Personally, I use my Vitamix to make my own "apple juice smoothy" and routinely ferment fruit for the probiotics. But I'm skeptical about the "juice is bad" meme.

It is and for a simple reason that we've known about for a long time: glycaemic index. If the sugars (fructose) are locked in a matrix of cellulose (AKA dietary fibre) they're released gradually as your body digests the bulk matter. If you plot the blood sugar concentration of the person consuming a solid piece of fruit you see a nice curve where the levels rise, peak, and non-violently fall.

Now when you process the fruit you're effectively pre-digesting it - the sugars are free of the cellulose matrix (the bulk of the fruit) and when you plot the blood sugar concentration after consumption of juice, because no work needs to be done to digest it, the blood sugar level quickly spikes. This provides a rush, then your insulin response peaks, sending your blood sugar levels crashing. This happens much faster than the curve in blood sugar from eating unprocessed fruit.

The only argument I'll accept from people who drink juice: They like it. That's OK. You're allowed to like things. I like beer, which acts similarly to juice with regards to blood sugar concentration.

Fructose on the other hand can only be processed by your liver, so all the fructose you eat just kind of queues up for your liver to process it. It doesn't cause you to release insulin so it has a low glycemic index. Your liver can convert fructose to glycogen and then to glucose to feed your cells if you don't eat any carbs or glucose. But if you already have more than enough carbs/glucose, your liver instead converts the fructose to fat and stores it. This can lead to fatty liver and somewhat interestingly can also lead to insulin resistance which then makes you worse at processing glucose. Alcohol also gets processed exclusively in your liver and can cause fatty liver, so it is true that juice and beer can do a similar kind of damage.

Anyway, on the bigger point I 100% agree that juice is bad for you. It's sad to see it so often touted as healthy.

EDIT: One thing I do wonder about, people always point to fiber as a reason why fruit is ok but fruit juice isn't. It seems like it would be a lot easier to get people to start taking fiber supplements than to stop eating sugar, so why don't we ever hear that advice?

You're correct and my original post is incorrect with regards to fructose. Thanks for pointing this out - it's better to be wrong but enlightened.

Lustig goes through all the processes here:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

Either way, apple juice and orange juice have about 10-12g carbs per 100g (according to the packaging, in NL). Coca Cola has (not sure) I think, about 11g/100g? So I treat it about the same and drink it rarely.

The only difference is, you can mix up most types of juice 50/50 with tap water and it'll taste good (and if you're thirsty, actually better IMO). Try that with Coca Cola and ... nope :)

I had never heard of glycemic load before today, and I'm always reading articles about nutrition science. It seems like fruit and veg have relatively high glycemic indices, but low glycemic load--which means that they're fine, which makes sense. Who here can imagine a doctor telling anyone on earth not to eat more carrots?

EDIT: I also found this article: http://www.calorieking.com/learnabouts/The-Glycemic-Index-Th... which had this quote: The glycemic load (GL) goes a step further than the GI by taking into account the amount of carbohydrate in a food. A weak point of the GI is that it fails to do this.

For example, carrots have a high GI of 47, but you have to eat a pound and a half of them for there to be a steep rise in blood sugar.

This completely meshes with my experience.

Completely tangential, but I can imagine doctors treating patients complaining of Carotenosis:

Carotenemia or carotenaemia (xanthaemia) is the presence of the orange pigment carotene in blood from excessive intake of carrots or other vegetables containing the pigment resulting in increased serum carotenoids. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carotenosis

carrots are full of water, not to mention roughage, so they don't have high caloric density per unit mass/weight

the glycemic load is precisely articulating the index number adjusted per unit mass to account for stuff like caroots or beets etc.

So basically if you ate de-hydrated fruit or vegetables that will load higher (per unit mass) than stuff full of water...because whater has no cals...so water and starch dilute glycemic index

The glycemic load is calculated by multiplying the glycemic index of a food by the amount of carbs in a 10 gram portion of the food.

In practice, you can dilute glycemic index using fat and protein in addition to water.

And people really don't understand this. For instance, you basically can't find full-fat yogurt in an American grocery store. Instead there's 20 kinds of non-fat yogurt packed with sugar, which have a much higher glycemic load than yogurt with the same amount of sugar and fat would. But they're all advertised as being healthy because they're non-fat. It's crazy.

There's nothing wrong with this except that it probably makes you feel more hungry and eat more. But the blood sugar surge isn't really unhealthy in normal people, it's usually the subsequent behavioral impact (the low that makes you feel hungry) that causes the real harm (ie: the total sugar matters more directly than the glycemic index).

I agree there's nothing wrong with the part quoted. That's an ideal outcome. And the surge of blood sugar concentration from juice wasn't the part I was concerned about (unless it results in a child going into a hyperactive transdimensional shit-fit). The blood sugar crash is the significant part: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypoglycemia#Signs_and_symptom...

Low blood sugar also plays a major part in decision fatigue. Do you make dinner after work or buy something on the way home? Making a healthy dinner is the better decision but right now you want satiety. Do you do the washing or sit in front of the TV? You don't just have decision fatigue, you're out of energy - the real deal.

This is in contrast to a low GI meal where the energy supply is provided over a longer period at a stable rate, providing the stamina to make good decisions and act on them.

The problem is that people can't separate an unbalanced diet from the foods that are throwing them out of balance.

Juice is fine and great. Getting most of your calories from simple sugars like all too many people do (and like juice provides)is bad. Replacing sodas with fruit juice doesn't do much to make your diet better. You should balance your sugars, fats, and proteins.

It's a cloud looking like substance in my juice. Does that mean it's been sitting too long? Fermented apple by chance? Smells almost like alcohol when opening it.

To be specific, I was trying to describe the "tree looking" like thing inside the bottle.

1: http://store.martinellis.com/products/jaj128.shtml

Are you skeptical of "sugar is bad" meme? If you are, not sure how sugar disolved in water is a different.

I recently had to discover this, for any kind of raw food actually, even carrots. Anything 'processed' (either industrial pre-made meals, or even home made sauced/whatever) will tease your mouth and brain in an incomparably different manner. You can eat at least 3 times more of anything if it's dipped into fat/sugar/spices. Without these, your brain will very clearly and very quickly tell you "enough". Even delicious strawberries have enough acid, sour in it to make you sick pretty fast.

My question is if the fibre has to be whole or not. If I put an apple into a high powered blender, it will get pulverized, but I'm not removing any fibre from it the way I would if I were running it through a juicer.

Does the "slowing" factor of the fibre depend on it being in clumps (i.e. a chunk of apple digests slower than apple sauce)?

> slower/evenly absorbed

Also, I'm curious what you mean here by "evenly absorbed." Even in what sense?

Going back to whole fruits the key I found was remembering those lessons as a kid, chew your food. This means even with fruits to make sure you don't just chew two or three times and swallow. That can lead to some gastric problems which turns many off to certain types of fruits. Better is to each vegetables, combined together they can be nearly as sweet tasting without the sugar

For the most part, once you have enough protein in your diet, calories are calories. If you're predisposed to diabetes you're better off getting those calories from low glycemic sources. That doesn't make it easy to avoid too much of the good^Wbad stuff. However, you should also avoid getting more than 100g of sugar a day, though I try to stay under 100g of net carbs/day.

Sugar bound up in fiber (as is the case with natural fruit) is not immediately bioavailable. Your GI tract needs to break down the fiber in order to release the sugar, which takes time. The sugar is absorbed by your small intestine more slowly, causing a gentler glycemic response. This is analogous to 'extended release' medication, where the dose is delivered slowly over a longer period of time.

Separating the sugar from the fiber (as with juicing) means that all the sugar is bioavailable more or less immediately after you consume it, Causing the blood sugar high followed by the insulin spike. Adding fiber to your sugary meal does little to slow this down.

Nutrition threads in HN never fail to crack me up. Excess fiber consumption is exactly reason why I have a juicer, and because it tastes delicious.

Stop scaring people. Try doing some sports or having a walk instead of reading paleo/keto propaganda blogs for a change. Maybe that way you'll all be able to handle sugars just like any other healthy individual does.

Fermenting reduces the sugar in the beverage.The sugar is processed by the cultures.

If nothing else, high and uneven sugar levels are a recipe for getting fat and to get insulin resistance.

Excess glicose floating around in your bloodstream is harmful. You want a constant, baseline level, but the rest should be removed asap.

http://mic.com/articles/88015/what-happens-to-your-brain-on-...