Do yourself and your family a favor and limit your fruit juice consumption. Better yet, cut juice - along with soda - from your diet entirely. Although the companies that manufacture fruit juice love to slap labels on their products claiming they are "healthy" and "natural," this just 'ain't true. Fruit juice, even without extra sugar added to pump up the taste, is loaded with sugar and calories. It's bad for the teeth and it's bad for the waistlines of kids and adults alike.

Excess juice consumption - like excess soda consumption - may even contribute to the development of Type 2 diabetes. Dr. Robert H. Lustig, professor of pediatric endocrinology at the University of California at San Francisco and a passionate opponent of juice consumption explains it as follows: The fructose in juice is metabolized into acetyl-Co-A, a compound that is normally processed by the body without harm, but which occurs in such high quantities in people drinking lots of juice and soda that it can damage the body in a variety of ways. One of these ways is the production of a compound toxic to beta cells in the pancreas, which some experts believe triggers the development of Type 2 diabetes.

When it comes down to the facts, juice is not much more than a sugar cocktail of fructose, glucose and sucrose, with none of the beneficial fiber you get from eating fruit. The calories it contains can contribute to weight gain, obviously, but in addition it is not effective at suppressing the appetite, which encourages overeating. The final word goes to Dr. Lustig: "Drinking juice - even if it says '100% natural' - is no better than drinking soda."