Whole fruit or Juice?

Whole fruit or Juice?

Last weekend I bought juice from a Just Fresh stall at Buffalo Mall in Naivasha and it was amazing!!! The guy also said that I could write about it and they wouldn’t sue me so I think am not in trouble.  One of the things I loved about it was the amount of real fruit they put in it and they made it as I watched. It essentially had half a cup or more of real strawberries, fresh milk, some honey-I think, and yogurt. Super healthy especially because it was not sieved. But not all of the juices we drink are like that. Most of the times we don’t even know what goes into them.

How can we get the most of the fruits we buy? Are fruits healthier whole or in juice form?

When juicing, most of the times the skin is separated from the juice to get a smooth consistency. That’s one of the things we do wrong. The skin is the part that comes into contact with the sun when the fruit is growing and it’s the part that normally develops color as it interacts with different wavelengths of light. These colors contain Phytochemicals which are chemical compounds that occur naturally in plants. Some are responsible for color and other properties, such as the deep purple of blueberries and the smell of garlic. These are very useful antioxidants that help our bodies prevent and fight diseases. Another thing that we lose when we separate the skin from the juice is the fiber which we need for good health. Fiber helps reduce cholesterol in our bodies, helps us feel full for longer, prevents constipation and a lot more.

The pulp is the inner, juicy part of a fruit or vegetable. When we juice fruits, this part is almost always thrown away. This not only wastes fiber but it also makes us lose important flavonoids which are a family of phytochemicals. Take an orange for example, the orange colored part has most of the vitamin C and the white part that we throw away after we squeeze the juice is full of flavonoids.

Is drinking juice unhealthy?

Of course not. You can have your fruit the way you like it but if you want to get all the health benefits of the fruit, I would recommend that you do not throw away the skin and the pulp unless the skin is not edible.

While we are at getting the best out of our fruits, try and eat fruits with different colors because each color in a fruit gives us different phytochemicals. An adult needs a minimum of two whole fruits for good health and it is more than ok to go crazy and mix the colors.

One of the advantages of juicing is that you can mix it up and make it interesting. The one thing to remember though is that juices count as calories too and you should count them as you calculate your daily calories. If you are trying to lose weight, eating a whole fruit would help you eat less calories because we tend to take larger volumes of juice than fruit. That is, if you squeeze one orange in a cup and put it next to one whole orange, the whole orange will be more in volume and if you eat the whole orange you will be fuller than if you drank the juice.

One last thing, you get more health benefits when you juice your own fruits as compared to buying commercial juices. If you have no choice but to buy commercial juices, try and get the ones that say 100% on the package. If it is apple juice for instance, the package should read 100% apple juice. Those will have more nutrition benefits than the ones that read juice blend.