Some Notes on Juice

During the Sometimes Foods/Always Foods Activity Session, your children were taught that juice is a sometimes food. This post discusses several reasons why.

In my first week at Armour I immediately noticed that none of the children were bringing juice with their snacks. This made me incredibly happy. Then I realized that the absence of juice in the classes was due to environmental concerns over the packaging, which also made me happy, except that I realized I would have to tell you the truth about juice after all.

First off, the Recommended Daily Intake (RDI) of fruit juice for children is 6oz.

Let's see what that looks like.

six ounces - it looks like it would last most kids about six seconds, at which point they'd probably ask for more

 Now, before we continue, it should be noted juices aren't necessarily "bad" for you. Juice can be very good some of the time. Allow me to speak briefly of the recent corporate trend of offering "2 x concentrated!" laundry detergent - because juice is kind of like that. You wouldn't use a "regular" amount of that laundry detergent to wash your clothes all the time, because the stress on your clothes would be immense and they would become weathered, faded and degraded in the process. Most juice has a comparable effect on the human body. Even the juices that claim to be healthy, organic or packed with antioxidants are actually harmful to the body when ingested too frequently. What's more, the juice industry has raised the sugar and sodium content of its products since you were a kid, and misinformation abounds claiming that a glass or more of juice a day is actually good for you.

The truth is grimmer. In fact, children who drink more than two sweetened fruit juice beverages a week significantly increase their risk of type II diabetes. Luckily, good science has been indicating this for some time and the knowledge is finally becoming mainstream.

Some recommended tips include watering the juice down (slowly), buying less juice, and encouraging water consumption.

What I would personally recommend, especially if your child has grown really attached to juice is to reinforce the association between food and feelings. Just let them keep drinking it, and after the next inevitable sugar-crash ask them if they think their low energy level has anything to do with the juice they drank earlier.

     - Nicholas

References:

Odegaard, A., Woon-Puay, K., Arakawa, K., Yu, M., & Pereira, M. (2010). Soft Drink and Juice Consumption and Risk of Physician-diagnosed Incident Type 2 Diabetes. American Journal of Epidemiology, 171(6), 701-708. doi:10.1093/aje/kwp452.