Check out the multitude of blog posts and articles with tips for healthier skin, and you’ll likely find juicing among the top recommendations. On the surface, getting a boatload of skin-nourishing vitamins and antioxidants in one glass seems like a great idea. However, it’s actually a colossal nutritional misunderstanding that is undermining your health, sabotaging your skin, and making it tougher for you to fit in your favorite jeans. So, while we’re big advocates of healthy skin from the inside out, we’ve got no love for the juicing craze.
Here are five reasons you’re better off eating your fruit and veg whole and skipping the juice bar:
1. Sugar Surplus = Aging & Acne.
Drinking a glass of juice is like eating several pieces of fruit and getting a huge, concentrated dose of sugar (fructose) all at once. Not only is excess sugar linked to serious health concerns including diabetes and heart disease, it also speeds up aging. Studies published in the British Journal of Dermatology and research from Leiden University Medical Centre in the Netherlands reveal that excess sugar can damage collagen when sugar molecules bond to proteins in a process known as glycation. Skin can lose elasticity, sag, and wrinkle more rapidly as a result. A high-glycemic diet also can drive inflammation and act to artificially elevate hormones, both of which can aggravate acne. Nothing sweet about that.
2. Fiber Deficit.
Simply put, your body needs fiber. For heart health, to aid digestion, and to regulate glucose levels. When you juice, you extract all the fiber and all its benefits. Most immediately, the concentration of sugar impacts your liver, giving it too much to process at once. What your liver can’t process, it turns to fat, which can lead to insulin resistance.
3. So much for that workout.
In terms of calories, that juice blend you’ve just concocted isn’t much better than popping open a can of soda. You’re about to ingest about three times the calories you’d get from just eating a single piece of fruit, and because you’ve removed all that fiber, you aren’t going to feel full, so you’re likely to consume still more calories.
4. A bad case of the bloats.
Some fruits like apples, pears, peaches, and certain berries contain sorbitol, a sugar-based alcohol that’s difficult to digest. In concentrated amounts, it can give you a serious case of gut gymnastics. Nobody wants that.
5. Orange skin.
Not the glow anyone is going for. Carotenemia—a yellow or orange appearance of skin pigment—is a condition caused by high carotene levels in the blood. It can happen when you drink too much juice from vegetables high in beta-carotene. Not pretty.
Bottom line, there are better ways to adjust your diet for healthier skin. Eat fruits and veg whole. Keep sugar to a minimum. Limit dairy consumption. Drink water and unsweetened tea, especially green tea, which contains antioxidants and polyphenols beneficial to skin.
Bonus: you can skip the expensive juice machine and put that money toward something a whole lot more fun!
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