Fruit juice sugar content

WHO recommend to intake less than 25g sugar every day, about 6 teaspoons (1tsp=4.2g). A bottle of 500ml fruit juice may contain 12 teaspoons of sugar, which has exceeded the standard of WHO.

A cup of fresh fruit juice is made of 2-3 fruits. For example, a bottle of 240ml orange juice contains 21g sugar and 112kcal calories, amount to the nutrition of 2 oranges. Drinking 2 cups a day will close to the maximum intake (50g) recommend by WHO.

Sugar content per 200ml serving

Sugar content in orange juice

For a cup of orange juice made of 2 oranges, the sugar content is up to 34g, equaling 6.5 tsp. If it is made of 3 oranges, the sugar content will be up to 7tsp, higher than the maximum sugar intake (50g) everyday. So it is easy to intake excessive sugar with a cup of juice a day.

A 250ml soft drink contains about 25g sugar, about 5 tsp. In this regard, the sugar content in orange juice is higher than soft drinks. But the sugar in fruit juice is fructose, while in soft drink is cane sugar. The former one is slower to raise the blood sugar, so it is healthier than the latter.

Sugar content in orange juice

Sugar content in fruit juice is unknown to many people

People tend to underestimate the sugar content in fruit juice. In an research carried out by Glasgow University, most people overestimate the sugar content in carbonate beverages, and underestimate it in milkshakes, smoothies, energy drinks, and fruit juices. For example, the amount of sugar in pomegranate juice is 18tsp more than people’s estimate.

People also estimate their weekly drink consumption in this research. The result shows that they intake 659g sugar and 3144 calories every week. It equals 450 calories every day, which is 1/4 of the recommend value for woman and 1/5 for man.

The research also reveals that 24% people didn’t consider their intake of liquid sugar and calories on a diet. Half of them drink more than 3 bottles of sugar drinks, and they don’t reduce the calories in food to balance.

This research shows that many people haven’t realize the high sugar in drinks. Some healthy drinks like fruit juice also contains high sugar content. Professors recommend to drink water, low sugar or sugar free drinks.

Harm of high sugar drinks

Due to the high sugar content in fruit juice, it is not suitable for drinking it everyday. The fructose will get into the liver quickly in human body, then transform into triglyceride, which is easy to induce fatty liver. Especially for diabetics, drinking fruit juice may cause complications.

Too much high-sugar drinks many induce obesity. The body will transform excess fructose into fat and make you gain weight, and increase the risk of diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease.

American Academy of Pediatrics has published a Dietary guidelines for infants and young children. It doesn’t recommend infants under 1 year old to drink fruit juice. Because the high sugar content will cause over-high sugar and calories intake, increase the weight and the risk of tooth decay.

High sugar drinks

What are low sugar fruits?

Low-sugar fruits refer to those with less than 10% sugar content. In other words, low-sugar fruits contains less than 10g sugar in every 100g. These fruits include Lemon, cucumber, watermelon, orange, grapefruit, peach, plum, apricot, loquat, pineapple, strawberry, cherry, cucumber, tomatoes.

The fruit with the lowest sugar content is lemon. Every 100g lemons only contain 5.1g sugar. Lemons are excellent for drinking water or make salad. The following low-sugar fruits are greengage (5.9 g), carmelo Anthony (6.2 grams), papaya (7.0 g), strawberries (7.1 g), grapefruit (9.0 g), orange (9.5 grams).

In contrary, high-sugar content including raisins, longans, dried persimmon, banana, and fresh jujube are high-sugar fruits. You shouldn’t eat them over 100g every day.

Sugar content ranking in common fruits

Sugar content of 4-7%	watermelon, strawberry, honey dew melon
Sugar content of 8-10%	pear, lemon, cherry, cantaloupe, grape, peach, pineapple
Sugar content of 9-13%	apple, apricots, figs, oranges, pomelos, leeches
Sugar content over 14%	persimmon, cinnamon, banana, waxberry, pomegranate

Sugar free fruit juice

Nowadays, more and more people realize the harm of too much sugar. Sugar free drinks are invented to meet this demand. Sugar free drinks include soda, xylitol drinks, diet coke, diet Pepsi, Sprite zero, etc. What is sugar free drinks? Are they really contain no sugar?

We can find the difference between sugary drinks and sugar-free drinks from their labels. Sugar free drinks refers to those without cane sugar, fructose corn syrup, or high fructose corn syrup, and replaced by Aspartame, glycoprotein, saccharin, acesulfame that don’t raise blood sugar.

Sugar free drinks

The calories and sugar in sugar free juice

Sugar free doesn’t mean zero calorie. For example, aspartame only contains 4 Kcal, but the sweetness is 200 times of sugar. So 0.3g aspartame can take the place of 60g sugar in drinks. So the calorie and sugar in sugar free drinks are negligible.

However, we shouldn’t drink sugar free drinks with abandon. The sweetness of sugar substitutes will also stimulate appetite. The sense of hunger will drive you to eat food, especially sugary food. Besides, the accustomization to sugar substitute will reduce our appetite for natural sugary fruits and vegetables.

In conclusion, fruit juice contains more sugar than most people though. Drinking fruit juice too much can easily cause excessive sugar intake, thus induce obesity, tooth decay, diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease. You can choose juice with low sugar content, or sugar free juice. It contains little sugar, but you shouldn’t drink it with abandon. At last, nutritionist Gloria recommend to make mixed fruit and vegetable juice, with the vegetables 2 times the quantity of fruits. This can lower the sugar content in fruit juice.