Fruit juice

Control sugar: Limit fruit juice intake to once a day

juice

The appalling diets of the nation’s teenagers have been exposed by a report which shows that many are already putting themselves at risk of diabetes, obesity and heart disease. And last night health experts warned that fruit juice – seen by many as a healthy option – should be drunk no more than once a day because of its high sugar content.

Girls and boys aged 11 to 19 typically eat 42 per cent too much sugar and 14 per cent too much saturated fat.

Only 10 per cent of teenage boys and 7 per cent of teenage girls manage to get their five portions of fruit and veg a day.
Adults do not fare a great deal better. Only a third get their five-a-day and the diet of the average adult exceeds recommended sugar limits by 10 per cent.

The report, the Government’s National Diet and Nutrition Survey, also shows that children aged ten and under typically exceed the recommended daily limit of sugar by 34 per cent.
Their main sources of sugar are fruit juice, soft drinks, cereal bars, biscuits and cakes.

It reveals that adults are eating half the recommended weekly amount of oily fish – which protects against heart disease, cancer and dementia – while teenagers and children only manage a fifth of this amount.

The survey, which involved 4,000 adults and children between 2008 and 2012, says 48 per cent of men and women have above-normal levels of cholesterol, putting them at higher risk of heart disease and strokes.
Simon Gillespie, chief executive of the British Heart Foundation, said: ‘This study paints a clear picture that too many people, especially children, are not eating healthily enough.

‘This puts them at greater risk of coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes and obesity now or in the future. There is no magic bullet to solve this problem. Parents, schools, restaurants, retailers and the food industry all have a role to play.

‘But the Government can fire the first shot by implementing a 9pm watershed ban on junk food marketing to stop children being bombarded with advertising about products high in fats, salts and sugars. We also need stringent regulation to protect children from online marketing tactics.’

There is also concern that policies such as the NHS’s Change4Life programme are having little effect because only healthy adults and children pay any attention.

The initiative, which has cost taxpayers £65million since its launch in January 2009, consists of television adverts, a website, a helpline and locally-run sports clubs all aimed at curbing the obesity epidemic.
The scheme also produces posters for schools, community clubs, GP surgeries and hospitals urging the public to eat their five- a-day, take regular exercise and cut portion sizes.

Dr Ian Campbell, of the National Obesity Forum, said: ‘In spite of a raft of measures designed to encourage us to eat a healthier diet we are, as a nation, failing miserably.

‘If we really care about the health of our children we need to take far more decisive action. ‘We need to regulate the food industry to make healthy choices easier, more attractive and cheaper.’

Dr Alison Tedstone, the chief nutritionist at Public Health England, the Government agency that released the report, said fruit juice was a good option as one of the recommended five fruit portions a day.
But she warned: ‘It should only be drunk once a day and with a meal because it can be high in sugar.’

In March, Dame Sally Davies, the Chief Medical Officer, said the Government may have to introduce a sugar tax to help make the nation’s diet more healthy.

Later that month the World Health Organisation urged the public to cut their sugar intake by half to six teaspoons a day.
Yesterday Labour MP Keith Vaz called for food labels to include the numbers of teaspoons of sugar in all products.

Source: daily mail

UK govt health adviser warns against drinking orange juice

Contrary to the popular beliefs about the health benefits of fruit juices, the UK government’s leading adviser on obesity has said people should stop taking orange juice due to high sugar content in it.

Professor Susan Jebb, head of diet and obesity research at the Medical Research Council’s Human Nutrition Research unit in Cambridge, UK, says orange juice has as much sugar as Coca-Cola and warned that fruit juice should not be counted as part of a healthy five-a-day diet.

“Fruit juice isn’t the same as intact fruit and it has got as much sugar as many classical sugar drinks. It is also absorbed very fast so by the time it gets to your stomach your body doesn’t know whether it’s Coca-Cola or orange juice, frankly,” she told The Sunday Times.

The development comes after the health experts urged the food industry to cut 30 per cent from processed in the UK while warning that sugar has become as dangerous as alcohol or tobacco.

They also claim that reduction in sugar could shave 100 calories from each person’s daily intake and reverse the UK’s growing obesity epidemic.

While many branded fruit juice contain as little as 10 percent fruit juice with lots of added sugar, several research has linked intake of sugary sodas, fruit juices with an elevated risk of obesity, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes.

Professor Susan Jebb, who said she had herself stopped drinking orange juice also asked people to dilute it with water and drink if they cannot quit juice.

“I have to say it is a relatively easy thing to give up. Swap it and have a piece of real fruit. If you are going to drink it, you should dilute it”, she added.

Source: Zee news

 

Eating whole fruit lowers risk of diabetes than its juices

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Eating whole fresh fruit, especially blueberries, grapes, apples and pears, will lower risk of type 2 diabetes, but drinking more fruit juice has the opposite effect

Eating more whole fresh fruit, especially blueberries, grapes, apples and pears, is linked to a lower risk of type 2 diabetes, but drinking more fruit juice has the opposite effect, says a study.

British, US and Singaporean researchers pored over data from three big health investigations that took place in the United States, spanning a quarter of a century in all.

More than 187,000 nurses and other professional caregivers were enrolled.

Their health was monitored over the following years, and they regularly answered questionnaires on their eating habits, weight, smoking, physical activity and other pointers to lifestyle.

Around 6.5 percent of the volunteers developed diabetes during the studies.

People who ate at least two servings each week of certain whole fruits, especially blueberries, grapes and apples, reduced their risk of type 2 diabetes by as much as 23 percent compared to those who ate less than one serving per month.

“Our findings provide novel evidence suggesting certain fruits may be especially beneficial for lower diabetes risk,” said Qi Sun, an assistant professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.

On the other hand, those who consumed one or more servings of fruit juice each day saw their risk of the disease increase by as much as 21 percent.

Swapping three servings of juice per week for whole fruits resulted in a seven-percent reduction in risk, although there was no such difference with strawberries and cantaloupe melon.

“Greater consumption of specific whole fruits, particularly blueberries, grapes, and apples, was significantly associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes, whereas greater fruit juice consumption was associated with a higher risk,” the authors say in the paper.

The paper, published on Friday by the British Medical Journal (BMJ), says further work is needed to to explore this “significant” difference.

It speculates that, even if the nutritional values of whole fruit and fruit juice are similar, the difference lies with the fact that one food is a semi-solid and the other a liquid.

“Fluids pass through the stomach to the intestine more rapidly than solids even if nutritional content is similar,” says the paper.

“For example, fruit juices lead to more rapid and larger changes in serum [blood] levels of glucose and insulin than whole fruits.”

The study also points to evidence that some kinds of fruit have a beneficial effect for health.

Berries and grapes, for instance, have compounds called anthocyanins which have been found to lower the risk of heart attacks.

But, say the authors, how or even whether this also applies to diabetes risks is for now unclear.

The investigation looked at data from the Nurses` Health Study, which ran from 1984-2008; the Nurses` Health Study II (1991-2009); and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study (1986-2008).

Ten kinds of fruit were used in the questionnaire: grapes or raisins; peach, plums or apricots; prunes; bananas; cantaloupe melon; apples or pears; oranges; grapefruit; strawberries; and blueberries.

The fruit juices identified in the questionnaire were apple, orange, grapefruit and “other.”

Source: http://zeenews.india.com/news/health/healthy-eating/whole-fruit-deters-diabetes-juice-boosts-risk-study_23641.html