The Healthiest Fruit Juices

Randomize people to whole apples, and their LDL cholesterol drops compared to those getting clear apple juice, but not compared to cloudy apple juice (all made from the same apple harvest). We suspect it’s due to the remnants of fiber floating around in the cloudy juice, since you can get a similar effect if you add apple fiber to clear apple juice. So, if you are going to drink apple juice, drink cloudy, not clear.

Orange juice can reduce LDL cholesterol levels by about nine points, but if you choose to drink juice it’s better to do it with meals. Drinking about two cups (470 ml) of 100 percent orange juice three times a day between meals led to the accumulation of nearly three more pounds (~1.40 kg) of body fat within two weeks, compared to the same amount of juice taken with meals.

Also, OJ fails to significantly improve artery function. In apples, the magic appears to be in the peel, as eating apples with their skin improve artery function significantly better than peeled apples. It may be the pigment compounds, since even though regular orange juice doesn’t work, blood (red) orange juice does.

What about purple grape juice? Can’t get much more colorful than that. While grape juice may be harder on dental enamel than orange juice (so it’s important to rinse with water after drinking it), grape juice has greater antioxidant effects in the bloodstream compared to OJ, significantly decreasing oxidative DNA damage. And purple grape juice can significantly improve artery function. About two cups (470 ml) a day doesn’t appear to help any more than one cup (240 ml) a day, with estimates that even a half cup (120 ml) would work. What about just eating some grapes? That works too!

The equivalent of one and a quarter cups (295 ml) of fresh red, green, and blue-black seeded and seedless grapes improved artery function within three hours of consumption. Do that every day for a few weeks and artery function improves even further. They were even able to blunt the arterial dysfunction of a McDonald’s sausage and egg McMuffin meal.

The improvement in artery function may explain the ergogenic benefits of purple grape juice. Recreational runners drinking about three cups (710 ml) a day for a month improved their running time to exhaustion by a remarkable 15 percent compared to grape-flavored sugar water that had no effect. That’s an awful lot of juice, though (an additional 28 or so spoonfuls of daily sugar). It turns out you can get the same effect just drinking that one single dose two hours before the race.

Other deeply colored fruit juice capable of significant improvements in vascular function in randomized controlled trials include blackcurrant juice (a quarter cup (59 ml) four times a day for six weeks) and a single cup (240 ml) of cranberry juice (with maximum effect with one and a half cups (355 ml), compared to a half (120 ml), one (240 ml), one and three quarters (415 ml) or two and a quarter cups (532 ml)). Note cranberry “cocktail” is typically only 25 percent juice, so chugging even one cup (240 ml) in cocktail form may start exceeding kidney excretion capacity.

A wild blueberry beverage worked too, but it was made with freeze dried blueberry powder so was more whole food than juice. Acutely, the equivalent of one and two thirds cups (400 ml) of fresh blueberries worked as well or better than two and two thirds (630 ml) or three and three quarters cups (890 ml). The magnitude of the effects of these berry beverages, if they could be maintained over time, corresponds to about a 20 percent decreased risk of cardiovascular disease.

Two months of daily tomato juice consumption improved artery function, as did 15 days of a quarter cup (60 ml) of tomato paste a day, but not 7 days (though in that case the paste was given inside a buttered roll). Tomato juice along with other tomato products can also lower LDL cholesterol. This may help explain why, in a study of more than 20,000 Americans for about six years, higher tomato intake is associated with a significantly lower risk of premature death even after controlling for other diet and lifestyle factors.

Fruit juice can carry a sugar load similar to soda, but it’s not associated with a shortened lifespan, presumed to be because of the presence of polyphenols, the natural compounds in fruit thought to account for many of the benefits associated with fruit consumption. Fruit juice may be better than soda, but it’s not as good as whole fruit. Instead of a juice’s apparent neutral effect on mortality, consumption of fruit is associated with significantly lower risk of cancer, diabetes, stroke, and premature death from all causes put together.