Why Juice Bugs Me

I can understand why living with someone like me can be hard for Bill, who has a sweet tooth bigger than an ant's. He loves his Coke, baked goods, and chocolate; yet he married a woman who drinks a cup of Coke as often as one goes to see an optometrist, sees baking as an Olympic event (it takes a long time to prepare for and it only happens once every four year), and has only very recently developed a liking to chocolate. It's a typical case of "When East Meets West". While Bill thinks a cake is not a cake without the icing, I'm still trying to figure out the difference between a muffin and a cupcake.

I'll be the first to admit (okay, more like "proudly announce") that I have become a "Food Tyrant" or a "Food Nazi" of the house after I had Kai. Since sweets are not a part of my own diet, naturally they're not on the shopping list, and I don't even go down the snack/pop drinks isle in the store. There's no candy in the house whatsoever, and if we have any sweets, they have to be put out of sight. Instead of a dessert, Kai gets fresh fruit after meals every day. Since Kai's bound to see his father having Coke at the dinner table, it's basically treated as beer (you wouldn't let a toddler drink beer, would you?). For the most part, my husband agrees with me and goes along with my twisted ways of hiding sweets. But juice.... Bill has a hard time understanding why I don't allow Kai to drink juice. "Look," Bill would point at the label on a juice bottle, "100% natural. It's just like fruit, but in juice form."

To Bill's credit, he has only given Kai juice in a handful of occasions, and each time it was only a few sips. But juice is NOT "just like fruit". In fact, it's far from that.

1. Poorer nutrition
It is well-known that juice can lead to obesity and tooth decay because of its high calorie count and high sugar content. An 8 ounce glass of orange juice contains 112 calories, 0.1 g dietary fiber, and 20.8 g sugar, while a piece of orange has 45 calories, 2.3 g dietary fiber, and 9 g sugar (Time). The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends a maximum of 4 to 6 ounces of juice a day for children 1 to 6 years of age. However, it also points out that "For children older than 6 months, fruit juice offers no nutritional benefits over whole fruits." Whole fruit also offers natural vitamins and fibre, which have to be added in many brands of juices.

2. Lacks substance
The lack of fibre in juice makes it easy to absorb. That's why hospitals give it recovering patients. For a healthy child, however, fast absorption means that it does not make the child feel full. That's why we sometimes see kids asking for another box of juice as soon as s/he just finished one. When a child eats an apple, on the other hand, chewing sends a message to the brain that s/he is getting full, and it takes time to digest the fibre in the apple, which helps the child to stay full longer. Moreover, crunchy foods, including apples, celery, and carrots, have a high water content, which dilutes the effects of the sugars they contain, and stimulate the flow of saliva. Saliva helps protect against decay by washing away food particles and buffering acid (WebMD).

3. Sweeter than the actual fruit
Even if it's freshly squeezed, juice has more concentrated amount of sugar than the actual fruit. When a child is trained to prefer sweet, it may be difficult to introduce the child to the the actual fruit or vegetables.

4. Lack of texture (and fun)
What's the fun in drinking juice? As humans, we eat with our eyes, nose, mouth, and hands, Toddlers, in particular, love to play with their food. Offering juice instead of the fruit robs a child the whole experience of eating a fruit: distinguish the different shades of red of apples, strawberries, and pomegranates; experience the springy texture of a lychee or mush banana between your teeth; feel the creepy yet fascinating hairy shell of a Rambutan; decide for yourself what durian smells like; discover the best way to peel an orange by hand, pop frozen red grapes on a hot summer day, have a spitting contest with watermelon seeds, etc.

5. Money
We all want the most for our money, so why buy juice when whole fruit offer so much more?

Here's the bottom line: WHY HAVE JUICE WHEN YOU CAN JUST HAVE THE FRUIT? I can't wrap my head around it.

I know my kids are going to be exposed to soft drinks, fast food, and dessert. In fact, I hope they'll get to experience all kinds of food in their lives. At this time when part of my job is to choose what they eat for them, I want my kids to appreciate fruit and vegetables in their most simple and original forms before venturing out to all the other decadent and delicious variations. What I'm trying to do ultimately is to make sure that, when I can't be around to watch what they put in their mouths, they will have developed the habit of choosing fresh food over processed and whole over juiced.