Is Fruit Juice good? (Part 1 of 2)

Researchers at Tulane University showed that eating fruit helps to prevent diabetes, while drinking fruit juices increases risk (Diabetes Care, July 2008). They analyzed diets of 71,346 women enrolled in the Nurses Study. Increasing intake of whole fruit by three servings a day lowered risk for diabetes by 18%, while a serving of fruit juice each day increased risk by 18%.

The food that we eat passes into our stomach and must remain there until it is turned into a liquid soup. No solid food is allowed to pass into our intestines. This delay prevents blood sugar levels from rising too high. However, sugar in drinks can pass directly into our intestines to cause an immediate rise in blood sugar. This can cause sugar to stick to the surface of cell membranes and damage them to cause the side effects of diabetes which include blindness, deafness, heart attacks, strokes, and so forth. It makes no difference whether the sugared drink is "junk food" such as a soft drink, or a supposedly healthful fruit juice.

If drinking fruit juice alone is bad to health, what about if we drink fruit juice while eating other foods?

Continue to Part 2...

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