Juice Causes Diabetes
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photo credit: amberbow92
Yes, you read the title correctly. I’m sure this is going to upset some people but the truth is the truth. Juice causes diabetes. If you are a fan of juice and are into it for what you thought were its health benefits then you might be feeling like scrolling down and leaving me a nasty comment right about now. Hold that thought my friend. If you’ve read just a few of my other health related articles:
- Talk the Talk, Walk the Walk
- Misinformation and Misperceptions about Meat
- Make One Easy Change and Lose Weight
- The Best Diet for You
- Is Cardio Necessary for Fat Loss?
- Are You a Victim of the Great Cholesterol Con?
- Miss Breakfast at Your Peril!
You would know that I wouldn’t throw a statement like “Juice causes diabetes” around lightly. Take a moment to read this article. After I’ve presented you with some information you may or may not be aware of you might have a change of heart about that nasty comment you were planning. If not, then that is ok to.
What do I mean when I say juice?
To start with when I say “juice” I’m referring to the juice you’re buying from both the commercialized over the counter juice bar and from your local supermarket. I am specifically not referring to any juice you may be having after cutting up fresh organic fruit and vegetables, juicing them and immediately drinking the resultant freshly made juice.
How does juice cause diabetes?
Let me break it down for you. If you were to go visit your doctor and have them check your blood sugar levels they will look primarily at the level of glucose in your blood. However, glucose is just one form or type of sugar that is in your blood. There are several other types of sugar. One of which is Fructose, which as the word suggests is a sugar found in fruit.
The catch is Fructose doesn’t have much of an impact upon your blood glucose levels. And your doctor isn’t checking your body’s level of Fructose. What’s more, research has shown that the number one sugar that causes diabetes is Fructose! That’s right. Sugar from fruit is the number one pro-diabetes sugar.
So next time you go to drink some commercially processed and produced juice or consider giving it to your children, stop. Fruit juice may be taking you and your children down the slippery slope to diabetes. That may sound a little alarmist to you. Which is fair enough. I’m sure for many it might be a bit of a shock.
Lets put this into perspective
Consider your ancestors. No more then a couple hundred years ago if you didn’t live close to the equator where the weather is good for year round fruit production you didn’t eat all that much fruit. If your ancestors originated anywhere outside the small equatorial band then your body is not adapted to eating fruit year round.
There were no trains, planes or global shipping using cold storage methods to ship low priced fruit all over the world year round. This goes back to the idea of what constitutes a healthy diet. If the concept of eating what your body is genetically adapted to is a new one for you then you will want to read my article - A Healthy Diet Means Eating What Your Body is Adapted To.
Now think of drinking juice. I love apples. So if I were to make a big glass of apple juice I’d probably have to juice about four or five apples. That means I’ve removed all the skin, the fiber and if we are talking modern processing methods I’ve removed all the vitamins and minerals as well. What is left is essentially Fructose water. Also known as sugar water.
Have you ever eaten four or five apples in less then a minute? I’d be surprised if you have. The problem is, that is what you are doing when you drink a glass of juice. Only there is no fiber to slow the rate of sugar absorption into your blood. If you know something about the Glycemic Index you would know that things like fat and fiber slow the rate of absorption of sugar from the food you’ve eaten into your blood. Thus effectively reducing the G.I of those foods.
What drink is good for you?
If you want to juice your own fresh organic fruit and vegetables that is a good thing. Just make sure you drink it right away. Otherwise the nutrient value degrades very quickly and you’ll end up with regular sugar water. Also if you love eating fruit like I do then make sure you have some nuts like almonds, walnuts, or pecans with your fruit. Between the fiber in the fruit and the good fat in the nuts the rate of absorption of the sugar in the fruit will be sufficiently slowed. That way you’ll get a nice steady release of energy instead of a sudden spike followed by an equally sudden crash. At which point you’re probably going to reach for more sugar and fake energy from things like coffee and just go around in an unhealthy circle.
Now lets check out my favorite drink. Water. There was a time when I disliked the taste of water. But then I did some research and decided that I had to drink a decent amount of it every single day. Surprisingly it wasn’t long before I got into a serious habit of just drinking water and nothing else. Right now I have a 1ltr glass stein of water on my desk in front of me. Most days I drink about 3ltrs. When I exercise or if it’s summer I often drink a lot more.
How much water should I be drinking?
How much water you should be drinking each day depends on your bodyweight. Take your weight in pounds and divide it by two. That is how much water in ounces you should be drinking each day, minimum. If you do things in liters and kilograms then take your body weight in kg x 0.033 = how much water to drink in liters.
Our bodies are composed of roughly 75% water. Water’s chief functions are to maintain a stable environment inside and around our cells. This allows our cells to acquire sufficient nutrition and aids elimination of waste. For normal digestive processes to occur you need to drink the amount of water you just calculated for your body weight.
If you are dehydrated you cannot produce sufficient saliva when chewing food. Saliva contains digestive enzymes that begin to break down food right there in the mouth. This prepares the food for proper digestion and assimilation in the stomach and intestines. If you do become dehydrated your body will scavenge water from your organs and your central nervous system.
I hope you found this article both informative and interesting. Agree with me? Have questions? Still want to write a nasty comment in defense of juice? Please leave a comment below.
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September 10th, 2008 at 5:17 am
Hmmmm. Interesting post. Of course when you first said that juice causes diabetes, I thought, ok this guy is crazy.
But what you are saying does make some sense, if what you are backing your claim up with is entirely accurate.
I’m sure that fruit juice cannot singlehandedly be the cause of diabetes, but one of them for some people.
Anyway, I’ve stopped drinking juice in the past year, I’ve always found it sickeningly sweet and it doesn’t make me feel good at all…
Thanks for posting, interesting read.
September 10th, 2008 at 5:49 am
Hi Sophie,
I’m glad you found it interesting. My saying juice causes diabetes is a little bit of sensationalism on my part. I do however feel that most cases of dis-ease are the product of a person’s lifestyle. Diet of course is a large part of one’s lifestyle and there is a scary amount of sugar in fruit juice.
When people talk about the behavioral problems of their children I tell them to take a look at what they are feeding their children. If you have a blood sugar crash you would tend to be pretty irritable and basically not much fun to be around. It’s not hard to imagine what sort of behavior a blood sugar crash is going to produce in children.
Also I like that you are a little skeptical. Certainly don’t take my word for it. If anyone is interested they should go ahead and do their own research. Inform yourself and make up your own mind.
September 10th, 2008 at 6:16 am
I definitely agree that juice can cause a lot of health problems. I don’t take canned or bottled juices anymore. The juices I drink must come freshly squeezed. My kids are also not allowed too much sugary drinks or coke too!
September 10th, 2008 at 11:55 am
Interesting point about ancestral diets. No doubt, my Irish ancestors wouldn’t have known a pineapple if it struck them in the eye!
Mind you they probably could have used the vitamin C, I’m sure.
September 10th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Mine either! From my research the only fruit in ancient Ireland were apples and wild berries.
On the issue of vitamin C you may be surprised to know that a cup of pineapple has roughly 40% of your daily value of vitamin C. On the other hand a cup of Kale contains over 88% of your daily vitamin C requirement. If anyone doesn’t know what Kale is, it is a member of the cabbage family and is something ancient Irish people ate. Even more interestingly it grows mid winter to early spring.
Just for the record a cup of broccoli contains 205% of the daily requirement for vitamin C. At one point a while ago I realized that there is no nutrition in fruit that is not in vegetables. More often then not it is in much more concentrated amounts.
September 10th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Jeez, I drink lots of juice because I’m lactose intolerant and used to drink lots of milk. The juice I drink is the orange juice not from concentrate stuff, so basically it’s crap is it?
September 10th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
I like the post. I have heard of this before, so your claims are not at all shocking to me. It makes sense too, specially since some people and kids drink more than just 1 glass of this juice, some even replacing it with water, getting the fructose from 50 fruits or more a day, something like that is bound to add up.
I have read your article on ancestral diets, and luckily for me, I am from Colombia, a country near the equator, where there is fruit all year round. For the past week I have put your advice to use on eating what my body is adapted to and I have to say its working great, I’ve lost 5 pounds of fat this week alone.
You’ve mentioned here and on other posts that to research this on our own, to prove that your claims are based on fact, but it is difficult, and I don’t know where to start, since the only places that I know are genuine doctors and researchers are the ones that tells us fat and cholesterol are bad for us and to avoid it at all costs.
Its even worse on the internet, as you cannot see how healthy they are, as opposed to real life where at least I can look at the person telling me these things and see if they are healthy themselves. As you say “Sick people cannot help other sick people get well”, and on the internet its even harder to determine that. Aside from that, I am sure there are many websites that have false data about these things.
So, where do you recommend I start researching for all this? The only 2 sources I have for this are you, and a fitness/nutrition coach that does videos on youtube.
By the way, he does great videos and a lot of what he says I have seen on this website as well, metabolic typing, this juice thing, cholesterol and fat.. so on..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kj__g0SDx7k
theres a link to his video on juice.
September 11th, 2008 at 1:26 am
@Tim - I would say it is unlikely to be doing you any good. If you were to get the flu I would tell you to eat an orange instead of drinking orange juice. Often juice is fortified with synthetic vitamin C because most of the natural occurring vitamin C has been lost in the processing. However no single vitamin works in a vacuum. What this means is a vitamin needs other vitamins and minerals to be effectively used by your body. So I say go to the source. Eat whole food.
On the subject of your lactose intolerance - I used to be much the same. At one point I remember drinking a big glass of milk and it causing me severe discomfort for days. However, I have since discovered that I had a bad disbiosis. Which means the ratio of good bacteria to bad bacteria in my digestive system was way off. Why this is important is because the good bacteria break down lactose in our gut for us. Among many other important functions vital to good health. Try taking a good probiotic for a month and then have a small amount of organic unhomogenized milk to test. I’d be interested to see the results.
@Christian – It is fantastic to hear that you’ve put the information here on my blog to the test of your own experiment. I understand the problems you have not knowing where to begin in the sea of health and diet information that is out there. Firstly, what you have already done – test what I’m saying for yourself – is probably the single most important thing you can do if you want to find the truth. You see, we are all different, if someone else was to eat the diet that you just lost 5 pounds in a week on they are just as likely to gain 5 pounds. So you must test what the information you gather using yourself as the guinea pig and when you do so be sure to really pay attention to what your body is telling you.
Signs you are on the right track include – good digestion and regular easy elimination, better levels of sustained energy, clear mind and clear thinking, less irritable then previously, clear eyes and skin, and so forth. These are all signs that what you are doing is right for you.
On the subject of research I would point you in much the same directions that Underground Wellness would. That is because we are both big fans of a person called Paul Chek. You can find him on YouTube and I suggest you do. We are also both big fans of Weston A Price - http://www.westonaprice.org/splash_2.htm.
I also suggest three books – Paul Chek’s - How to Eat, Move & Be Healthy, Weston A. Price’s – Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, and T.S. Wiley’s Lights Out.
All these resources make many references to scientific studies, which you can then seek out and read for yourself to ensure they back up the author’s conclusions.
September 27th, 2008 at 8:59 am
[...] and what nasty things happen to your body when you become dehydrated. You might also like to read Juice Causes Diabetes to find out exactly how much water you should be [...]
September 27th, 2008 at 10:14 am
[...] Dehydration and Constipation When your don’t give your body the water it needs it then goes ahead and scavenges it from your organs, from your central nervous system and from your digestive system. I don’t think I have to tell you that that is a bad thing. Before I go any further if you would like to know exactly how much water you should be consuming every day then please see my article – Juice Causes Diabetes. [...]
October 15th, 2008 at 1:41 am
Hi Stephen,
I found this article quite interesting.
I have the following that I think backs up your statement about drinking freshly squeezed juice straight away. A few years ago, during winter time, I travelled to work by public transport three days a week. During my journey I would drink a large glass of orange juice (that was freshly squeezed from two oranges) that also had an ice-cube that was a combination of freshly squeezed lime and lemon juice (at the time one of the markets I went to was selling boxes of lemons and limes at $5.00 per box). All of the fruit pulp was retained and mixed into the juice. The juice was diluted with water (for a 50% juice & 50% water mix). My fluid intake at work was usually 3 to 4 litres of water and a can of coke (as an aside I’ve totally given up drinking soft drinks and have stuck to this for the past 563 consecutive days).
What I found was during that Winter I didn’t suffer from any colds or chest infections. So I feel that fruit juice can be beneficial as long as it’s freshly squeezed, the pulp is mixed in with the juice, diluted with water and plenty of water is drunk each day as well. What’s your take on this paragraph?
October 15th, 2008 at 2:00 am
Hi Ben,
Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment. I have to agree with you. With freshly squeezed juice the vitamins and minerals are still present for a time plus you were watering it down 50/50, which I think is a good idea. Normally eating two oranges takes time and I think dilution and drinking it over the span of a train trip would simulate that.
Essentially you were slowing the sugar dump and making it more gradual. That way the juice didn’t cause a blood sugar spike and subsequent crash. Keeping the fruit pulp is very good to. Fiber also slows sugar absorption into the blood.
As with most health issues nothing is precisely black and white. Thanks for helping to highlight that. As you found this article interesting you might like to check out some of my other health related articles. Particularly - Are You Becoming Dumber?
Thanks again.
Stephen
October 15th, 2008 at 2:12 am
[...] by Stephen Cox you can visit BalancedExistence.com. Here are a few of my favorite must reads: “Juice Causes Diabetes”, “How to Become Dumber”, “How to Overcome Daily Fatigue and Tiredness”. [...]
October 26th, 2008 at 1:55 am
[...] can have are green apples, berries, avocados, grapefruit, lemons and limes. All others including fruit juice is off [...]
December 10th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
[...] to increase our weight. When our blood sugar spikes when we eat sugar (and especially when we drink sugar), our bodies store any extra sugar-energy that it cannot use right away as fat.1 This is a unique [...]