A Gem of a Juice

I’ve always preferred my calories eaten rather than drunk. Call me crazy, but I just much prefer chewing them over gulping them down.

It’s a good thing too, because in every food I know of, foods maintain more of their nutritional soundness as a food than as a drink, maintaining more fiber, not to mention other key nutrients.

This is not to suggest that juices aren’t healthy. They are. They’re just not quite as healthy because they take more calories to get the equivalent amount of satiety one gets from a piece of fruit. What’s more juices are often packed with added sugar (it takes about 10 freshly squeezed oranges to make one glass of orange juice).

But if one truly prefers the juice over the fruit, it’d be nice to know which fruit juice is the healthiest, right?

Well, despite the prevalence of orange juice and its well-known status in the juicing universe, it’s certainly not the healthiest. Like I said, most orange juices are jammed packed with added sugar, nullifying a lot of the health benefits that come from unsweetened orange juice. But even if the orange juice were unsweetened, it still wouldn’t make the top five fruit juices.

No, the healthiest fruit juice is pomegranate juice – the fruit that’s packed with all those mini arils you don’t throw away, but eat.

Researchers from the University of California Los Angeles analyzed the nutrient and antioxidant content of 10 different kinds of juices and ranked them in order of their antioxidant density. Antioxidants are hailed for their anti-inflammatory properties and their ability to free the body of toxic radicals that contribute to heart disease, cancer and premature aging. Their findings are published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Publishing their findings in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, UCLA researchers tested 100 percent pure fruit juices, 10 of them in all, giving pomegranate juice “best in show” in antioxidant density and variety of antioxidants, having many more kinds of antioxidants than the other juices and beverages tested (other tested beverages included apple juice, orange juice, acai juice and tea). In fact pomegranate juice had an antioxidant potency index 20 percent higher than its nearest competitor, determining this after analyzing the effectiveness of the juices’ ridding the body of free radicals.

Other juices that ranked high in antioxidants included blueberry juice, cranberry juice, Concord grape juice, acai juice and black cherry juice (orange juice ranked in at number eight on their top 10 list).

How does pomegranate juice compare with red wine? Once again, the competition is no match for the powerful pomegranate, yielding more antioxidants cup for cup.

While this is a great find, I maintain that it’s much better to eat a piece of fruit than to drink one – both nutritionally, and in my opinion, enjoyment-wise – if for no other reason than the food provides more fiber and other key nutrients that are lost through juicing.

But if you can’t go without a glass of juice in the morning, make it pomegranate juice. Because if you’re going to drink your calories, you should get them from the most nutritious juice available.