Posted on 11/11/2009 7:11:27 AM PST by Still Thinking
America’s self-anointed food police have a new punching bag in their obesity crusade: fruit juice. We’re not making this up. The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that a growing number of dietary do-gooders are now pointing their fingers at juice as a culprit for fattening waistlines:
The inconvenient truth, many experts say, is that 100% fruit juice poses the same obesity-related health risks as Coke, Pepsi and other widely vilified beverages. … [I]t's time juice lost its wholesome image, these experts say.
"It's pretty much the same as sugar water," said Dr. Charles Billington, an appetite researcher at the University of Minnesota. In the modern diet, "there's no need for any juice at all."
Is this new target in the obesity blame game any more legitimate than activists’ perennial demonization of soda? Nope. As the Times notes, a 2008 review of 21 studies found that 15—over two-thirds—did not support the theoretical link between juice and weight gain. But dietary activists still single out soda despite a wealth of academic research finding that soda isn’t a unique cause of obesity, so don’t expect the grape juice naysayers to be quieted in the face of actual evidence.
It’s worth noting that “Twinkie tax” creator Kelly Brownell isn’t jumping on the opportunity to call for a government War on Fruit Juice. According to the Times, Brownell is “loath to provoke the tens of millions of Americans who consider their morning juice sacrosanct.” Read: Brownell won’t target fruit juice yet, but after fruit juice’s public image is dragged through the mud and turned into “the new tobacco,” all bets are off. For now, Brownell is sticking to his soda tax song-and-dance out of purely political considerations, not ideological ones.
We have to ask: What’s next? Raisin rations? Warning labels on avocados? Red-light / green-light stickers in the produce aisle? Paging Alex Padilla…
Absolutely not! If necessary we’ll redirect the transport from inessentials such as wheat. The persimmons must roll!
eh I don’t think HFCS is in natural juice....at least not what I buy.
Not sure that HFCS is the culprit—it has been in our food supply for 40 years. Kids may be drinking more products that contain it, but then perhaps they are not drinking water, koolaid, lemonade, and milk—staples of kids diets even in the 80s. IMHO, many kids are not getting exercise is—many don’t work after school, many don’t play around neighborhoods—gotta stay in A/C in summer, heat in winter. My neighborhood looks like a ghost town in the summer. Not so when I was young—everyone was outside running around—house to house.
Many kids today sit in front of TV or computer as soon as get home from school. I know I sound like I belong on porch in rocking chair, but when I was young, there were no computers, VCRs, and there was not 24 hour TV programming—children’s programming, like all programming, was very limited by today’s standards. From what I have seen, I blame it on consumption of large amounts of junk food (high fat) and lack of exercise.
Lack of exercise.
Some kind of soccer, baseball (big fan), football, volleyball, etc. in a structured enviroment does not make up for kids playing on their own.
I do the same with orange juice — about a quarter glass of OJ and the rest water and ice. It tastes more interesting that water but doesn’t bombard you with sugar.
Besides, how do you “ranch” persimmons? Do you have to have little persimmon roundups with tiny persimmonboys riding cucumbers? Do you have to brand them? Have persimmon drives to get them to the railhead or...um...peelinghouse?
Exactly—they go to a 1 hour soccer practice and that is considered “exercise.” As a kid, I “played” i.e. ran around the neighborhood, rode bike all over for hours, rode pony, walked downtown, played at playground—all forms of sports, went swimming for the entire afternoon, etc. literally for hours.
Basically, we were active from mid morning till dark in the summer. Just don’t see kids doing that today.
As an aside, I wonder if that is why people just can’t seem to get along anymore? They don’t interact like I did when they were young? Everyone depends on “play dates” and pre-school for social interaction.
I’m not buying that for a dollar. There’s a whole lot of paranoid pseudo-science being spewed about HFCS these days, but nobody really has the data to back up any of it.
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