Mrs. G. is not an uncommon patient. As diabetes specialists, we see patients like her all the time, who for one reason or another believe that juice is a health food. The truth is that fruit juice, even if it is freshly pressed, 100 percent juice, is little more than sugar water.
Yet many Americans believe that juice is good for them. In one survey of parents of young children, 1 in 3 believed that juice was at least as healthy as fruit. We are inundated with the message that juice is healthy. Juice bars abound in gyms, spas and health food stores,
while government programs supply large quantities of juice to low-income children and pregnant mothers. The commercial juice industry is happy to take advantage of this idea, as with POM Wonderful’s tagline “Drink to your health” or Juicy Juice’s labels extolling the,
(mostly added) 120 percent of recommended daily vitamin C in the products. While the Internet is busy laughing at the Juicero juicing system — in which, it turns out,
your hands work as well as the $400 WiFi-enabled machine — what people should really be talking about is a much simpler fact: The product takes healthy fruits and vegetables and makes them much less healthy.
