Study: Drinking Fruit Juice Worse Than Sugary Soda For Type 2 Diabetes Risk

Dr. Julie Palmer says don't get fooled into drinking OJ

What could be healthier for you than a icy cold glass of orange juice, right? What could be more Americana and good for you than that?! I mean it comes from freshly-squeezed oranges which are grown on trees, so it HAS to be better for you than sugary soda, doesn't it? Wellllllll, not exactly as a new study published in a major medical journal from researchers out of Boston University revealed this week.

Lead researcher Dr. Julie Palmer, a senior epidemiologist from the Slone Epidemiology Center at Boston University, looked at the connection between both fruit juice and sugary soda to Type 2 diabetes as part of the enlightening and still-ongoing prospective Black Women's Health Study featuring a whopping 59,000 African-American women from across the United States. Because Type 2 diabetes has hit the black female population especially hard increasing exponentially in the past few years (double that of white women), Dr. Palmer wanted to find out specifically why and what she discovered is gonna shock a whole lotta people.

Initial questionnaires went sent out to the study participants in 1995 to obtain baseline information on height, weight, demographic characteristics, medical history, usual diet and other factors. Then follow-up questionnaires soliciting information with updates on various health conditions, lifestyle changes, and diet among other things have been sent out every two years ever since to see if there are any marked changes in the occurrence of Type 2 diabetes or other such diseases.

In all, 2,713 of the study participants (about 4.5 percent) developed Type 2 diabetes in the first ten years since the study began that paralleled with those women who increased their consumption of both sugary sodas and fruit drinks. According to the study, women who drank 2+ sodas per day experienced a 24 percent increase in getting Type 2 diabetes than those who drank less than one soft drink in a month.

Interestingly, Dr. Palmer also found a curious connection between fruit juice and Type 2 diabetes as well. Those women in the study who drank 2+ servings of this "healthy" drink alternative to sugary soda, primarily at breakfast time, saw a 31 percent increase in diabetes risk compared to those who had less than one glass of fruit juice each month.

Hmmmm...

I can remember growing up how much I LOVED drinking Sunny Delight orange juice. And my mom faithfully bought it for me, my brother Kevin, and sister Beverly thinking it was a "healthy" option since it was derived from fruit. Surely this had to be better than all that soda we would be drinking instead, right? Boy, we couldn't have been more wrong if we tried--and we have to blame it partially on the aggressive marketing of the juice lobby led by groups like the Juice Products Association who are in full spin-mode right now promoting juice as playing "an important role in a healthy diet." NOT!

Some will argue that it's fruit and that alone should make it healthy. While I sincerely believe both whole fruits and vegetables are an important part of a healthy diet (including a low-carb one, by the way!), it's a blatant copout to say they're all good for you when clearly they are not. Blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, cantaloupe, and honeydew are excellent choices for fruit in the latter stages of your low-carb life management plan. But juicing even any of these fruits simply concentrates the sugar that much more and you just don't need it. Can you imagine all the sugar you'd be adding to your body with apple, pineapple, or orange juice? EEEEEEK! No thanks! I don't need to get Type 2 diabetes.

The take-home message from this study is that fruit juice is equal if not MORE harmful to your risk for Type 2 diabetes as sugary soda is and should be avoided for the same reasons. Most of the people reading this at my blog are saying to themselves, "well duh?!" But ask just about anyone you know which of the two is healthier between fruit juice and sugary soda and you're gonna have a virtually unanimous choice for the fruit juice. My answer would be NEITHER and I haven't drank either one since I started livin' la vida low-carb in January 2004. And I have NO intentions of EVER doing so again.

Dr. Palmer said fruit drinks were favored over sugary soda by the participants in the study and that fruit drink consumption in the United States has doubled since the late 1970s. This along with the strong marketing of fruit juice as "healthy" beginning in the 1980s and still to this day has led us to higher and higher rates of Type 2 diabetes, Dr. Palmer noted.

"The public should be made aware that these drinks are not a healthy alternative to soft drinks with regard to risk of type 2 diabetes," she exclaimed.

This study was funded by the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases and was published in the July 28, 2008 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

You can e-mail Dr. Julie Palmer about her study at jpalmer@slone.bu.edu.

See what some of my fellow low-carbers had to say about this study on fruit juice:

- Dr. Jonny Bowden
- Connie Bennett
- Discussion at my forum
- Carol Bardelli
- Low-Carb Friends
- Sean Kelley

Study: Brain Cancer Tumors 'Significantly Smaller' On High-Fat, Low-Carb Diet

Dr. Thomas Seyfried says low-carb starves cancerous tumor cells

This Medical News Today story shares yet another positive health benefit to livin' la vida low-carb as a way to fight cancer cells that are causing life-threatening tumors which up until now has meant painful chemotherapy and radiation treatments.

But we've already seen a series of research studies provided over the past year confirming the low-carb treatment option for other areas of the body that cancer inflicts, including the pancreas, the esophagus, and the kidneys. This latest study confirms the use of a high-fat, low-carb diet on brain cancer, too!

Research supervisor Dr. Thomas Seyfried, professor of biology at Boston College, overlooked this study featuring a product called KetoCal. Looking at their web site, the nutritional label for each 100g serving of this powder drink product shows it contains 90 percent fat (72g), 15g protein, and just 3g carbohydrates. It is also heavily fortified with all the essential vitamins and minerals for a nutrient-dense diet.

Although this product has been primarily marketed to children with epilepsy, another health ailment that has been found to improve on a low-carb diet (with all these improvements in health just by switching to livin' la vida low-carb, why aren't we hearing more recommendations by our health leaders to have people switch to this way of eating, hmmm?), now Dr. Seyfried and his team of researchers wanted to test to see if KetoCal could improve the condition of people suffering from brain cancer.

While KetoCal was used in the study, they did not pay for this study except to donate the products that the mice involved in the study consumed. But the results of this study were not so much about any particular product as much as it was about the remarkable findings of how health improves dramatically on a high-fat, low-carb diet.

The researchers implanted into the brains of male laboratory mice two kinds of malignant tumors and then divided them into three distinctive dietary groups:

GROUP 1--Low-fat, high-carb mouse chow
GROUP 2--Unlimited amounts of the high-fat, low-carb KetoCal
GROUP 3--Restricted amounts of the high fat, low-carb KetoCal

What were the results of the study?

GROUP 1 and GROUP 2 did not see improvements in the brain cancer. However, GROUP 3 saw a 35-65 percent reduction in the growth of the brain tumors and extended their life survival rates longer than the control groups. Moreover, the overall health of the high-fat, low-carb GROUP 3 mice was enhanced compared with the low-fat, high-carb GROUP 1.

The results of this study were published in the February 21, 2007 issue of the scientific journal Nutrition & Metabolism.

Describing the high-fat, low-carb diet as a "novel alternative therapy for malignant brain cancer," Dr. Seyfried believes the results his team found should lend credence to finding a more natural, just as effective, and economical way to fight this devastating condition.

"While the tumors did not vanish in the mice who received the strict KetoCal diet, they got significantly smaller and the animals lived significantly longer. And compared to radiation, chemotherapy and surgery, KetoCal is a relatively inexpensive treatment option," he said.

Since brain cancer is a leading killer among the cancers in both adults and children, researchers have been looking for less invasive ways to provide long-term management that will reduce the size of tumors by using the knowledge we already have about what feeds the cells of this cancer.

What the high-fat, low-carb diet does is basically starve tumors from getting any glucose (sugar), something we have learned from other research actually feeds cancer cells. Yikes! So, despite the low-fat diet that GROUP 1 ate, it was the high-carb content that prevented their brain tumors from seeing improvements.

Interestingly, although opponents of livin' la vida low-carb have made a mockery of ketosis and the ketone bodies that are produced on a low-carb diet, the truth of the matter is tumor cells cannot effectively metabolize them and, thus, cannot grow. Do you think you're gonna hear that on the 6 o'clock news anytime soon?! Yeah right!

What's most revealing about this study is the fact that it shows a positive step in the right direction with health as a result of going on a low-carb diet. We always hear the naysayers talking about how unsafe and ineffective this "dangerous fad" diet is for people to go on. But clearly the evidence from the research that is coming out is showing just the opposite is true.

There will come a day sometime in the future when livin' la vida low-carb will be the preferred and quite possibly recommended dietary approach to treating obesity and disease in the United States of America. It won't happen soon, but I honestly believe that day is coming. I only hope to stick around on this Earth long enough to see it happen in my lifetime. It could happen in the next 50 years. Wait and see!

You can e-mail Dr. Thomas Seyfried about his outstanding research at thomas.seyfried.1@bc.edu.

2-27-07 UPDATE: I heard from Dr. Thomas Seyfried in an e-mail today regarding my blog post.

Dear Mr. Moore,

Thank you for your interest in our brain cancer research. While the impact of the calorically restricted diet on brain cancer is significant, there is still much we don't know on the molecular mechanisms of action. Providing this kind of information will eventually hasten the adaption of the diet for general clinical use.

It is also important to mention that the anti-tumor benefits of the diet are observed only when given in restricted amounts to lower total caloric intake. Our previous studies showed that we could get similar results using a calorically restricted high carbohydrate/low fat diet. The phenomenon basically involves a complex series of metabolic transitions following reductions glucose and elevations in ketones. Ketogenic diets simply provide somewhat more circulating ketone bodies than restricted high carb diets, which is healthy for normal brain cells.

Sincerely,

Professor Seyfried

Well, I certainly appreciate the correspondence Dr. Seyfried. I'd be interested in seeing the side-by-side comparison of a calorie-restricted low-carb diet with a calorie-restricted low-fat diet to see what the difference would be on cancer and other health markers. That would be a fascinating subject to study. THANKS again for your e-mail!