Friday Fitness Fun Fact
“Two and half servings of fruit and vegetables in each glass.” “No Sugar Added.” “High in Fiber.” “Loaded with Antioxidants.” These are all healthy-sounding claims for fruit and vegetable juices and supplements, but are these fruits and veggies from a bottle really just as good as eating the real thing?
It’s better than Kool Aid, for sure, but eating whole fruits and vegetables is always better than depending entirely on juices for your fruit and vegetable requirements.If you still choose to use juice substitutes for the real thing - it’s important to consider that they contain all the calories from the original fruits and vegetables, but without the bulk to satisfy your hunger. This is true even if you have your own juicer in your house (thanks, Jack LaLanne!), although at least with your own juicer you don’t have to worry about additional sugar, corn syrup, and calories. Overall, watch your serving sizes with fruit juices. Ounce for ounce most of them have as many calories as cola, up to 220 calories for 16 ounces. Yes, it's better for you than flavored carbonated water sweetened with corn syrup, but it's still a concentrated source of calories, too.
Bottom line: Consuming fruit and vegetables as juices or drinks is better than consuming no vegetables at all. Although we always prefer that athletes meet their daily requirements by eating fruits and vegetables instead of just drinking their juices, we understand people are busy and it’s not always possible to munch through those servings. Drinks like original V8, tomato juice, V8 Fusion, and the like are reasonably good substitutes because they are mainly blended fruits and vegetables (though some contain a lot of sodium, too). Be careful to read the labels on any fruit or vegetable juices, though, make sure they contain 100% real juice. And realize that it’s very easy to consume a lot of calories with fruit and vegetable drinks because they’ve removed the fiber that makes the whole foods more filling. And with the widespread availability of actual produce as well as high-quality fruit and vegetable drinks, there’s little need for concentrates and powders.
By Jennifer Sommer, RD and Alicia Kendig, RD, CSSD
