Cold-Pressed Juice: What Pressing Keeps, What It Loses and the Sugar Problem

The woman ahead of me in the grocery line had three bottles of green juice balanced on a bag of kale, and she apologized to the cashier for the price as if it were a confession. “It’s a reset,” she said. As of early 2026 that scene is playing out everywhere: searches for cold pressed juice have climbed again on the back of viral videos claiming that pressing “keeps the enzymes alive,” that three days of bottles can “flush” the liver, and that heat-treated juice is somehow dead food.

Some of that is half-true, most of it is marketing dressed as biochemistry, and the part that matters most, the sugar, rarely gets a mention. The honest story is more interesting than either the hype or the backlash.

This piece walks through what a hydraulic press actually preserves, what every juicer throws away, how strong the evidence is for any health benefit, and how to drink the stuff without quietly swallowing a day’s worth of sugar before breakfast.

What is cold-pressed juice, and how is it different from the carton?

Picture two ways to get juice out of an apple. The first is a centrifugal juicer: a metal grater spinning at several thousand revolutions a minute shreds the fruit and flings the liquid through a mesh. It is fast, loud and warm, and it whips a lot of air into the juice. The second is a cold press. The produce is first ground into a wet pulp, then that pulp is wrapped in cloth and squeezed between hydraulic plates with tons of force. Little air is introduced and the juice temperature barely rises. That slower, cooler process is the whole meaning of “cold-pressed.”

The carton on the supermarket shelf usually adds a further step. Pasteurization is a short burst of heat, typically to around 70–90°C for seconds, that kills harmful microbes and extends shelf life. Most bottled cold-pressed juice is not heat-pasteurized. Some of it is sold raw with a very short refrigerated life, and a growing share is treated with high pressure processing, or HPP, in which the sealed bottle is submerged in cold water at extreme pressure to inactivate bacteria without heat.

Why does any of this matter nutritionally? Three variables decide what survives from orchard to glass: heat, oxygen and time. Vitamin C and some polyphenols (the colorful antioxidant compounds in plants) degrade with all three. A cold press minimizes two of them. It does nothing about the fourth variable, which is the mechanical removal of fiber, and that one, as we will see, is where the real argument lives.

Keep the terms straight and the rest of the debate becomes clearer: cold-pressed describes how the juice was extracted, pasteurized and HPP describe how it was made safe, and neither label tells you how much sugar is in the bottle.

What changed recently: the dated facts behind the search spike

Nothing in the chemistry of a carrot changed this year. What shifted is the conversation around sugar, and cold pressed juice landed in the middle of it.

The anchor is still the World Health Organization’s 2015 guideline on sugars, which recommends that free sugars make up under 10 percent of daily energy, with a conditional suggestion to go below 5 percent for extra benefit. The guideline is explicit that free sugars include the sugars “naturally present in honey, syrups, fruit juices and fruit juice concentrates.” In other words, the WHO counts juice sugar exactly as it counts table sugar, because once fruit is pressed, the sugar is no longer locked inside cell walls.

In the United Kingdom, the NHS 5 A Day guidance caps juice and smoothies at a combined 150 ml per day, counting as a maximum of one portion no matter how many glasses you drink. In the United States, the American Heart Association’s added-sugar advice sets a ceiling of about 25 grams a day for most women and 36 grams for most men, and its consumer guidance treats fruit juice as something to limit in favor of whole fruit.

Against that backdrop, two things drove the recent surge. First, a cluster of social media posts promoting multi-day cleanses as a January and post-holiday “reset,” several of which claimed that cold-pressed juice is sugar-neutral because it is “natural.” Second, a renewed consumer fight over HPP versus heat, with creators insisting that pasteurization destroys nutrition. Both claims are testable, and the sections that follow test them. The short version: the sugar guidance is strong, the HPP-versus-heat differences are real but modest, and the cleanse claims have no clinical trial behind them.

What pressing keeps: vitamin C, polyphenols and the oxygen question

Here is the fair case for the press. Vitamin C, also called ascorbic acid, is fragile. It oxidizes on contact with air, and it breaks down faster when warm. A centrifugal juicer violates both conditions at once, and heat pasteurization adds a thermal insult on top. Laboratory comparisons of juice processed by HPP versus conventional heat generally find that the pressure-treated product retains more vitamin C and more of certain polyphenols immediately after processing, and that the gap narrows but persists over a week or two of refrigerated storage.

The size of that gap is where the marketing drifts from the data. In most published comparisons the difference is in the range of a few percentage points to perhaps a fifth of the vitamin C content, not a transformation from “living” to “dead.” A glass of heat-pasteurized orange juice still comfortably provides a day’s vitamin C for an adult. Pressing keeps more; it does not create more.

Color compounds fare similarly. Beet betalains, the pigments that stain your cutting board, and the carotenoids in carrots are reasonably stable under HPP and only partly degraded by heat. Flavor is probably where cold pressing wins most clearly, because volatile aroma compounds evaporate when warmed, and that is why pressed juice tastes brighter.

What about enzymes? Plant enzymes do survive cold pressing better than heating. That is true and also beside the point. Your stomach acid denatures them within minutes, and human digestion does not rely on enzymes from fruit. The claim that cold-pressed juice “delivers live enzymes to your cells” is biochemistry theater. If you buy cold-pressed juice, buy it for vitamin C, flavor and freshness, which are honest reasons, and not for enzymes, which are not.

What pressing loses: the fiber your gut was counting on

Watch what comes out of the other end of a juicer. That dry, pale brick of pulp is most of the fiber the plant contained, and it is also where a good share of the polyphenols were bound. A medium apple carries roughly 4 grams of fiber. Press it, and the glass gets well under 1 gram. The cold press is slightly gentler than a centrifuge, but it is still a device whose entire purpose is to separate liquid from fiber.

Why does that matter so much? Fiber does three jobs that juice cannot. It slows the emptying of the stomach, so sugar enters the bloodstream over an hour rather than minutes. It bulks and softens stool. And the fermentable portion feeds gut bacteria, which turn it into short-chain fatty acids linked in observational and mechanistic studies to lower inflammation and better insulin sensitivity. Most adults in the United States eat about half the recommended 25–38 grams of fiber a day; juicing fruit is a way to make that gap wider.

There is a chewing effect too, and it is not trivial. Eating a whole orange takes several minutes and triggers satiety signals from the mouth, stomach and gut hormones. Drinking the juice of two or three oranges takes thirty seconds and barely registers as food. Short feeding studies consistently show that liquid calories are poorly compensated for later in the day, meaning people do not eat correspondingly less at the next meal.

A blender keeps the fiber, and a smoothie is nutritionally closer to the whole fruit than any juice. It still breaks cell walls and frees sugar, which is why the NHS counts smoothies under the same 150 ml ceiling. But if the choice is between a press and a blender for your morning greens, the blender keeps more of what the plant was offering.

Is cold pressed juice actually good for you? What the evidence actually says

Grade the evidence and the picture sorts itself into three tiers.

Strong evidence (randomized trials and large cohorts): whole fruit and vegetable intake is associated with lower rates of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes, and trials of diets rich in produce improve blood pressure and cholesterol. Free sugars raise the risk of weight gain and dental caries, and the WHO rates the caries evidence as moderate quality and the weight evidence as moderate for adults. None of these trials used cold-pressed juice specifically.

Moderate evidence (observational): in large prospective cohorts, higher consumption of whole fruit, especially berries, apples and grapes, tracks with lower type 2 diabetes risk, while higher fruit juice consumption tracks with slightly higher risk. These are associations, not proof of cause, but they point consistently in the same direction, and the mechanism, fast-absorbed sugar without fiber, is plausible.

Weak or absent evidence (lab data and expert opinion): the superiority of cold-pressed over heat-treated juice rests on laboratory nutrient assays, not on any trial showing better health outcomes in people. Juice cleanses have no randomized trials showing lasting benefit for weight, liver function or “toxin” removal. Claims about enzymes, alkalizing the blood or boosting immunity beyond ordinary vitamin C sufficiency are opinion at best.

So is cold pressed juice good for you? In the amounts the NHS and the American Heart Association have in mind, a small glass alongside a meal, it is a pleasant way to add some vitamin C and potassium, particularly for people who otherwise eat little produce. Drunk by the bottle as a meal replacement, the sugar load outweighs whatever the press preserved. The Mayo Clinic’s dietitians put it plainly: juicing is not healthier than eating whole fruits and vegetables, and the evidence for its claimed benefits is lacking.

The sugar problem: why a bottle of cold pressed juice can match a soda

Try a simple exercise. Count the fruit that went into a standard 16-ounce (about 475 ml) bottle of cold-pressed orange juice. It is usually five to six oranges. Would you sit down and eat five oranges in one go? Almost nobody would; the fiber and chewing would stop you by the second or third. In a bottle, there is nothing to stop you.

The numbers are not subtle. A 250 ml glass of orange juice contains roughly 20–22 grams of sugar; apple juice, around 24 grams; a cola of the same size, around 27 grams. Grape and pomegranate juice can exceed the cola. Because juicing frees the sugar from the fruit’s cell structure, the WHO classifies all of it as free sugar, the same category as the sugar in the cola. The AHA’s daily ceiling of 25 grams for most women can be reached with a single modest glass.

Blood sugar tells the same story. The glycemic index, a measure of how quickly a food raises blood glucose, is markedly higher for fruit juice than for the same fruit eaten whole. For someone with prediabetes or diabetes, a large juice taken on an empty stomach produces a sharp spike that the whole fruit would have smoothed out.

Teeth pay as well. Juice combines sugar with acidity, and sipping it over an hour bathes enamel in both. The NHS specifically advises keeping juice to mealtimes to limit erosion and decay, and recommends diluting it for children.

None of this is an argument that fruit is bad. It is an argument that the form matters. Pressing changes a food your body handles well into a liquid it handles poorly, and no amount of “cold” in the process alters that chemistry. The sugar problem, not the vitamin question, is the one that decides whether a juice habit helps or hurts.

Cold pressed juice vs whole fruit: the numbers side by side

Figures vary with the variety, ripeness and brand, so treat these as representative approximations drawn from standard food composition data rather than lab certificates. The pattern is what matters, and it holds across almost every fruit.

Serving	Approx. sugar	Approx. fiber	Time to consume	Counts toward 5 A Day
1 medium orange (about 130 g)	12 g	3 g	3–5 minutes	1 portion
250 ml cold-pressed orange juice (3 oranges)	21 g	under 1 g	under 1 minute	Max 1 portion, 150 ml cap
1 medium apple (about 180 g)	19 g	4 g	3–5 minutes	1 portion
250 ml cold-pressed apple juice (3 apples)	24 g	under 1 g	under 1 minute	Max 1 portion, 150 ml cap
250 ml green juice (cucumber, celery, spinach, lemon, small apple)	6–9 g	under 1 g	under 1 minute	Max 1 portion, 150 ml cap
250 ml cola	27 g	0 g	under 1 minute	None

Two things jump out. The whole fruit delivers less sugar per serving simply because you eat one piece rather than three, and it brings three to four grams of fiber along. The green juice is the exception that proves the rule: when the base is vegetables rather than fruit, the sugar drops by two-thirds, which is why the “healthiest” question in the next section has a clear answer.

Notice also the time column. Five minutes of chewing versus thirty seconds of swallowing is not a cosmetic difference; it is the window in which your gut signals fullness to your brain.

Which cold-pressed juice is the healthiest?

If you buy or make cold pressed juice, the single most useful habit is to read the ingredient list from the bottom up. Ingredients are listed by weight, and the sugar content of the bottle is decided almost entirely by what sits in the first two positions.

The healthiest pattern is vegetable-forward: cucumber, celery, leafy greens, fennel or bell pepper making up the bulk, with a small amount of lemon, ginger or a single apple for palatability. A juice built that way lands at 5–9 grams of sugar per 250 ml, carries potassium and a modest dose of vitamin K and folate, and behaves more like a savory drink than a dessert. Pure celery juice, a viral favorite, is mostly water, sodium and potassium; it is not harmful for most people, and it is not the cleanser its fans describe.

Mid-range options include carrot and beet. Carrot juice brings substantial beta-carotene, which the body converts to vitamin A, at around 9 grams of sugar per 250 ml. Beet juice contains dietary nitrate, which in small randomized trials modestly lowers blood pressure and improves exercise efficiency for a few hours, but it carries sugar comparable to orange juice, so it is a measured dose rather than a free pour.

Fruit-dominant blends, anything where apple, orange, pineapple, mango or grape leads the list, belong in the “small glass, with food” category regardless of how they were pressed. Watch for the phrase “no added sugar” on these bottles; it is accurate and irrelevant, because the sugar that matters was never added, it was pressed in.

A practical ranking, then: vegetable-based first, root vegetables second, fruit blends last, and in every case closer to 150 ml than to a full bottle. The press cannot make a sweet juice healthy; your ingredient choice can make a juice less sweet.

What are the disadvantages of cold press juice?

Set the sugar aside for a moment, because it has had its own section, and the other drawbacks are worth naming on their own.

The first is food safety. Raw cold-pressed juice that has not been pasteurized or HPP-treated can carry the same pathogens as the raw produce it came from, including E. coli O157, Salmonella and Listeria. Outbreaks linked to unpasteurized juice have been documented for decades, which is why most national food agencies require raw juice to carry a warning label or be sold only on the premises where it was made. Pregnant women, young children, older adults and anyone with a weakened immune system are advised to avoid it.

The second is oxalate. Spinach, beet greens, Swiss chard and beets are high in oxalic acid, a plant compound that binds calcium and can contribute to kidney stones in susceptible people. A single salad’s worth of spinach is harmless; a daily green juice concentrating several bunches is a different exposure, and case reports of acute kidney injury after extreme green juice regimens exist in the medical literature.

The third is potassium. For most people, the potassium in juice is a benefit. For people with reduced kidney function or on certain blood pressure medicines, a large daily volume of vegetable juice can push blood potassium up, and that is a conversation to have with a clinician before starting, not after.

The fourth is simple displacement. A bottle of juice at breakfast is often standing in for eggs, oats, yogurt or fruit, foods that bring protein and fiber. Over weeks, that swap tends to mean more hunger by mid-morning and less fiber over the day.

And last, raw cold-pressed juice has a short refrigerated life, often three to five days, and nutrient levels fall steadily across that window, so the freshness advantage shrinks the longer the bottle sits.

Cold pressed vs pasteurized juice: which is safer and who should skip raw?

The honest answer is that pasteurized juice is safer, cold-pressed HPP juice is almost as safe, and raw untreated juice is the one that deserves caution.

Heat pasteurization reduces harmful bacteria by a factor of at least 100,000, which is the standard food agencies require. HPP achieves a comparable reduction for the main bacterial culprits by crushing their cell structures with pressure of around 6,000 times atmospheric pressure, and because the juice is sealed in its final bottle before treatment, there is no recontamination afterward. What HPP does not reliably destroy is bacterial spores, which is one reason HPP juice still has to be kept cold and has a limited shelf life.

Raw cold-pressed juice, the kind made at a juice bar or sold with a “this product has not been pasteurized” notice, has had no kill step at all. Its safety depends entirely on how clean the produce was, how quickly it was chilled and how long it sat. For a healthy adult the risk from an occasional raw juice is small. For the groups below, public health guidance is to avoid it:

• Pregnant women, because Listeria infection can harm the pregnancy even when the mother feels only mildly unwell.
• Children under five, whose kidneys are more vulnerable to the toxin produced by E. coli O157.
• Adults over about 65 and anyone receiving chemotherapy, taking immunosuppressant medicines or living with advanced HIV, organ transplant or poorly controlled diabetes.

Nutritionally, the difference between HPP and heat is the modest vitamin C and flavor gap discussed earlier. If you want the slightly higher vitamin C of cold-pressed juice and you fall into none of the groups above, HPP-treated bottles give you most of that benefit with a proper safety step. If you do fall into one of those groups, the pasteurized carton is the sensible choice, and it is not a nutritional compromise worth losing sleep over.

Juice cleanse side effects and the detox claim, examined

The pitch goes like this: for three to seven days you drink only six bottles of cold-pressed juice, your digestive system “rests,” your liver “flushes,” and you emerge lighter and clearer. Every clause in that sentence has a problem.

Your liver and kidneys are the detoxification system, and they do not require a break from solid food to function; they require adequate protein, which a juice cleanse removes almost entirely. There is no randomized trial showing that a juice cleanse improves any measurable marker of liver or kidney function, immune status or long-term weight. Several small observational studies show weight loss of a few pounds during the cleanse, which is almost entirely water and glycogen, and it returns within days of resuming meals.

What the cleanse reliably produces is a predictable set of juice cleanse side effects. Headache is near universal by day two, driven by caffeine withdrawal and low blood sugar. Dizziness on standing, fatigue, irritability and poor concentration follow, because most cleanses deliver roughly 800–1,200 calories a day with almost no protein or fat. Loose stools are common from the sugar and sorbitol load, and constipation can follow once fiber disappears. People with diabetes risk both high readings after each bottle and low readings between them, and anyone on glucose-lowering medicine should not attempt a cleanse without their prescriber’s input.

There is a quieter harm too. Cleanses frame ordinary eating as something to be punished and corrected, and that framing is a known entry point for disordered eating, particularly in adolescents and young adults.

If the appeal of a cleanse is the feeling of starting fresh, there is a version with evidence behind it: a few days of regular meals built around vegetables, whole fruit, legumes and water, no alcohol and an early bedtime. It is less photogenic and considerably more effective.

Cold pressed juice and medicines: three interactions worth knowing

Juice is food, but concentrated food, and three interactions come up often enough in clinic that they deserve their own space. None of them means you should change a prescribed medicine on your own; all of them mean a conversation with the person who prescribed it.

Grapefruit. Grapefruit and some related citrus (Seville orange, pomelo) contain furanocoumarins, compounds that block an enzyme in the gut wall called CYP3A4. That enzyme normally breaks down a share of many medicines before they reach the bloodstream. Block it, and blood levels of certain statins, some blood pressure medicines, some immunosuppressants and others can rise well above what the prescriber intended. The effect lasts a day or more, so spacing the juice from the tablet does not solve it. Anyone on regular medication should ask their pharmacist or doctor whether grapefruit is a concern before making it a juice habit.

Leafy greens and warfarin. Kale, spinach and chard are rich in vitamin K, which is the vitamin warfarin works against. The issue is not that greens are forbidden; it is that a sudden large and variable intake, such as starting a daily green juice, can swing the blood’s clotting measure. People taking warfarin are usually advised to keep vitamin K intake steady and to tell their anticoagulation clinic before changing it.

Potassium and kidney or heart medicines. Vegetable and some fruit juices are concentrated potassium sources. Combined with reduced kidney function, or with medicines that raise potassium such as certain blood pressure drugs and potassium-sparing diuretics, a daily large volume can push levels into a range that affects heart rhythm. Routine blood tests catch this, which is one more reason to mention a new juice routine at appointments.

The pattern across all three is the same: the problem is not the juice, it is the dose and the surprise. Tell your clinician, and let them decide.

Common myths about cold-pressed juice, corrected

“Cold-pressed juice has no sugar because nothing was added.” The sugar was pressed in, not added, and the WHO and NHS count it as free sugar either way. A fruit-based bottle can carry 40 grams or more.

“Heat kills all the nutrients.” Pasteurization reduces vitamin C and some polyphenols by a modest fraction and has little effect on potassium, folate stability over short periods, carotenoids or sugar. A pasteurized carton is still a decent vitamin C source.

“Live enzymes aid digestion.” Plant enzymes do survive cold pressing, then stomach acid denatures them. Human digestion uses human enzymes; there is no clinical evidence that juice enzymes contribute anything.

“Juice alkalizes your blood.” Blood pH is held between 7.35 and 7.45 by the lungs and kidneys regardless of diet. Urine pH shifts with food; blood pH does not, and if it did you would be in an emergency department.

“A cleanse flushes toxins.” No cleanse study has ever identified which toxin was removed or measured it falling. The liver and kidneys do that work continuously, and they do it better when fed protein.

“Celery juice treats autoimmune disease.” There are no trials. Celery juice is water, potassium and sodium with a small amount of flavonoids. It is fine to drink; it is not a treatment for anything.

“Cold-pressed means organic, raw and safe.” Cold-pressed describes the extraction only. A cold-pressed juice may be conventional or organic, raw or HPP-treated, and raw versions carry the same pathogen risk as any unwashed produce.

“Kids should have juice for the vitamins.” Children get the same vitamins from whole fruit with far less sugar and far less dental erosion. Where juice is given, the NHS advises diluting it and limiting it to 150 ml at a mealtime.

The thread running through every myth is the same confusion: treating the method of extraction as if it changed the biology of sugar, digestion and detoxification. It changes none of them.

When to see a doctor

For most healthy adults, a glass of cold-pressed juice is simply a glass of juice, and nothing here needs a medical appointment. A few situations do, and some need urgent care.

Seek urgent medical help if, within a few days of drinking raw or unpasteurized juice, you or a family member develop bloody diarrhea, severe abdominal cramps, persistent vomiting, a fever above 38.5°C (101.3°F), or signs of dehydration such as very dark urine, dizziness or passing little urine. In young children, watch especially for pale skin, unusual tiredness and reduced urination, which can signal a rare but serious kidney complication of E. coli O157 infection. Pregnant women with flu-like symptoms after unpasteurized food should contact their maternity team the same day.

Stop and get medical advice during any juice cleanse if you experience fainting, a racing or irregular heartbeat, confusion, severe headache that does not settle, or if you have diabetes and your readings are swinging outside your usual range.

Book a routine appointment before starting a regular juice habit if you:

• have diabetes or prediabetes, so the sugar load can be fitted into your plan;
• have chronic kidney disease, a history of kidney stones, or take medicines that affect potassium;
• take warfarin, a statin, an immunosuppressant or any medicine your pharmacist has flagged for grapefruit interaction;
• are pregnant, breastfeeding, over 65 or living with a weakened immune system, and are unsure which juices are pasteurized;
• notice that juice or cleansing has become a way to compensate for eating, skip meals or manage guilt about food.

Every decision about adjusting medication, blood sugar targets or dietary restrictions belongs with your prescribing clinician or registered dietitian, who can see your results and your history. A magazine article, including this one, can tell you what the evidence shows; it cannot tell you what is right for your particular body.

Frequently asked questions

Is cold-pressed juice actually good for you?

In small amounts with a meal, yes, in the sense that it provides vitamin C, potassium and some plant compounds. It is not better for you than eating the whole fruit or vegetable, because pressing removes the fiber and leaves concentrated sugar. Public health guidance treats it as a limited item, around 150 ml a day, rather than a health food to drink freely.

What is cold-pressed juice?

Cold-pressed juice is produce that has been ground into pulp and then squeezed under hydraulic pressure, with minimal heat and little air exposure. The term describes only the extraction method. Separately, the bottle may be raw, heat-pasteurized or treated with high pressure processing (HPP), which inactivates bacteria using pressure instead of heat.

What are the real cold pressed juice benefits?

The documented benefits are modestly higher vitamin C retention and better flavor compared with heat-treated juice, plus a convenient source of potassium and carotenoids for people who eat few vegetables. Claims about enzymes, detoxification, immune boosting beyond normal vitamin C sufficiency or weight loss are not supported by clinical trials.

Is cold pressed juice healthy for people with diabetes?

It needs care. Juice raises blood glucose faster than whole fruit because the sugar is free of fiber, and a single bottle can hold 40 grams or more. Many people with diabetes can include a small vegetable-based juice with a meal, but how much and when should be agreed with the diabetes team rather than guessed from a label.

Cold pressed vs pasteurized juice: which one should I buy?

If you are healthy and want the slightly higher vitamin C and fresher taste, an HPP-treated cold-pressed juice gives you that with a proper safety step. If you are pregnant, over 65, caring for a child under five or have a weakened immune system, choose pasteurized juice and avoid raw bottles; the nutritional difference is small and the safety difference is not.

What are the disadvantages of cold press juice?

The main ones are high free sugar without fiber, a short shelf life with falling nutrient levels, food-safety risk if the juice is raw, high oxalate in heavy green and beet juices for people prone to kidney stones, and the tendency to displace more filling breakfast foods. Interactions with some medicines, notably grapefruit and vitamin K-rich greens, are also worth checking.

Which cold-pressed juice is the healthiest?

A vegetable-based juice where cucumber, celery, leafy greens or fennel are the first ingredients, with only a small amount of apple or lemon for taste. These contain roughly 5–9 grams of sugar per 250 ml versus 20–24 grams for orange or apple juice. Carrot and beet sit in the middle. Fruit-led blends are the least favorable regardless of how they were pressed.

What are the common juice cleanse side effects?

Headache, dizziness on standing, fatigue, irritability, poor concentration and hunger are the usual effects, driven by low calorie and protein intake and caffeine withdrawal. Loose stools from the sugar load are common. People with diabetes risk unstable glucose readings. There is no trial evidence that a cleanse improves liver function or produces lasting weight loss.

Does cold-pressed juice count toward 5 A Day?

Yes, but only once. Under NHS guidance, juice and smoothies together count as a maximum of one portion a day, limited to 150 ml, no matter how many glasses you drink. The cap exists because juicing frees the sugar from the fruit and removes most of the fiber, so additional glasses add sugar without adding another serving of produce.

Can children have cold-pressed juice?

Children do not need juice and get the same vitamins from whole fruit with far less sugar. Where juice is given, the NHS suggests diluting it, keeping it to mealtimes and limiting it to about 150 ml a day, to protect teeth and appetite. Children under five should not be given raw unpasteurized juice because of the risk of serious bacterial infection.

References

• NHS: 5 A Day: what counts?
• NHS: How does sugar in our diet affect our health?
• WHO: Guideline: Sugars intake for adults and children

This article is for general information only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Please consult a qualified doctor about your individual situation.