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Whole fruit has more fiber, but new research finds some nutrients more accessible in juice.
Readers of this newsletter know that drinkingfruitjuiceisno substitute for consuming whole fruits. Processing fruit into juice loses most of the fiber, often adds sugar, and damages some of the nutrients that make fruit such a healthy choice. But people who nonetheless like to start their day ^ with a glass of orange juice can take some encouragement from a new study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. It found that juicing may improve how readily certain nutrients can be absorbed by the body.
"The researchers compared the carotenoid, flavonoid and vitamin C concentrations in fresh orange segments, homogenized orange puree and orange juices that varied in processing (freshly squeezed, pasteurized and flash-pasteurized)," explains Elizabeth J. Johnson, PhD, a scientist in Tufts' HNRCA Antioxidants Research Laboratory. "They reported that the content of some carotenoids and flavonoids decreased with juicing, while the vitamin C content was unaffected.
"They also evaluated the bioaccessibility (the fraction of the compound that is released from the food matrix in the gastrointestinal tract that is available for intestinal absorption) of these bioactives. Compared to orange segments or puree, the bioaccessibility of carotenoids increased three- to four-fold in the orange juices....