Orange or Orange juice? Which is better for you… Decoding the health benefits

New Delhi: Fruit juice Vs Whole fruit has been a long-held debate among fruit lovers as proponents of one counter the other and vice-versa. Fruits are assumed to be power-packed with essential nutrients and minerals we require in our lives and so do the fruit juices because they are nothing but a by-product of fruits.

In today’s times, fruit juices present more convenient method of consuming nutrients and many youngsters prefer juice over fruits.

However, there is a catch when it comes to health benefit. Juicing fruits provides you with instant dose of vitamins, minerals and anti-oxidants making it easily available for absorption by body but takes away its fiber content. Fiber constitute an important part of fruit and help in boosting digestion, controlling blood sugar and lowering cholesterol.

Making The Right Choice

Satyendra Garg, a senior IPS officer (1987 batch) shares many valuable insight and observations into the fruit vs juice debate.

He always prefers taking a glass of fruit juice than tea, coffee or milk either in his daily routine or on official tours. Often, he ended up gulping few glasses of fruit juices than eating fruits, owing to wide range of juices.

However, he has learnt (via study & research) that eating a fruit is always better than having fruit juice and there are very solid reasons to justify it.

In fact, the sweetest thing available in nature is fructose which is found in fruits like mango, orange, apple, sugarcane, pineapple and many more. Earlier, there was limited availability of fructose across the world, so the consumption was also less.

“Things changed mostly in 20th century when there was a large increase in sugar plantations and making of sugar. 1960s saw the advent of High Fructose Corn Syrup, HFCS. This increased the fructose consumption to about 100 pounds in the USA by the end of the 20th century and resulted in massive increase in obesity, diabetes, Alzheimer and diseases of heart, liver and pancreas, writes senior IPS officer in leading nutrition portal.

Why Fruit has edge over Juice

When you eat orange or any other fruit, you also consume fiber and this serves as antidote to fructose. Eating fruit is always limited as chewing takes time and digestion is delayed because of the accompanying fiber.

With the advent of juice extraction two things have happened.

Fiber is chopped off and allows one to gulp fruit juice in one go. Also, while eating you can 1 or 2 oranges while in juice, you can take orange juice made of 5-6 oranges.

Large quantity of fruit juice does more harm than good

Satyendra Garg further elaborates, Taking large quantities of fruit juice is harmful for us. There are mainly three reasons for that:

i) When fruit is eaten, absorption of fructose in it is gradual as fiber slows its journey to the liver.

ii) More important reason is that consumption of fruits is always less in comparison to juice.

iii) In liquid form, the fructose reaches the liver almost immediately and swarms it.

As is well-known, fructose can only be metabolised by the liver and no other part of the human body. Therefore, large quantity of fructose makes the work of the liver extremely difficult.

“If fructose exceeds the manageable capacity of liver, it gets converted into fat and results in non-alcoholic fatty liver, NAFLD, nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, accumulation of visceral fat, diabetes, obesity and diseases of liver, pancreas and heart,” says Garg.

Data shows that non-alcoholic fatty liver has become one of the biggest epidemic in the world, affecting large populations across the world. This has affected developed and developing nations alike.

India also has a large population suffering NAFLD, diabetes, obesity and diseases of heart, liver and pancreas. Therefore, it is the call of the hour to say NO to fruit juices and go with a more healthy option i.e. eating limited quantity of fruits.