janos comments on Procedural Knowledge Gaps - Less Wrong

126 Post author: Alicorn 08 February 2011 03:17AM

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Comment author: Conuly 09 February 2011 03:04:02AM 4 points [-]

One orange is one or two servings of fruit... but a serving of orange juice is four oranges.

You're getting all the sugar and calories of four oranges (4 - 8 servings of fruit!) without any of the fiber.

Fruit juices aren't exactly the devil, but they're not especially nutritious either.

Comment author: janos 09 February 2011 04:57:01AM 2 points [-]

But I drink orange juice with pulp; then the fiber is no longer absent, though I guess it's reduced. The vitamins and minerals are still present, though, aren't they?

Comment author: Conuly 09 February 2011 05:53:30AM 1 point [-]

Are you making this juice yourself by chucking a whole orange in the blender and then drinking it?

In that case, you probably - I don't know - have enough fiber that it's not that much different from just eating an orange, and fresh juices are said to be more nutritious than bought anyway. (Admittedly, the people who say this are people who own juicers, but that's probably beside the point.)

But if you're buying it from the store, then... no. It's still mostly just sugar with a little bit of texture floating in it.

If you're not gulping it by the gallon daily I wouldn't worry about it, but it's part of your healthy balanced breakfast - and not a huge part :)

Comment author: Vladimir_M 09 February 2011 05:08:43AM *  1 point [-]

You still get an enormous amount of sugar, with or without the pulp.

Regarding the vitamins and minerals, my understanding is that you need a certain amount of each of those to avoid various nasty and fatal diseases, and an amount over a certain limit can be poisonous, but there isn't any real evidence that anything in-between makes a difference. From what I understand, it also requires a very extreme diet (by modern developed world standards) to develop provably harmful micronutrient deficiencies.

(One exception might be vitamin D if the winters are especially dark and cold where you live, but you won't get that one from fruit juice.)