What about vegetable juices?
Posted by kathryn in A Balanced Diet, Fruit, Snacking and Vegetables
In amongst the anti-fruit-juice posts this week, Andrew asked whether vegetable juices were any different? We tend to lump fruit and vegies together in our heads and nutritionally they do have similarities. However there are a number of key differences, which makes including both of them in our diet important to our health. It also means that vegetables are a much better juicing option.
While some vegetables have really good levels of vitamin C (think capsicum and anything green and leafy), fruit is our main source of this vital nutrient. Both fruit and vegetables provide potassium and fibre, as well as carotenoids and other important antioxidants. It’s important to note that fruit and vegetables do contain different antioxidants , which is why we’re generally told to eat a mixture of the two.
Kilojoule content
One of the big differences between fruit and veg lies in their kilojoule content. While fruit is low in kilojoules compared to many snacks and other foods, it does contain some. Depending on the fruit, a serving will be between 150 and 250 kilojoules. Whereas most vegetables are much lower than this. For example 100g of apple has:- twice the kilojoules of carrots and broccoli
- three times the kilojoules of cabbage
- four times the kilojoules of cucumber, tomatoes, celery and spinach
- seven times the kilojoules of lettuce
If you’ve ever stood in a juice bar and watched the assistants at work, you’ll know that it takes a lot of fruit and vegies to make one small juice. This is why fruit juice is so much higher in kilojoules than vegetable juices. By the time you’ve juiced five apples, you’ve clocked up 1,500 kilojoules. Whereas if you’re making a juice of carrots, beetroot, celery and spinach, you’re having about a quarter of that amount.
What does that all mean?
As I said before , when I’m out and about, I’ll sometimes buy a juice, but I’ll make sure it’s at least 75% vegetables.
However, you do still need to eat vegetables. While juicing can be a useful addition to your daily diet if you know you’re having a low vegie day, vegetable juices (like fruit juices) do not contain fibre . The fibre part of the vegetable goes down the waste tube and gets thrown away (or put on the compost), which means you’re still missing out on one of the important nutritional components we get from vegies.
Technorati tags: juice , fruit juice , vegetable juice
Photo from the National Cancer Institute: http://visualsonline.cancer.gov
04 April, 2007
Comments
Thanks Kathryn. There is so much misinformation and “Woo-Woo” floating around about fruit and vegie juices. It is great to read your clear information on the topic . We really love our juice as it is so convenient & we are really busy…but I must work harder to keep our whole vegetables up!!
As an aside, friends of ours use the discarded crushed vegie’s from the juicer for soups and bolognaise. This seems like a good idea…but you are right…most of ours ends up as worm food!
Andrew, as with everything it comes back to balance. A bit of this and a bit of that. By varying meals, food sources and preparation methods around, you can basically guarantee you’re having a healthy diet.
Interesting about using the crushed vegies from the juicer in soups and sauces. I would have thought it would have lost a lot of flavour – but it’s one way of making sure you get all the goodness from the vegies.
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