Sweet and sour juice best caters to people's tastes, always making it irresistible, but have you noticed the potential harms of drinking juice? Traditional Chinese Medicine reminds us that juice has five major dangers, are you still daring to drink it?
Juice Danger 1: Juice can cause anemia
Fructose also hinders the body's absorption of copper. A lack of copper affects the production of hemoglobin, leading to anemia. A retrospective study of over 100 anemic children at the Einstein Medical Center found that more than 80% had a habit of drinking juice.
Domestic survey data shows that children who frequently drink juice beverages show polarized physical development, either being too thin or too overweight. Due to the high sugar content in juice drinks, children can obtain a significant amount of calories from them, affecting their intake of regular meals. Over the long term, this inevitably leads to insufficient intake of protein, certain vitamins, minerals, and trace elements, impacting physical and intellectual development.
Therefore, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children aged 1-6 drink no more than 4-6 ounces of juice per day (one ounce is 28 ml); for children aged 7-18, no more than 8-12 ounces.
Juice Danger 2: Artificial colors affect IQ
Whether it's fruit-flavored drinks or low-concentration juice beverages, artificial colors are often used. Vibrant colors visually link the beverage to fruit in the consumer's mind. When the juice content is too low to give the drink a rich fruit color, inexpensive artificial colors are the best choice.
The harm of artificial colors to the human body, especially children, has long been studied in modern nutrition.
In 2008, researchers from the University of Southampton in the UK surveyed 100 children and found that artificial synthetic colors affect children's intellectual development. Children who often drink juice and drink less water often experience poor appetite, hyperactivity, irritable temper, and are insufficient in height and weight.
Seven chemical additives, including Tartrazine and Sunset Yellow, can lower children's IQ by 5 points. Tartrazine is a yellow food coloring found in pea puree and marshmallows, and its use in foods and drinks for children under 3 is prohibited. Quinoline Yellow, on the other hand, is a food coloring often added to fruit drinks, sodas, and cold capsules. The preservative sodium benzoate, widely used in fruit drinks, is also harmful to the body.
An excessive amount of colorings entering a child's body can easily accumulate on their immature digestive tract mucosa, causing decreased appetite and indigestion, interfering with the function of various enzymes in the body, and adversely affecting metabolism and physical development.
Obviously, fruit-flavored drinks made with food additives like artificial colors, sweeteners, acidulants, and flavorings, which contain no actual juice, have almost no nutritional value of fruit.
Juice Danger 3: Higher calories than soda
According to US media reports, more and more doctors, scientists, and public health officials believe that drinking pure natural juice is not necessarily beneficial to health. The obesity caused by drinking natural juice is no different from that caused by drinking sodas like Coke or sweet alcoholic beverages.
A glass of juice combines the sugar from multiple fruits. If calculated by equivalent volume, the calories in juice can even be higher than in soda.
You might not think that a 240ml glass of pure juice generally has about 100 calories, which is even higher than Coke, which is widely considered an "obesity drink."
Data from the US Department of Agriculture shows that a glass of fresh orange juice contains 112 calories, apple juice 114 calories, and grape juice 152 calories. In the same volume, Coca-Cola contains 97 calories and Pepsi contains 100 calories.
Usually, a person feels full after eating one apple, but it takes four apples to make a very small amount of juice, and drinking it all doesn't make you feel full. But this very glass of juice contains far more calories than one apple. This is even more true for juice drinks, as many of them have added sugar. Experts point out that there are currently numerous studies on juice and juice beverages internationally, and many of these studies aim to protect children from type 2 diabetes.
Juice Danger 4: Get you hooked on sweet drinks in 8 days
Some experts worry that children who drink large amounts of sweet beverages will develop a preference for sweet foods as they grow up. A 2004 study in the Netherlands found that children aged 8 to 10, after drinking sugary orange juice for 8 consecutive days, preferred sweeter drinks. They also drank more because they were accustomed to the sweet taste of the orange juice.
Juice Danger 5: More likely to increase fat storage
Juice contains a large amount of fructose. Experts point out that consuming a large amount of fructose increases the risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes because fructose is more easily converted by the liver into fat than glucose.
Many research reports show that juice is beneficial to health and can reduce weight. In 2008, a survey of 3618 children aged 2 to 11 found that children who drank at least 6 ounces (about 177 ml) of juice per day were lighter than those who did not drink juice at all, and had more vitamins and minerals in their bodies. However, many experts believe that this data only reflects a correlation between juice and a healthy diet, not a causal relationship.
Experts say: Children who drink more juice are more likely to eat breakfast, and children who eat breakfast are lighter than those who do not.
From the above, it is clear that delicious juice poses great harm to human health, so one should be cautious when drinking it. Juice has five major dangers, are you still daring to drink it?