How is it "much healthier"? 8 ounces of real orange juice has 21 g of sugar and 110 calories. This is about what Minute Maid orange juice has.

Calories is not the only way to measure how healthy something is.

It also matters how it affects the body, and in that regards orange juice and soda are not the same. You feel much fuller after orange juice, so clearly the body recognizes it as food, unlike soda.

I asked why "real" orange juice was "much healthier" than Minute Maid orange juice, not juice vs. soda. (Quoting text from hisham_hm; they aren't meant as scare quotes.)

> How about real fruit juice? Much healthier.

Most fresh squeezed fruit juices have comparable levels of sugar to soda. They may have some extra vitamins but they are not terribly 'healthy'.

Indeed. Fruit is "healthy" because it has fiber in it. Fruit juice removes the fiber, making it basically the same thing as soda.

Also people tend to consume a lot more when in juice form. A 16oz glass of OJ is ~8 oranges worth of juice.

It doesn't have to for example if you made orange juice from an orange and didn't filter it. Eat the orange or juice it it's pretty close.

Who says eating the orange is healthy? Still lots of fructose, and these days you're not going to get scurvy if you skip it.

The obesity epidemic is probably not being caused by people binging on whole fruits, however.