University News Last updated 26 June 2014
Fruit juice should be had at meals times – says Mel Wakeman, Senior Lecturer in Applied Physiology at Birmingham City University, in response to a call from senior government advisors to ban juice from the dinner table.
The Government's chief obesity advisor has said that parents should only serve water or milk with meals and ban fizzy drinks and juices from the dining table, in order to reduce their children's intake of sugar. The recommendation was made ahead of scientific advice being published about how much sugar people should consume and proposed measures to reduce public levels of consumption.
Government advisors blame fruit juices for rises in obesity, type-2 diabetes and heart disease. Experts now want parents to treat fruit juices as they would fizzy drinks, as many 'wrongly believe' that fruit juice is healthy.
Nutrition expert Mel Wakeman has responded; "If children are going to have fruit juice (ideally not made from concentrate and with 'bits' in) it is preferable to have it at meal times rather than in-between meals. Fruit juice is preferable to many other soft and fizzy drinks which are a problem in terms of their sugar content and we advise children to drink water or low fat milk products during the day.
"I think to say fruit juice should be banned at meal times is too strong when there are other worse culprits in terms of sugar content. Eating the whole fruit is always going to be better and I would suggest diluting fruit juice but I think we need to focus on the ultra-processed soft drinks instead."
Mel's comments on food and nutrition can be found on her blog The Grub Hub.