Is Fruit Juice Really that Bad?

such as grape juice, something that isn’t fructose. wouldnt sipping on this throughout the day for carbs be alright–as it is not purely empty calories

The commercial brands are. Try the real kind, where its just some squeezed grape juice and some water added. Nothing else.

However, natural or not, fruit juice will still spike your blood sugar levels, something you don’t want to do all day long. I’d go with slow digesting carbs, like oatmeal, and even beans. Save the grape juice for your workouts.

The only time I would suggest grape juice is if you have a hard time eating enough calories and you need to stimulate your hunger some more.

well, if it’s natural grape juice, meaning you made it, I don’t see how it could be bad

What makes you think grape juice doesn’t have fructose?

http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts/fruits-and-fruit-juices/1923/2

I use orange juice during workouts and its fine. My energy levels stay up and Ive no gut. Plus I can say Im on juice :slight_smile:

I’m like 99% sure that all fruits contain Fructose. Most juices are pretty much pasteurized sugar water & a little vitamins. I think you’re better off eating the whole fruit instead. Regardless of all that, it really comes down to your own calorie needs & weight gain/loss goals.

Yes, all fruits have approximately 50% of their sugar content as fructose when figuring the total of both fructose and half of the sucrose content (as sucrose is a disaccharide combining one glucose with one fructose.)

The principal problem with fruit juice is the nature of man.

A person can readily eat, say, a large apple and psychologically feel that that was a good snack. This would be about 100 calories’ worth or 25 g of sugar (for some reason, the USDA Nutrient Database can’t be accessed right now, so I don’t have the exact figure)

However, if at all thirsty and instead having the juice, the same person would probably feel deprived if not chugging down perhaps two, three, or even four times as much sugar.

The secondary problem, which is only potential, is that it is not desirable to derive a high percentage of daily calories from fructose. This is not relevant if consuming only a small amount of fruit juice.

However, “small amount” really is a small amount. For example, if you’ve seen those tiny cans of grapefruit juice that are sold, that is in fact a reasonable serving size.

i must have been massively misinformed then–i was convinced that grape juice was an optimal fruit juice as it was mainly glucose–guess not!

That rumor may have been started back in the Muscle Media 2000 days. They had an article announcing that grape juice was the thing to drink when taking creatine because it was (supposedly) so high in glucose.

But it’s not the case.

However it’s been a common belief in bb’ing ever since, it seems.

Now, the controversial circumstances of having natural fructose.

Would you suggest removing fruits from your diet??? Of course not, but, any opinions from people who know nutrition inside and out?

fruits are much different from fruit juices, so fruit is fine

so fructose is turned into liver glycogen. does it end up being ‘nonempty’ calories–as in calories used to build muscle. if not, fructose is really worthless

vanilla whey w/ some not-from-concentrate OJ is possibly the tastiest post workout concoction in history. that a slice or two of wheat bread and i’m good to go pwo.

Fruit juice contains lots of fructose, which can only be metabolized in the liver. If the liver glycogen stores are full (which they usually are, except before you eat breakfast), then the fructose is converted to adipose tissue - i.e. fat.

By drinking fruit juice, you also obviously lose all of the fiber in fruit. You might also lose some of the micronutrients in the skin, if the skin doesn’t get completely crushed and/or is filtered out, but I’m only speculating about that.

Another issue is the amount of fructose that you ingest when you eat fruit vs. drink fruit juice. You might be satisfied to eat one orange, which might have 10 grams of fructose or so (I’m guessing on this), but if you were to drink orange juice, you might easily drink 20 fluid ounces of it (after all, it’s healthy, right?! the commercials said so! so give me more OJ!). That would be a LOT of fructose - we’re talking 45 grams or so. Your body’s ability to deal with this amount of fructose varies by the time of the day, what you’ve eaten, etc. but you can rest assured that a lot of it is probably being converted to adipose tissue.

Personally, I would avoid fruit juice altogether and stick to water. There’s no reason you can’t eat real fruit, which has more nutritional benefits and less drawbacks. That’s not to say that a small amount of fruit juice is particularly dangerous, but it’s very easy to go overboard on the fruit juice without even realizing it.

By the way, listen to Bill Roberts. He sounds like he knows what he’s talking about.