Is fruit that is juiced or blended better than no fruit at all? Or, is it better to avoid any juiced fruit?
I like the flavour of fruit but not the texture, because of this I avoid all fruit and am pretty close minded on trying anything new due to price and waste.
I recently debated buying baby blended fruit pouches to add vitamins into my diet; is this something that will be better than avoiding fruit all together?
Thank you for any comments in advance!
Edit: Thank you all so much for your replies, and as well for the suggestions and advice!
In: 10
Blended fruit would be the same a s whole fruit. Juice fruit doesn’t have any of the fiber of the whole fruit so it is higher in the percentage of sugar per measure and has little to no fiber.
Posting at r/nutrition would be good. Whole fruit is good, juice is good. If you have one apple and eat it whole, or stick it in a blender and drink it, equal parts, it’s the same.
Sure, if you add sugar or filter, you affect some of the nutrition, but it’s not worth stressing about until the rest of your diet is unbalanced.
Whole fruit is full of fibre whereas fruit juice is full of sugar. Fibre digests slowly and keeps you full and satiated for a longer period of time
It’s the fiber (flesh) of the fruit. If you blended whole fruit in a blender, I think it would be equally healthy, but juicing it discards the fiber.
It is not about blending vs chewing, it is about the amount you typically consume. a glass of Orange juice has 3 oranges. typically speaking, you wouldn’t slam 3 oranges in the a minute, like you would with a glass of juice. so you get 3 times the amount of sugar, and most likely far less of the fiber.
If you simply blended one full orange, and ate one full orange, it would be the basically the same. Although the act of chewing the orange, and having your stomach work extra to digest would burn a few more calories than drinking it. A small difference, but a difference non the less.
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Juice is not as good for you as whole fruit because the juice discards the pulp, and therefore most of the fiber in the fruit (and fiber is good for your digestion). Fruit juice also contains a lot of sugar. All that sugar was already in the fruit of course, but in fruit juice you’re getting it in a more concentrated form that is easy to consume quickly. You can down a glass of OJ a lot faster than you can eat a whole orange, and you digest the juice faster as well.
Blended fruit is broadly as good for you as whole fruit, as it still has all of the same stuff in it. However, it is still easier to consume a lot of blended fruit, for instance in the form of a smoothie, in a short timespan, compared to eating whole fruit. And it is important not to be fooled into thinking that smoothies are *always* healthy (and that more = better). Sometimes they will contain added sugar, and they may also have added fat that contributes to your calorie intake (even if they are healthy fats). Even for smoothies or fruit blends that are just fruit and nothing else, most experts these days recommend eating some fruit every day but not too much, because of the high sugar content (beyond the recommended intake, it’s better to eat more vegetables than more fruit). So you have to be mindful of how many portions of fruit are in a smoothie, which is easy to underestimate.
If you dislike fruit, then blended fruits may be a good option. However, personally I would encourage you to keep trying different fruits as your life will be enriched and made easier by the ability to enjoy whole fruits (which are easier and cheaper to obtain than blended fruit). Tastes can be acquired and aversions can be overcome with experience. Maybe start with something like a crisp apple or some grapes, which (to my mind anyway) have a pretty approachable texture (as opposed to, say, a peach).
“better” for you ( or “healthy”) can be interpreted a few ways,
Weight gain / loss – fruit that is unprocessed has large chunks of fibrous matter that takes a long time to break down inside you, leaving you feeling fuller for longer.
Nutrition wise – home blended fruit is pretty much identical provided you do no straining, separating or sugaring etc. Home cooked fruit is less nutritious as the good stuff gets broken down into sugary carbohydrates (where the caramelized flavour comes from).
Store-bought processed foods usually combine the worst of all worlds to give you a sugared, cooked and strained product that has little nutritional value, littered with unnatural chemicals to prevent spoilage, digests instantly leaving you hungry for more, and will last longer on your shelf / fridge.
In addition to what people are saying about that fruit juice has fiber removed. The act of chewing itself makes you feel more full. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031938415300317 has some research on this topic. But a blended fruit will let you overeat by doing all the chewing work. And this overeating is of something that is fairly high in sugar. This is also the reason that liquid calories are considered very bad.
It’s pretty obvious with juicing. A glass of orange juice is roughly six oranges. You’d consider 6 oranges to be almost a meal but a glass of orange juice can be drunk in a minute. But even with blending you can drink several cups of fruit in a minute.
Consider adding vegetables to your blended, juiced or chewed diet for more vitamins and nutrition. Very flavorful mixtures can be made.
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