice lately that is blended daily at the local shop and there is certainly a big difference (drinking apple and berries atm) even though it costs 3 times more than the non concentrated stuff in the supermarkets.
My missus sees all the pulp in it and she is like ” I don’t know how you can drink that stuff ” but I’m like “you should try it and see the difference in taste and how much more filling it is, besides it’s much better for you as well”.
anyhow, what i was going to say before I started to get long winded was
I really need to start making my own like you do.
Kyle
Exactly, the pulp is the “good” stuff and has a lot of fiber in it which makes you much more satisfied after drinking a cup of juice. You might as well drink sugar water if you are drinking no pulp juices…and even with pulp juices, you are still missing out on most of the nutrition within the skins and the pith.
Christina
Mmmm spinach…I love a good green smoothie! Just bought some wheatgrass yesterday and I like the feeling of mowing my breakfast. Is that weird? Lol. Anyway, I’m glad you wrote this because we severely underestimate the fat-inflating properties that most juices have. I’d pretty much stopped drinking the bottled stuff for a long time.
Kyle
Spinach + Wheatgrass = Awesomeness.
People don’t realize that when they are eating sugars, they might as well be eating straight fat if they are not burning off the calories. In fact, fat is much better for you (good fats) than sugar. I think if people really cut down on their sugars and understood the real problem with obesity comes down to too much sugar consumption, we would have a much healthier world.
James W D
That is really interesting. I had heard about this recently and it is good to see the why behind it.
Is there a way to tell when to leave the entire skin on versus peeling it down to the white like the orange?
Kyle
You should always try to leave some of the “white” on the orange, lots of nutrition in the “pith” (the real name for it). That is why I am an advocate of juicing and using a blender like a Vitamix that is powerful enough to liquify fruits and vegetables (skin on) with ease.
Manie
Although I hardly ever have a glass of juice in the morning I now know to avoid it even more!
I do sometimes feel that I lack energy through out the day though which is why I’m going to give your fruit mix juice a go. I’m sure it will get me feeling lively. Thanks Kyle.
Kyle
You will be glad you did, you get so much nutrition from a simple shake and you can throw vegetables in with the fruit in the morning and it still tastes awesome. I always put spinach or carrots in my morning shake and it still tastes like an awesome fruit shake.
Gordi
This was a real eye opener. Fortunately, I NEVER drink pop, it’s usually coffee, tea or water. However, I thought frozen juice was a healthy drink. Go figure.
Good to know post.
Kyle
Frozen juice is actually the worst. That is PURE sugar.
Steve
I head strait for the coffee pot when I get up. Of course I use sugar and creamer so I guess I’m no better off there.
Kyle
I can’t blame you for the coffee part, but try moving closer to drinking your coffee black. I like you used to put sugar and creamer in my coffee, but now that I drink it black I cannot stand the taste of sugar coffee.
I think a lot of the time if you have a good coffee maker and good beans, it will make all the difference in the world and entice you to drink your coffee in more of a raw, healthy form. If you cut out the sugar from your coffee, you would be saving yourself 1,000’s of calories per month…and lbs of fat.
Andrea Roa
This is so true! All juices that are sold in the supermarket or any other that comes already bottled is basically water and sugar. That’s why I always prefer and suggest everybody to make our own fruit juice at home.
By its hand, fruit skins are actually the most important part because all nutrients are there, so next time you have a fruit really consider not to peel it. Great post! Thank you!
Kyle
Excellent points Andrea. When I was going to look for a way to get the nutrients out of fruits and vegetables (through fruit juice), I was initially looking at an industrial juicer. The reality of it though is that all the fiber is still getting tossed with these high end juicers.
That is why I think blending is a much better option than “juicing” because you are actually getting the fibers and a good deal more of the nutrition because of the skins.
Mahevash
Totally agree with you, Kyle. My dentist also told me that having juice wears away the enamel from our teeth.
Kyle
Well the sugars can definitely lead to cavities as well.
Charlie
it was a good job my mum used to warn me about drinking concentrated orange juice – now i know why 🙂
Kyle
For children, in particular ones that are active, having a cup of OJ is definitely not the end of the world. As we get older though, these sugars are a sure way to store extra fat on our bodies as most people have very sedentary lifestyles and don’t burn enough calories on a daily basis to use the sugar from juices and pops that they consume during the day.
If you can stay away from store bought juice altogether, you will save yourself a good deal of calories throughout the year.
Stephon Gittens
I have to start juicing more often. Seeing this motivates me to make it habit. I use a lot of green tea though. Ginger, Bay Leaf and pepper mint are some of favorite teas.
Kyle
All sounds like good options Stephon. I am not a huge tea drinker, but the benefits of tea are awesome and it is definitely a wonderful way to drink something without having all of the sugars in it like juices. Obviously tea without sugar is the best option.