Best Fruit Juice

If phenolics are what’s in fruit juice that provides protection against Alzheimer’s disease, then which juice might be best? They compared apple juice to cranberry cocktail, grape juice (purple, red, and white), grapefruit juice, orange juice, pineapple juice, and pomegranate. Whenever I show brand names, it’s only because they were the actual brands used in the study.

Here’s the graph. As you can see, one really pulls ahead, though the next five came out pretty respectable, with a couple relative phenolic flops at the end.

Which do you guess those are? Pineapple, apple juice, and white grape. Who do you think leads the pack? Six left to choose from. Purple grape #1, then cranberry, pomegranate, grapefruit, orange, and red grape. So, there are definitely better choices than apple, though this was for clear apple juice. Cloudy apple juice has more—way more, but that’s because it’s cheating, and actually has a little bit of the actual fruit in there, which is what makes it cloudy.

So imagine how superior an entire apple would be compared to juice—or even better, a whole pomegranate, or Concord grapes themselves.

So, the best fruit juice is the one inside the whole fruit. 

To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video. This is just an approximation of the audio contributed by Peter Mellor.

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• Mullen W, Marks SC, Crozier A. Evaluation of phenolic compounds in commercial fruit juices and fruit drinks. J Agric Food Chem. 2007 Apr 18;55(8):3148-57.

• apple juice
• apples
• cranberries
• cranberry juice
• fruit
• fruit juice
• grape juice
• grapefruit
• grapes
• juice
• orange juice
• phytonutrients
• pomegranate juice
• pomegranates
• processed foods