John Nicholson, author of The Meat Fix: How A Lifetime of Healthy Eating Nearly Killed Me, has had enough of fruit juice being considered healthy. Just because it contains the word fruit, that doesn't make it healthy...
I must confess I am not as other men. Its ok, I'm not about to de-trouser.
I have never seen Star Wars.
I do not use a mobile phone.
I have never eaten in a McDonalds.
I assume this trifecta of cultural choices makes me almost unique in the western world in 2012. I like that.
However, it came to my attention this week that what my Scouse friends like to call Maccy D's – I can feel the value of the house dropping even as I write that – has introduced a healthy new drink. That was nice of them. Turns out its fruit juice made from raspberries, grapes and apples with fizzy water added. Lovely.
Surely everyone wants to eat more fruit and less fizzy pop? Surely that's what we've been told is healthy for us? Well McDonald's obviously thought so. However, you'll probably have seen the outpourings of shock and awe in many newspapers because it contains 49 grams (never less, never more?) of sugar, which apparently sets off the 'it'll drive kids bonkers' alarms at Healthy Eating Towers.
The Sun quotes dietician Christina Merryfield, of London’s Bupa Cromwell Hospital saying: 'A large cup of this drink has more sugar than a can of Fanta.' She doesn't say if this is good or bad but the inference is the latter, unless you are in Scotland, where they have long considered Irn Bru to be one of their five fruit and veg a day, and also a useful self-tanning lotion.
Ok, so McDonald's fizzy fruit juice is sugary and bad for you; that’s the story. You could forgive your average punter for finding all this a bit puzzling. After all, fruit is sold to us by everyone as super-duper healthy.
When I was a kid, you really couldn't buy fruit juice. It was all Tree Top and other lurid orange squashes. Today, you can't move for them in your local Emporium Of Food Uniformity. This is because everyone thinks it's great for you and thus buys it by the bucket load. I bet you do. I know I did, for my whole life I thought it as somehow good for you. Juice is natural and natural is good, right?
Err..sorry. No.
That's a lie I don't believe any more, and apparently those who are sticking it to McDonalds for their new fruit juice drink don't believe it any more either. Or is it just because it's coming out of the Golden Arches? Hmm, I bet if it was an Innocent Smoothie the health police’s panties would not be in such a wad.
While undergoing my diet revolution, I realised something about fruit juice that had never occurred to me before......it's mental!
By which I mean this: if you eat an orange, you eat the whole thing, flesh and juice. You can't really eat more than two apples or oranges at once can you? Well you could but you wouldn't want to. However, when you drink a big glass of juice, you're consuming the juice of seven or eight pieces of fruit. Much more than you would ever consume in any other way. This means you are ingesting, as the McDonald's critics point out, a lot of sugar, which your insulin will lay down as fat if you're not very active. In other words, it’s a quick way to consume far more energy than you are likely to need.
Worst still, we don't even consider fruit juice as something which can make us fat. It's not on our radar in that regard at all. It's a crime free food for dieters and healthy eating veggie girls called Emily. And since we are forever being told to eat five fruit and veg a day, we simply don't and won't question it. But we should. It ain't natural to consume that much juice and certainly not on a daily basis, week in week out.
This story is typical of the confused messages that flow around healthy eating issues. On the one hand there is outrage that a fast food joint is selling drinks with high sugar levels, but on the other, NHS leaflets push the benefits of a diet high in fruit and vegetables.
As with so many issues, it seems to me that 'they' i.e. the authorities, almost get it but can't quite join all the dots together. Just as last week's NHS advice to diabetics swerved the obvious problem of a diet based on carbs in favour of a fear of fat approach, so this issue side steps the obvious conclusion that if high sugar fruit drinks are bad for you, so is consuming a lot of sugary fruit for exactly the same reasons. But you won't see any health warnings on bags of grapes or bananas. No-one talks about a juice belly the way they talk about a beer belly but it is largely the same problem with the same cause. Think about it; mass juice consumption occurred in the last 25-30 years only, right in line with the upward curve of weight gain and obesity. It's right there in the belly of the fatty beast looking all natural and innocent.
So I quit drinking fruit juice a couple of years ago. I don't miss it and life is not worse because of the lack of it. Quite the opposite. It is just another foodstuff which we have been brainwashed about in pursuit of greater profits despite the health consequences. Trust me; I'm not a doctor.