Fruit juice – Essential in our Daily Diet?
Staying healthy has got to be one the easiest and most rewarding things in life… once you get the hang of it of course. Really, what it consists of is finding things that A) you find to be irresistible and delicious, and B) are healthy for you. I guess it’s only as difficult as your desire for junk food, so the less junk food you craved before getting healthy directly relates to how easy it is for you to choose a healthy diet and stick to it.
Now a lot of time I see otherwise health conscious friends and colleagues drinking soda and other sugar laden or Aspartame laced soft drinks, and can’t help but ask them why they aren’t drinking a natural juice instead. One of the answers I got surprised me, not because of what the person said necessarily, but from whom it came from, one of my most health conscious friends. Her answer was that she didn’t know if fruit juice was really an essential part of a healthy diet. My initial response was that fruit juice was sure a whole of a lot better then a Coke. She agreed that some fruit juices are, but others were just as bad or worse then soda.
We didn’t have a lot of time to talk, so we never got a chance to finish the conversation. Her position intrigued me, and I definitely understood where she was coming from. A lot of cheap “fruit” juices contain very little fruit at all, and some of the lower end “fruit” drinks contain “natural flavoring” with no actual fruit juice to be found. Obviously those “juices” are not aimed at those trying to live a healthy lifestyle.
Back to her answer though, are fruit juices essential to a healthy daily diet? Well, the answer to that depends on how much actual fruit you eat during the course of a day. The USDA recommends that most adult Americans consume 2 cups worth of raw fruit or 100% fruit juice a day, so according to thm, fruit juice is an essential part of your daily diet. They don’t specify what fruit juice to drink, so feel free to drink orange, apple, or even noni juice, just make sure you get the 100% real fruit juice to actual get the full benefits from it.
Next time I talked to my co-worker, we had a bit more time to talk. I mentioned the USDA recommendations and needless to say we both agreed that fruit juice is an essential part of a healthy diet. 100% real fruit juice that is.
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