SHARES
“I love taking fruit and vegetable juice for my breakfast. It contains lots of vitamins and antioxidants. What’s more? It tastes good!”, Lin, 33, loves juicing instead of eating fruits and vegetables whole.
In fact, fruit and vegetable juices contains most of the minerals, vitamins, plant compounds, and antioxidants naturally present in whole fruit/vegetable. It is an easy way to obtain large amount of these nutrients in a small cup as it lightens our meal portion. As such, juicing becomes increasingly popular in recent years. Many juice lovers advocate for health benefits of juicing like weight loss, detoxification, and as a supplement. However, is juicing really a healthier choice?
The Juicing Process
During juicing, you remove the solid part of fruits and vegetables from its liquid portion. Common methods of juicing include cold-press and centrifuging. In cold-press, the juicer crushes and squeezes the juice out. Compared to that, centrifuging juicer first grinds and cuts the fruit and vegetable into pulp, and then spins the mixture at high speed to separate its liquid content from solids. Both methods produce juice of similar quality.
Photo by Marco Verch Professional Photography and Speaker’s Photostream from Flickr
The Good And Bad Of Juicing
1. Nutrient Content
It makes sense that blending many fruits and vegetables into a small cup of juice is like condensing all the good nutrients from so many food into one fine meal portion. However, whilst this can be true, but not exactly. If you are not taking enough of certain nutrient or vitamin from your diet alone, it is a good idea to supplement with juice. For instance, taking mixed fruit and vegetable juice can supplement you with vitamin C, vitamin E, selenium, folate, beta carotene, etc.
Having said so, the rule of the thumb is it’s always best to consume whole fruits and vegetables. This is partly because you lose some nutrients, antioxidants and plant compounds in the discarded solid portion of the food. Most importantly, by removing the solid part of food, you are also removing plant fibre which is essential to our health. These plant fibres keep our gut healthy and ease movement of food through our gut. As a result, our digestion and bowel movement improve. This helps prevent constipation and even to some extent bowel cancer.
Likewise, fibre in our diet makes sugar absorption more steady. Hence, we get more sustainable energy throughout the day and less likely to gain weight. This is the reason why fibre is good for our heart and good for preventing diabetes.
2. Weight Loss with Juicing
Many claim that juicing is good for weight control. It actually depends. If you’re not careful with how you consume fruit & vegetable juices, you may end up gaining body weight.
Sugar Content and Fibre in Juice
Indeed, fruit and vegetable juice has sugar content as in sugary drinks. Although juices contain high sugar content too, these sugars are in healthier forms of sugar, fructose and glucose versus processed sugar such as sucrose found in other drinks. Our bodies metabolise processed sugars more quickly than natural sugars, resulting in higher blood sugar spikes after consuming them.
However, without the fibre which is naturally occurring in whole fruit and vegetable, these natural sugars in juices do get broken down and absorbed more readily, negating the lower glycaemic effect.
Also, the additional benefit of fibre is that it gives you feeling of satiety and limits your intake. Without it, you can easily over consume and end up getting more calories than you’re using.
A Balanced Diet during Dieting
Some people may go an extreme of replacing meals with juices only, to lose weight. This is dangerous to health because skipping meals and taking less than enough calories actually put our body under stress. If practised for a short time, our stress hormone actually makes us feel strong and energetic with less appetite. However, if prolonged, our body wears down and the same stress hormone now makes us feel very differently. We would feel tired with a low mood. Our body would now crave for high calorie food. In return, we easily overeat, become slothful and hence, gain weight.
On top of these, drinking juice only cause many nutrient deficiencies. Our body lack nutrients which can only be obtained from other classes of food. For instance, fat-soluble vitamin A, D, E & K, essential amino acids from animal protein, polyunsaturated fat, etc. Hence, we feel sick, fatigued, experience muscle weakness, and may even get ill with diarrhoea, anaemia, night blindness and so on.
Photo by Edisoninstitute Nutrition from Flickr
Conclusion
Fruit and vegetable juices contain high amount of carbohydrate, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and plant compounds that are good for our health. Yet, it is still best to consume whole fruit/vegetable due to its higher nutritional content and presence of dietary fibre. Also, watch out for the sugar content in juices and take in moderation with a balanced diet. Last but not least, enjoy your healthy and tasty drink!
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References:
1. Brown MJ. Juicing: good or bad [healthline]. Healthline Media. 2020. (Available from: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/juicing-good-or-bad; last updated on 2019 Oct 4; last accessed on 2020 May 22)
2. Zeratsky K. Is juicing better than eating whole fruits or vegetables [MayoClinic]? Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research. 2020. (Available from: https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/expert-answers/juicing/faq-20058020; last updated on 2019 Oct 1; last accessed on 2020 May 22)
by Chang Xian
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