JUST WHAT IS THE SUGAR CONTENT OF FRUIT JUICE?
We’ll use orange, apple, cherry and grape juice as examples. Even with
no sugar added, fruit juice contains about the same amount of sugar
as the same amount of soft drink.
Because apples, oranges and grapes are naturally full of sugar.
(No surprise there: Processed sugar comes from plants, usually corn
or sugar cane or sugar beets.) The table below compares the sugar in
12 ounces of juice (no sugar added) with 12 ounces (one can) of
Coca-Cola. If you look at the nutrition label on a can of Coke or
fruit juice, the “carbohydrate” is mostly sugar. Four grams of
sugar carbs equal approximately 1 teaspoon of
sugar.
12
ounces of >>>>>>>
Coca-Cola
Orange
Juice
Apple
Juice
Cherry
Juice
Grape
Juice
Total carbohydrates
40 g
39 g
42 g
49.5 g
60 g
Carbs from sugar
40 g
33 g
39 g
37.5 g
58.5 g
Sugar
(teaspoons)
10 tsp
8 tsp
10 tsp
9 tsp
15 tsp
Calories
145
165
165
210
240
WHAT DOES THE CHART TELL US? It tells
us that no matter which juice you choose, they all have more
calories than the same amount of Coke. It tells us that juice — 100
percent juice, no sugar added — contains about the same amount of
sugar (or even more — 50 percent more for grape juice) as the same volume of Coke. For
this comparison we used: Classic Coke, Tropicana HomeStyle Orange
Juice, Walnut Acres Organic 100 Percent Apple Juice, Eden Organic
Montmorency Cherry Juice (no sweetener added) and R.W. Knudsen
Unsweetened Concord Grape Juice. The numbers in the chart were
calculated from
the nutrition labels on the containers.