A couple of weeks ago we wrote about the sacred cow of OJ nutrition being mercilessly slayed over at the Los Angeles Times. To quickly remind you – the theme is that Orange Juice is high in sugar, low in fiber, and contains vitamins and minerals that are abundant in a normal diet – overall it does more bad than good for most people.

The Florida Department of Citrus was obviously not happy with all this OJ negativity. They sent a letter to LA Times reporter, Karen Kaplan, respectfully disagreeing with the articles content. They also sent copies to blogs such as Fooducate. (download WORD doc here).

As an additional measure, the Citrus folks enlisted a dietitian, Gail Rampersaud, to write letters to all the skeptics, extolling the virtues of the Juice. An LA Times Article from Wednesday brings the dietitian’s letter, and a response from one of the skeptics, Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist at UC San Francisco. It’s pretty much a re-run of previous arguments, with a few additional twists.

Pro-OJ:

• One glass counts as a fruit serving.
• Good source of vitamin C, which many people don’t get enough of.
• Citrus juices are more nutrient dense than apple or pineapple juices.
• 100% OJ is free of added sugar.
• The majority of  kids are not getting enough fruit in their diet. A study showed that kids 2-11 who drank OJ were likely to be consuming more fruit as well.
• The 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recognized the nutritional importance of including 100% orange juice in the diet.

Against-OJ:

• The problem is not with fruit, it’s with juice.
• Juice has no fiber.
• Half the calories are from fructose (a sugar). Fructose in high quantities is a burden on the human metabolism.

And you just have to love Dr. Lustig’s eloquence:

The upside of juice consumption is so infinitesimal compared to the downside that we shouldn’t even be having this discussion.

In his response letter he further writes:

I am not against fruit. As far as I am concerned, the most important nutrient contained in fruit (not just citrus, but any fruit) is fiber. “The juice is Nature’s way of getting you to eat your fiber.” Thus, I am not against fruit; indeed I am for it. So the Florida Department of Citrus can rest easy in terms of the citrus crop.

The problem with Florida’s department of citrus is that there’s way too many oranges produced. Too much for people to consume as fruit. So we got juice.

Can anyone else think of a surplus crop whose processing has turned into a profitable business with an unhealthy downside?

If you answered corn and high fructose corn syrup – give yourself a pat on the back.

What to do at the supermarket:

I am still torn by the saddening news that orange juice is not that healthy after all. Decades of programing my brain that this is healthy cannot be erased overnight. That said, in our family the issue is not so critical because we drink tap water 99% of the time. My kids can have whatever they want the rest of the time.

If you are debating between soda pop and orange juice – go for the juice.

If you’re debating between orange juice and water – go for water. And if that’s too hard, you can always water down a glass of OJ and halve the sugar content in an instant.

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flickr photo: Laurel Fan

Who hasn’t been told to cut down on fatty food, cholesterol, salt, sugar, and “practically everything that tastes good”. After a while, people just ignore these warnings because it seems that there is nothing healthy left to eat. After several decades of “negative” nutritional messages, messages encouraging people to eat foods with positive nutrients are becoming more prevalent. Products are not just touting low fat content, they are also boasting high levels of fiber, omega-3, and other goodies.

One group that has been an active player in the “Yes to good food” camp rather than the “No to bad food” approach is the Nutrient Rich Foods Coalition. The NRFC is a not-for-profit organization that represents for-profit commodity growers in the US, including the National Dairy Council, the California Avocado Commission, the Wheat Council, and others. All 5 major food groups are in.

We recently spoke with Dr Greg Miller, a spokesperson for the NRFC. Dr Miller is an executive vice president of the National Dairy Council. In our conversation we discussed the coalition’s approach to nutrition information, as well as dairy specific issues (we’ll write about those in a separate post).

The Nutrient Rich Foods Coalition formed about 5 years ago with the goal of creating a paradigm shift in nutrition education. The idea is to move away from 30 years of negatives, to a more encouraging focus on foods with maximum good nutrients per calorie. Some foods pack lots of health into a low number of calories. Others, called junk foods, fill people up with empty calories. The coalition funded several academic studies to explore various ways of defining which foods are nutrient dense and which are not.

An algorithm that was developed by Professor Adam Drewnowski, Director, Nutritional Sciences Program, at the University of Washington, exemplifies this approach. Called NRF9.3, this algorithm uses a food product’s levels of 9 nutrients to encourage and 3 nutrients to limit, and then calculates a nutrition score. The nutrients are those appearing on a packaged food’s nutrition label. They are protein, fiber, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, calcium, iron, potassium, magnesium, fats, sodium, and sugars.

Various products can be compared based on their nutrition score. According to Dr. Miller, the algorithm has been validated against the Healthy Eating Index and found to have statistically significant correlations between high scoring foods and better health.

The NRFC is taking an approach similar to that of NuVal / ONQI which we covered a few weeks ago. However, NRFC does not have a retail roll-out planned at this time. The organization is currently focused  on educational and informational activities.

Cynics will say that any organization representing the food industry will prefer messages that encourage eating more (even if more of good foods) rather than messages of “eating less”, this despite the fact that most Americans need to reduce their daily caloric intake. What is clear to the NRFC, as well as anybody dealing with nutrition today, is that consumers are confused about what to eat and what not to eat. They will welcome a solution that makes it easier to choose better foods. And if a system that encourages eating real foods works for people, great.

Some suggestions from the NRFC include:

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