100% fruit juices and weight: pay attention to portions, especially for children

Drink fruit juices can be useful to counteract the overweight? And is it good for the health of adults and children?

The limits of sugar

The questions have no simple answer. It is definitely not good to drink drinks and juices with added sugars in order not to increase the income of this element too much the guidelines of the World Health Organization they recommend that it does not exceed 10% of a person's total caloric intake per day (in a 2000 kcal diet it would be 50 grams).
How to consider for i 100% juices formed only from fruit, but which naturally contain fruit sugars?
A recent study conducted by a Canadian and American team, examined previous scientific works on the topic to understand how much the intake of fruit juices (only 100%) affected the final weight calculation of children and adults.

The results

The results, just published on JAMA Pediatricsthey showed aAssociation between an increase in fruit juice portions and an increase in body weight, calculated in BMI (Body Mass Index). Especially for the little ones, increasing the dose of fruit juice perhaps with the intention of making children eat the correct daily portion of fruit did not seem to be a good idea.

I study

Research included 42 scientific articles: 17 prospective cohort studies on children (for a total of 45,851 children), 25 studies on adults (268,095 adults). The average age of the children was 8 years with an average duration of studies of 4 years. The average age of adults was 48 years with a duration of 3 years and, for randomized clinical trials (experimental studies in which participants are randomly assigned to two groups, the experimental group receiving treatment and the control group /comparison) average age of 42 years and duration of 6 weeks.
Participants were provided with 100% fruit juice in the form of pomegranate, berries, black cherry, apple, citrus fruit or grapes. The comparison group had a standard diet of only water or sugar-sweetened drinks with zero-calorie sweeteners.
The standard portion considered for juices was of 237 mla full glass. In Italy usually cardboard bricks are from 200ml (in the table below is the food composition of the most common fruit juices).

For adults, portions are what matters most

The results demonstrated a positive association between the consumption of 100% fruit juices and the change (slight, of 0.03) in BMI, as written, especially for children under 8 years old.
For adults it depended from the caloric intake of juices (so how many portions were consumed). In particular less than 1 portionand juice day was associated with a significant reduction of body weight And more than 2 servings per day, however, implied a I earn in body weight. This may be due to the greater health benefits conferred by the vitamins, antioxidants and polyphenols found in some 100% fruit juices at lower doses and the risks of harm at higher doses, due to excess sugar.
No significant difference was observed between the types of juice, but a tendency to support weight loss appeared for juices based on superfoods (pomegranate, goji berries, blueberry, black cherry and currant), while those based on apple, citrus fruits and grapes were more associated with weight gain.

US and Italian guidelines

Nearly 50% of American children and adolescents consume at least 1 serving of fruit juice per day, with younger children having the highest rates of consumption, the study authors noted. And in the US, juices are often offered to meet daily fruit recommendations, also because the dietary guidelines for Americans allow 100% fruit juices as a fruit portion and recommend limiting added sugars, without including those naturally present in juices.
The Italian guidelines suggest do not consider them a substitute for water and do not add them as a drink to your snack, as children often do, because this leads to an increase in the daily sugar and calorie content. And they underline how they cannot be considered, at least systematically or to a prevalent extent, a substitute for fruit and vegetables.

What to do

Green light therefore to the consumption of 100% fruit juices because they also contain a significant quantity of minerals and vitamins (including potassium, folic acid and vitamin C) and bioactive compounds compared to other sugary drinks, but with great attention to quantity. However healthy a juice made of 100% fruit is, it is always preferable to choose the whole fruitif possible even with the peel, because the fibers balance the absorption of sugar in the liver, they yield sated for longer and contain fewer calories for the same weight.
To chew
finally, an exercise that affects the feeling of hunger so I notice that liquid calories have a greater impact on weight gain than solid calories, even for quantity easily overcome when drinking.

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