Hooked on Sugar: Why Your ‘Healthy’ Juice Box May Be Worse Than Candy
Walking into a community fitness centre in Accra recently, a bright pop-up banner stopped me cold. It read: “Juice Boxes. Not worth the squeeze. 1 box = 10 chocolate candies.” Beside it, ten chocolate kisses sat next to a small juice box. I assumed the banner was exaggerating. It wasn’t.
That single juice box—the kind marketed to parents as a healthy lunchbox addition—contains about 20 grams of sugar. That’s five teaspoons. Even a tiny 4.26-ounce box of 100% juice with no added sugar packs 16 grams, or four teaspoons.
For context, the World Health Organization recommends capping daily added sugar at roughly six teaspoons. One small drink gets you most of the way there. No wonder researchers have started calling fruit juice “liquid candy.”
The 22-Teaspoon Reality
Globally, sugar...