Healthy fight 101: Water vs Orange Juices

It seems obvious for us to do a healthy fight showing the differences between water and fruit juices. What drinks should you have? In which case should you have one or the other? Which one will be better for you?

So, you’re lucky, we’ll answer these questions here. But before let’s see concisely what are these two common drinks. Water vs orange juices.

 

Are Water and Orange Juices healthy?

Yes, we probably know what you are thinking about. And the answer sounds evident. Well, for water, everybody knows that is essential for our body but for fruit juices the answer could surprise you.

First of all, we have to explain you what orange juices are. We can find them in 2 different forms: natural fruit juices (such as orange pressed by ourselves) and fruit juices that we can find in any supermarket or grocery (like common orange juices). Although supermarket fruit juices contain vitamins, minerals and antioxidants, but some of them can have also added sugar in it. However, we’ll see that both of them can actually be loaded with sugar (fructose).

Well, now let’s start this new healthy fight between these two favorite drinks of our daily life.

As you know, natural fruit juices and water are very good sources of nutrients which are important to be in shape. Moreover, that is factual that they are both healthy for your body but what for? We’ll see that in the next part.

 

Water:

Water doesn’t contain any calories, proteins, carbs and fat. However, it’s essential for the body, its function and for the regulation of its temperature. Water is represented by 60-70% in our body and we get 40% of it due to the water we need to drink.

In natural water, we can find minerals such as calcium and magnesium.

Read –> What are minerals and their properties

 

Natural orange juices:

Unlike water, orange juices contain proteins, carbs and so calories. Indeed, per 100g of natural orange juices, we can find 45 calories, 0,2g of total fat, 1mg of sodium, 200mg of potassium, 0,2g of dietary fibre, 8g of sugar and 0,7g of protein. It contains also 4% of our daily need in vitamin A, 83% of vitamin C (orange juice is thus a huge source of vitamin C), 1% of calcium, 1% of Iron and 2% of magnesium.

Read –> What are vitamins and their properties

 

Could pure orange juice replace water?

This question is often asked. Indeed, many people want to drink something else than water. A pure orange juice owns several benefits for the body such as a fruit. Our body needs it, but an excess of calories should be avoided.

Therefore, we recommend you do not drink more than one glass of orange juices per day due to the many calories it can contains. Water is essential for the maintain of the body and government advises to drink six or eight glasses of water per day. Also, when you’re having fruit juice, the real fruit might lose some nutrients like dietary fibres that you might find in their layers.

That’s why it’s good that not having just fruit juice but real fruit instead.

Read –> How much water should you drink a day and why

 

Conclusion – who win the healthy fight?

As you probably expected, water has a lot of function for our body which are essentials unlike orange juice. However, it’s a serious competitor thanks to his properties (vitamin C mainly).

You’ll understood that, water thus win this healthy fight but, be sure, the orange juice will come back in force in a future confrontation.

 

Sources and further reading:

Livestrong: https://www.livestrong.com/article/145633-nutritional-value-of-water/

Verywellfit:https://www.verywellfit.com/orange-juice-nutrition-facts-calories-and-health-benefits-4113143