Food Tip: Vitamin C & Fruit Juice
by Shereen Jegtvig
Vitamin C is so important for the human body. It’s necessary for keeping your immune system strong and for building connective tissue that you need for healthy skin (that means fewer wrinkles) and sturdy bones. Vitamin C is also an antioxidant that helps protect the cells in your body from damage due to free radicals from the environment, sun damage and even as a result of normal metabolism.
The best dietary sources of vitamin C are fruits and vegetables, including citrus fruits like oranges and grapefruit, guava, strawberries, broccoli, peppers and potatoes. If you eat five to nine servings of these fruits and vegetables every day you should be getting all the vitamin C you need. However, vitamin C doesn’t hang around long so once fruits and vegetables are peeled, cut, sliced, cooked or processed, the vitamin C content starts to deteriorate. In general, fruits lose about 30% of their vitamin C content when canned or bottled as juice.
Of course, you may prefer the convenience of fruit juice and that’s OK, you’ll still get a full day’s worth of vitamin C from a glass of orange or grapefruit juice, although other juices such as grape and apple are generally very low in vitamin C. You have to look out for a few things, though. Be sure you’re drinking 100% juice and not a sugary fruit drink that’s mostly water and high fructose corn syrup. You might also want to be on the lookout for artificial food colorings too. Using the FoodEssentials tool, once can see that almost half the brands of grapefruit juice contain artificial red coloring.
It pays to be vigilent, and always be wary of the marketing claims on the bottles – know what you are drinking! For further reading on fruit and vegetable juices you may be interested in the following articles:
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