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Fruit Juice
Is Your Child Getting Too Much of a Good Thing?
By Kathleen Meister
That's exactly what happened with Jeffrey. If he drank all the juice he wanted, he wouldn't drink his milk at mealtime, and he wouldn't eat much of his meal, either. I quickly learned that I needed to limit his juice intake so that he would have an appetite for other foods.
"Fruit juice is not a bad food, but sometimes, it's an overused food," says Althea Zanecosky, spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association. "Because parents think of juice as a healthy food and because they like the convenience of single-serving juice boxes, they parents sometimes give children juice instead of water when they're thirsty. But a drink doesn't have to be sweet to satisfy your thirst. It's better to encourage children – even at a very young age – to drink water when they're thirsty, especially between meals."
Some parents allow their children to drink juice rather than milk at mealtime. However, juice is far less nutritious than milk. No other beverage should be allowed to replace milk in a child's diet (or breastmilk or formula in an infant's diet).
Parents also may give their children juice as part of an effort to reach the goal of five servings of fruits and vegetables daily. However, juice has no nutritional advantage over whole, cut up or pureed fruit. In fact, since juice doesn't contain fiber, it's actually less nutritious than fruit. Only one of a child's five daily fruit and vegetable servings should consist of juice, Zanecosky says.