Juicing is A Health Risk, say Experts

London - A new warnings have been issued that 'juicing', the practice of liquidizing fruit and vegetables into a drink, could be doing us more harm than good.

A leading gastroenterologist has reported a rise in the number of patients believing they have Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) when the culprit is in fact their excessively healthy eating, Mail Online health news reported.

Dr Jonathan Hoare, a consultant at St Mary's Hospital, in London, said some people are unable to digest the sugars in fruit and vegetables, known as FODMAPs, which hit the gut faster if reduced to a liquid. This can cause IBS-type symptoms including, pain, bloating and diarrhea.

Dr Hoare said: 'We have seen quite a few patients that come complaining of irritable bowel syndrome, things like bloating and diarrhea, and eat a lot of very healthy foods.

'If you juice you get the large amount of sugars delivered to the gut quite quickly, quicker than they would do otherwise, and that can actually cause quite a lot of bloating and diarrhea.

'We have certainly seen patients that think they have IBS but it's actually just their diet. We never used to have this. I think there has been an increase in people who are having symptoms related to healthy eating.'

He added, 'Juicing might be nutritionally healthy, but to some people it causes these symptoms.

'Not everyone can handle large concentrations of fruit and vegetables at a high rate.'

Dr Hoare claims there is no health benefit to juicing - apart from that it might encourage some people to eat healthy foods.

He said: 'There is no logical reason or any evidence whatsoever to suggest it's any better to whisk up your food than to eat it whole.'

The juicing business has become a multi-million pound industry over the last few years.

Makers of NutriBullet, a leading brand of food liquidizer, have already sold a million of their products in the UK and 40 million worldwide.

There are many juice diets where slimmers restrict their food intake exclusively to liquidized fruit and vegetables in order to lose weight.

Some juice diet programmes also claim that juice can help flush toxins out of the body or even 're-boot' the body.

Dieters and health enthusiasts pay thousands of pounds to attend 'juicing retreats' and a number of books have been published on the subject.

But the benefits of juicing diets have been met with scepticism by Professor Kevin Whelan, who is a Professor of Dietetics in the Diabetes and Nutritional Sciences Division at King's College London.

He said: 'There are many juicing books and it is widely promoted on social media as an approach to promote health, induce weight loss and flush 'toxins' from the body.

'There is very little research to support these claims. In particular a recent systematic review of all of the scientific literature showed no strong evidence to support these claims, especially compared to say just eating fruits and vegetables as part of a balanced and nutritious diet.

'Clearly removing food from the diet can potentially help with weight loss, but juicing is not a sustainable and sensible approach to doing so.

'If continued over the long term it will result in high intakes of fruit sugars and low intakes of essential micronutrients such as calcium and iron.

'We need to promote healthy, sustainable approaches to weight loss that don't require sticking to faddy diets.'