SINGAPORE: Watching the fruit juice vendor put together that cup of apple juice leaves many in no question that it’s far full of nutritious goodness. Indeed, many in Singapore are turning to drink fruit juices as a more fit alternative to gentle drinks. 
But assessments CNA carried out with the help of experts at Temasek Polytechnic confirmed that juices are not necessarily the more healthy desire. Whether fresh, bloodless-pressed or pre-packaged, they may include as a great deal if not extra sugar than a can of smooth drink. The tests confirmed that there is extra sugar in a three hundred ml cup of freshly prepared purple apple juice compared to a 320 ml can of gentle drink.
A lecturer from the School of Applied Science at Temasek Polytechnic Guo Ren designed and supervised the experiment achieved by means of two Year 2 students from the Applied Food Science and Nutrition path to quantify the number of sugars present in freshly made fruit juices.
The juices of purple apple, watermelon, and orange as well as famous combos of apple, beetroot, and carrot, famously referred to as ABC; tomato, watermelon and lemon, as well as orange and ginger, had been extracted into a 300ml cup without ice delivered.
The amount of sugar, which incorporates obviously taking place ones, had been measured with a refractometer for the test. These had been the outcomes.
Dr. Kalpana Bhaskaran, who heads the Centre for Applied Nutrition Services, said that nutritionally it is better to consume the real fruit in place of drinking its juice, even though freshly organized. This for motives of quantity and exceptional.
She said the juicing system could strip away dietary fibers. Some of the nutrients and minerals present in the entire end result would additionally be lost.
And due to the fact more than one fruit would normally be needed to make a tumbler of juice, the amount of sugar inside the juice can also be better as compared to eating a single fruit.
Dr. Kalpana, who’s additionally the vice-president of Diabetes Singapore, cautioned that humans should be mindful of the number of carbohydrates and sugar they are ingesting.
“We need to now not forget about that fruit juices are a focused supply of sugar. People are higher off ingesting the fruit,” she said. That way, human beings may not lose the fiber, they can control the calorie intake and may feel more complete from chewing at the fruit.
Using a medium-sized pink apple weighing 130g for instance, Dr. Kalpana said eating it provides 15g of carbohydrates, frequently from naturally occurring sugars such as fructose, sucrose, and glucose. But based on the experiment, 40.2g of sugar might be fed on whilst consuming a 300ml cup of apple juice.
In truth, stripping the fiber off the culmination via the juicing manner isn’t just awful for the bowels. The Health Promotion Board (HPB) stated that fiber in end result helps to slow the absorption of sugars into the bloodstream.
“Without the fiber, the massive amount of sugar from fruit juices enters the bloodstream fast and causes a sugar spike, similar to what occurs whilst we drink sweetened beverages like sodas,” a spokesperson stated.
Over time, this wears out the pancreas, which produces insulin, and might result in weight advantage and diabetes, she introduced.
“Many human beings may think that naturally going on sugar is more healthy than introduced sugar, but there may be no chemical distinction between the two, and that they have the identical impact on blood sugar level whilst ingested,” the HPB spokesperson stated.
For this motive, HPB stated that ingesting sparkling fruit juices isn’t any one-of-a-kind from consuming pre-packaged juices.
Making it worse, some shops upload sugar to their freshly-organized fruit juices, Dr. Kalpana said. Sugar should go disregarded, as it’s miles dissolved within the water this is introduced. In fact, one of the shops CNA visited admitted to including sugar to their fruit juices, as the drink would be “tasteless” in any other case.
IS COLD-PRESSED JUICE BETTER?
Cold-pressed juices had been gaining in reputation for being a “higher option”. A special juicer is used to slowly pulverize the fruit to extract the juice whilst maintaining as much of the nutrients as possible.
But HPB said with regards to sugar content material, they are no specific from juices extracted via an ordinary juicer.
“As the pulp is left in the back of, it nevertheless loses the beneficial fibers that slow sugar absorption, improves digestive fitness and helps one sense fuller. Hence, bloodless-pressed juices have an identical impact as conventionally extracted juices on blood sugar degrees, weight gain, and diabetes,” a spokesperson explained.
HPB additionally mentioned information from marketplace studies corporation Mintel to show that pre-packaged “100 in step with cent” fruit juice without added sugar had a similar quantity of sugar to different juice beverages that do not have such labels.
