Fruit Juice: Good or Bad for Kids? - Health Channel

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Fruit Juice: Good or Bad for Kids? |

Lucette Talamas, Registered Dietitian with Baptist Health South Florida, affirms juice is actually not necessary as way to get fruits intake.
She explains it is better to take the whole real fruits instead of juice or pulp. The whole fruit has the fiber that juice doesn’t have.
Registered Dietitian adds the serving size recommended for children is no more than four to up to six ounces per day of juice fruit, and for teenagers no more than 8 ounces.
She affirms kids just need water to stay hydrated.

Transcript

Tell us about your thoughts on juice, is there a better alternative for our kids and why? why is it a better alternative and that’s always go with the juice? > So that’s a great question and topic to talk about juice is it okay and a child’s diet or even a diet in general. So juice is actually not necessary as a way to get your fruit intake and the main difference between when we talked about the MyPlate we see that fruit is a part of the plate it’s an important part but this is talking about the whole real fruits. The whole real fruit, and it’s naturalness, has the fiber that juice does not have sometimes people think that the orange juice pulp, you know that the pulp is the fiber, it’s not. So you know it’s about when you eat the flesh of the fruit that you get your insoluble fiber and your soluble fiber and it’s that fiber nutrient that’s really important when you eat your one serving of fruit. So juice is really tricky even if it’s no sugar added and maybe even a fresh pressed juice the serving size recommended for children is no more than four to up to six ounces per day that’s by the American Academy of Pediatrics and for teenagers no more than eight ounces, but is it needed and necessary as a way to get nutrition and no. So although it’s no sugar added juice still has natural sugar which is fine when you eat it within one serving of fruit, but the amount of fruit it takes to get an eight ounce glass of juice or now we know our portion sizes are also much larger so you can easily be drinking 12 to 16 ounces of juice and that’s way too many pieces of fruit that no one would ever eat to equate that one glass of juice. So when it comes to kids they just need water to stay hydrated hydrated, also when they eat their fruits and vegetables they are staying hydrated by eating their fruits and then juice if they do drink juice definitely keeping it to the four to six ounces for the elementary aged and even middle school-aged kids.

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