Your Childrens Health

Parents often worry about whether giving juice to their children is a good idea.  Sure, 100% fruit juice is healthy, but does it contain too many calories for you little ones?  According to a recent analysis of government data, which will be presented at the Experimental Biology meeting this week, fruit juice is an excellent choice for children.

According to the study, kids who drank 100% fruit juice had healthier diets than those who drank no juice, and consumed more key nutrients.  The children also had BMIs (body mass indexes) which were either the same or lower than the non juice drinkers, allaying parents’ fears that juice drinking can make children obese.

The study found that although juice didn’t make the little ones considerably slimmer, it had a much greater effect in the 12 to 18 year old age group.  So what should parents do with this information?  Well – give your child juice of course!  But do it within limits.  Small babies who still drink from a bottle or sipper cup shouldn’t drink juice because of the risk to their teeth from the sugar, but it’s fine for older children.  Make sure you check the label though – a 100% fruit juice is totally different to a fruit juice drink.  Check the back of the packet to make sure that it doesn’t have any added sugar, or all the health benefits could be negated by the sugar content.  Natural fruit sugar is healthy – added white sugar isn’t great.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 4th, 2006 at 1:43 pm and is filed under Obesity, Diet and Nutrition, Dental. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.