It’s No Surprise Fruit Juice Isn’t As Healthy As We Thought

Filed under: Study — @ August 1, 2008

Dr. Julie Palmer says don’t get fooled into drinking OJ

What could be healthier for you than a icy cold glass of orange juice, right? What could be more Americana and good for you than that?! I mean it comes from freshly-squeezed oranges which are grown on trees, so it HAS to be better for you than sugary soda, doesn’t it? Wellllllll, not exactly as a new study published in a major medical journal from researchers out of Boston University revealed this week.

Lead researcher Dr. Julie Palmer looked at the connection between both fruit juice and sugary soda to Type 2 diabetes as part of the enlightening and still-ongoing prospective Black Women’s Health Stud featuring a whopping 59,000 African-American women from across the United States. In all, 2,713 of the study participants (about 4.5 percent) developed Type 2 diabetes in the first ten years since the study began that paralleled with those women who increased their consumption of both sugary sodas and fruit drinks.

According to the study, women who drank 2+ sodas per day experienced a 24 percent increase in getting Type 2 diabetes than those who drank less than one soft drink in a month. Interestingly, Dr. Palmer also found a curious connection between fruit juice and Type 2 diabetes as well. Those women in the study who drank 2+ servings of this “healthy” drink alternative to sugary soda, primarily at breakfast time, saw a 31 percent increase in diabetes risk compared to those who had less than one glass of fruit juice each month.

Click here to read more about this study and why it is not at all surprising to those of us who are livin’ la vida low-carb.