This is the second in a series of posts based on a recent f.a.c.t.s. (“food advertising to children and teens score”) report on sugary sodas issued by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale. A while ago, the center did a similar report on the advertising of junk food to children, and you can read my excerpts from that here.

Fruit drinks, which some parents consider to be better options than full-sugar sodas, can be as bad or worse. “Ounce for ounce, the fruit drinks are just as high in calories and added sugar as soda,” the report’s “in brief” version says.

This may be partly because “some fruit drink packages are covered with images of real fruit, even though these drinks may contain no more than five percent real fruit juice. The actual ingredients are water and high-fructose corn syrup, or in some cases 'real sugar,' such as cane sugar.”

I'd add — though they're science researchers and I'm not — that straight juice is no bargain, either. To my thinking, it's refined sugar too, albeit not as undesireable as high fructose corn syrup or cane sugar. But it is still a processed product in which plant fiber has been stripped away, making the natural sugars in the fruit more — and more quickly — burnable by the body. For food addicts, hypoglycemics, and others, that's not good.