ISGANAITIS: Higher fiber intake is healthful for lowering cholesterol levels and the risk of certain cancers. GAZETTE: We’ve heard about avoiding extra calories, but how important is the fiber we miss by choosing juice over whole fruit? You’re boosting calories and reducing the amount of fiber, so it winds up being a less healthful choice than eating the whole fruit. When you’re drinking a cup of apple juice, you’re having a lot more calories than you would if you just ate a whole apple. But if you’ve ever squeezed your own juice or tried to make apple cider, you’ll know that it takes a lot of fruit to make a glass of juice. If you’re talking about 100 percent fruit juice, it contains a lot of the vitamins and phytonutrients that fruit contains. ISGANAITIS: Juice has some healthy aspects to it.

GAZETTE: What is wrong with juice? When I was growing up, people always thought fruit juice was healthy. The change would make the WIC program healthier for the 25 percent of pregnant American women and 50 percent of children it benefits, Isganaitis said in an interview. The three recommended that fruit juice be cut from the federal WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) supplemental nutrition program for low-income families. The article was written by Harvard Medical School Assistant Professor Florence Brown, director of the Joslin-Beth Israel Deaconess Diabetes and Pregnancy Program HMS instructor in pediatrics Elvira Isganaitis, a research associate and staff endocrinologist at the Joslin Diabetes Center and Heather Ferris, a former Joslin research associate and now an assistant professor at the University of Virginia Medical School. That topic was taken up in a recent op-ed in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The twin epidemics of diabetes and obesity sweeping the country have forced a re-evaluation of the American diet, including the notion that fruit juice is a healthy alternative to soda.

Juice approved by wic