Excess fruit juices may lead to diabetes, heart diseases and other problems

They make a call to the UK government to alter the ‘five a day’ guideline and remove the fruit and vegetable servings. They have made various researches in this field and after extensive research they have concluded some facts that the fruit juices may be related to heart diseases and diabetes.

They also suggested that as fruit juice is included, it makes people think that it is a healthy drink and tend to consume it in huge amounts. They also requested to label a limit up to which a person should consume it in a day.

This has started from the time medical research has brought out the fact that high sugar intakes have an increased risk of heart diseases. Another research in 2012 at Harvard has concluded in the journal Circulation that regular consumption of sugary drinks has found to increase the risk of heart diseases in men. Also, researchers at American Heart Association conference said that the rate of diabetes and heart diseases in America has increased in the past ten years.

According to Dr. Gill, it is a misconception that fruit juices and smoothies are alternatives to sweet beverages.

He says that research has proved that they have the same effect as them. In fact, one glass of fruit juice has more sugar than one piece of fruit. Eating fruit is more beneficial considering the amount of fiber and other nutrients present in the fruit. However he does not say that one should shun away from these products. He just stresses this fact that their consumption must be reduced to a significant extent.

The researchers also told that they conducted an experiment on some people for three months and at the end of the time period, the people had increased insulin resistance and bigger waists in overweight people.

The medical researchers conducted an online poll also. In this poll, 2000 adults appeared. It was specifically aimed at testing the public awareness of sugar content of fruit juices. They were showed pictures of juices and other beverages, and they had to estimate the amount of sugar each of them contained.

Most of the respondents gave ambiguous answers. Most of the responses were underestimated to a great extent. The results were lowered by 48% for fruit juices and smoothies and 12% for carbonated drinks.

This is why Prof. Sattar and Dr. Gill have made an appeal to the UK government to issue health related awareness so that sugar consumption is reduced. However they do not want to go too far by putting restrictions on children as fruit are beneficial to some extent. But they urge that the public health makers to include fruit juice whenever the topic of sugar sweetened drinks arises.