Sugar is a hot topic! In the same way that fat & calories were hot topics several years ago. What with a huge emphasis on calories and fat in the 80’s & 90’s we turned to Diet Soda’s (or minerals as my Nan used to say……cue blank stares from any of my UK originated University friends that came to visit & were offered said beverage. “What? Your Granny offered me rocks, soil?”) & the likes of low fat spreads.
What most of us didn’t realise that (although a generalisation it is for the most part fact) anything low in fat tends to be high in sugar. Take frozen yoghurts as the classic example. I ate them until my eyeballs nearly froze whilst on my J1 – there are not many places on earth that serve a better soft scoop frozen yoghurt than the boards of Wildwood, NJ!!! My body is a temple Snooki. But how wrong was I?
And so here we are denouncing sugar in its various forms & becoming more and more frazzled with regards to what is good to eat or not. As Mum’s, there is little else to make you buck up & cop on than the fear of endangering the future soccer, rugby, political, entrepreneurial stars that we are raising. We’re trying to force the lid shut on their ‘5 a day’ hammered into their lunch boxes (me acutely aware than mine are thin on veg’ & high on fruit) and waving them off happy we’ve done our best.
We’ve eliminated the fizzy drinks and banished the fruits cordials to weekend and party treat status. Then they go and attack the fruit juices on us!!!! And we despair all over again.
But are the natural fruit juices really all that bad?
Oh look I’ve gone all shy!!! These juices from Pure Raw Energy Snacks are a great example of juices worth having. You can checkout their FaceBook page here.
Like everything, in moderation, not only are they not deserving of the bad rap they’ve been known to get lately, they are a fantastic source of vitamins, minerals & antioxidants that our children and us may not get elsewhere.
In my opinion there is certainly one way you can justify the juice in moderation and that is by adding vegetables to it. Therefore you are removing some of the natural sugars by replacing fruit with veg’ and also introducing nutrients not found in it’s sweeter counterpart. There is NO WAY my kids would eat Kale if I served it up on a plate to them. However pressed into juice status with a selection of other forbidden ingredients it is an alternative method for me to traffic these nutrients into them.
Ingredients in this green bad boy are : spinach, kale, celery, apple and mango -a great balance of fruit and vegetable.
Not everyday. But certainly at weekends. Not at the loss of vegetables at meal times. But certainly as a way to drip feed them the ones they refuse. Not in place of water. But as an add on.
Time magazine recently posed the question of green juices worth & concluded the following “Veggie juice is very healthy,” says Barry Popkin, PhD, professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina. And way healthier, he says, than fruity concoctions like smoothies. “The main concern about juicing and blending—that pulverizing produce lets sugar rush into your bloodstream faster without fiber—isn’t a big issue with juice made from vegetables. It is low in sugar, so quite different,” Popkin says.
“That’s assuming your green juice is getting most of its color from vegetables, not fruit juice plus a pinch of kale”, says Dr. Lydia Bazzano, a physician and director of the Center for Lifespan Epidemiology Research. Her research on fruit and vegetables juices found that vegetables—especially the green leafy kind—were linked to less risk of developing diabetes.
“It is better to eat than to drink veggies and fruits,” says Dr. David Katz, director of the Yale University Prevention Research Center. “But it is better to drink them than not to have them at all.”
And there, my friends, lies the key. So boost you and your kids systems with the juices for sure. They are of huge value – just don’t use them as crutch.
Top Tip: Freeze the juices to make healthier ice-lol’s for the kids!!
Your’s, feeling really parched after writing that,
Cli xx
