It stands on breakfast tables like a promise: freshly squeezed orange juice, the little hero in a glass. Vitamins, sunshine, health - that's its image. But nutritionists have long been taking a closer look. Because behind the golden colour lies a surprisingly sober finding: orange juice is one thing above all - a sugar bomb.
There are around ten grams of sugar in one hundred millilitres. That's comparable to cola. A normal glass quickly contains more than twenty grams. That is already half the recommended amount of sugar. The body doesn't notice much of this at first, because the sugar comes in liquid form and without the slowing fibre of the whole fruit. What is still filling in an orange rushes almost unchecked into the bloodstream as juice. The result: the infamous blood sugar spike.
Most people know that there is a lot of sugar in soft drinks. In Germany, there is no legal ban or tax on the sugar content of soft drinks. The government is hoping (in vain) for voluntary commitments from the industry. The harmful effects of soft drinks, especially for young people, have recently hit the headlines and there have been calls for legislation.
What most people don't realise is that juice is not a healthier alternative - juice also contributes heavily to your sugar intake. "With one large glass of orange juice, you have already consumed 50 grams of sugar," says Martin Smollich in an interview with SPIEGEL.
Sugar is sugar - even from freshly squeezed oranges!
Martin Smollich is a professor at the Institute of Nutritional Medicine at the University Medical Centre Schleswig-Holstein. Expert Smollich also points out that it makes no difference whether the sugar comes from freshly squeezed oranges - sugar is sugar!
The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends that adults consume a maximum of 50 grams of sugar per day, which is 16 sugar cubes. A large glass of orange juice is already enough!
Nutrition expert Bas Kast therefore describes drinks such as fruit juice or multivitamin juice in his bestseller "The Nutrition Compass" as a kind of "sugar infusion". Not poison, but not an elixir of health either. Juice does contain vitamins and plant substances. But the effect fizzles out if you consume it like a thirst-quenching drink.
The sober recommendation of science is therefore: water as the main drink, coffee and tea ok, juice only occasionally and as a dessert.
It's not about giving up sugar, says nutritionist Smollich, but about developing an awareness of sugar.
Eat fruit instead of drinking it
Background: Orange juice mainly contains fructose, glucose and sucrose. Fructose is processed differently in the body than glucose and can be more problematic in large quantities - especially in liquid form. In whole fruit, however, it is usually not critical.
Glucose enters the blood directly, is utilised by the muscles and brain and triggers insulin. Fructose, on the other hand, is processed almost exclusively in the liver and is more easily converted into fat if there is an excess.
In short: eat fruit rather than drink it. If fruit juice, then a maximum of one small glass per day and better diluted as a spritzer!
Conclusion:
A small glass of juice - occasionally - is fine. But if you think you're doing something particularly good for yourself with orange juice every morning, you may have bought into an old breakfast myth.
Dimitri Lehner
Editor
