Is green juice healthy?

Want to get more vegetables in your diet? It’s one of the latest health trends — vegetable-based green juices. They come with promises, like adding a “pep in your step” or “can make your body sing.” But beware, not all green juices are necessarily good for you. Stay away from the ones that have a lot of fruit juice in them. They’re not nearly as healthy as they claim to be.

Take Naked Juice Green Machine. The label touts it has, “no sugar added.” But look at the nutrition label. One 15-ounce bottle contains a whopping 53 grams of sugars. 15-ounces of an unhealthier beverage like Coca-Cola? 49 grams of sugars. Some of these green juices also contain a surprisingly high amount of sodium even though most have no added salt. One 15-ounce bottle of Evolution Fresh Essential Greens contains 300 milligrams of sodium. That’s 13-percent of an adult’s daily value.

Don’t expect a lot of fiber from most of these green juices either. Pressing the vegetables to extract their juice usually leaves the fiber behind. So it’s best to eat whole vegetables. If you a vegetable in a liquid form, you can try a drink in a blender, where you purify the whole vegetable.

Also, be wary of unproven label claims, like the promise of better sleep, cleansing your blood or enhancing your digestive system. If the company doesn’t have solid evidence to back up their claims, you shouldn’t take them at face value. In other words, if it seems too good to be true, it just might be.

A few of the healthier green juice options according to Consumer Reports are Suja 12 Essentials and BluePrint Motion Potion.

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