Drink juice or eat the fruit

In an increasingly busy world we are looking for ways to save time. It is often our nutrition that suffers and we tend to eat more from places like McDonalds and Burger King rather than take in the wholesome foods that we know are good for us. But for those of us who are concerned about our health, we may still be looking for ways to save time. Into this mix, products like V8 and various fruit juices have entered. The question then becomes should we drink the juice or eat the fruit?

As tempting as it would be to answer this question right away, we should consider first what the Food and Drug Administration has to say about how much fruit you should get daily. The FDA recommends somewhere between 2-4 servings of fruit in the average person's diet, or at least that is what the current edition of the food pyramid recommends. Now, before deciding whether to drink juice or eat fruit, the next question will be if drinking a fruit juice gives you the same benefits as actually eating the fruit.

It is well known that processing foods or even cooking them removes many of the nutrients the food would have in its natural unprocessed state, getting the juices from the fruit involves even more processing than cooking (although for certain foods cooking is required to kill harmful bacteria.) But well, the answer whether you should drink fruit juice or eat the fruit is obvious, once we take into account the processing.

Your body will receive far more benefit from consuming 2 or 4 servings of actual fruit a day than it will from gulping down fruit juice, so the answer of whether to drink juice or eat the fruit is simple, eat fruit whenever it is possible.

Sometimes we are on the go however and taking time to find fresh fruit or eat an apple or pear may not be desirable. In these circumstances, many of us will skip servings of fruit altogether to save time, but instead of doing this; we can substitute the soda that we may normally drink for a fruit juice. So be and Snapple both make all natural products that can easily serve for your daily fruit servings. A little shopping around may be required to find products that have an actual health benefit and are not merely fruit juice flavored. Reading the nutrition labels on the back can make this task seem far easier than it would seem at first.

So, the question of whether to drink juice or eat the fruit that it is made out of has a quite simple answer. In most cases, you will want to eat the actual fruit. People who are busy or on the go may want to stock up on fruit juices that will give them the same benefit when they do not have time peel to eat an orange, banana, or apple. Just remember to switch back to actual fruit when you have the time.

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