Would you drink Coke or Pepsi for breakfast?

It appears that L.A. Times readers love their juice.

Dozens of you wrote in to sound off about Sunday’s story “Nutrition Experts See Juice Glass as Half Empty.”

The bottom line – that 100% fruit juice can be as unhealthy as soda – was not welcome news to many readers.

To recap, the story points out that fruit juice has comparable amounts of calories and sugar as soda on an ounce-per-ounce basis. Drinking excess soda will make you gain weight, and the same is true of juice. Health experts scratch their heads when schools remove soda from their vending machines and substitute juice instead.

Though juice comes from fruit, it is not nutritionally comparable because it has more sugar and less fiber. As Dr. Charles Billington, an appetite researcher and endocrinologist at the University of Minnesota, put it: “It’s pretty much the same as sugar water.”

Juice drinkers wrote in with their complaints. Among them:

If [your butt] is super-glued to the couch, you can become obese eating celery. (I doubt it – that would mean eating a LOT of celery – but in principle, you could become obese if all you ate were apples and oranges.)

Read more here:

Comments

[Natalie DeJohn]

Does it count if I have Diet Coke for breakfast. That's happened before. I'm not proud of it.

[Carol]

Exercise, exercise, exercise.

Until exercise is emphasized over exactly what goes in our tummies, then people will be fat. I don't worry overly much about every bite, or gulp, because I walk, run, ride my bike, lift weights. I'm constantly on the move.

People are more glued to their TVs and computers than ever. Power off for awhile and get outside, move, dance, skip rope, anything! That will take care of the weight problem, the diabetes, the osteoporosis, high blood pressure, high cholesterol. I guess the drug companies won't like it, but it would also be the answer to runaway health care costs.

[J Met]

You can't just have a V8, then you have to worry about Sodium intake. Just drink a glass of water

[John Franklin]

People probably got upset because the premise of the original article was ridiculously naive and misinforming readers. Calorie counting tries to linearize the complexities of diet in a way that do not correspond to reality. Nobody gets fat from drinking juice. I challenge you to find someone who has, or to find any properly conducted study which shows purely natural juice squeezed from fruit promotes obesity.

[Joe]

Cola: sugar, caramel color, caffeine, phosphoric acid, coca leaf, kola nut extract, lime extract, flavoring mixture, vanilla and glycerin.

Fruit Juice: vitamin c, fructose

No comparison.

[tom Bates]

Have a V8! No problem!!