Five portions of fruit and vegetables every day is the recommendation, but the majority of European consumers eat about half of that. Although the consumption of fruit and vegetables has been increasing for several years, this daily amount proves to be difficult to achieve, as the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) estimated. The public announcement about the importance of healthy food and the increasing consumption of fruit juices cannot make up for this.
The average European consumer eats only 55 percent of the recommended daily amount. The daily consumed amounts of fruit juices are also part of this, at least in most of the countries that were part of the study. The study shows that, in addition tot the daily amount of fruit and vegetables, people drank, on average, 31 ml of fruit juices in 2016. A small glass of fruit juice (150 ml) would be enough to increase the average consumption of fruit and vegetables by 51 percent. In Germany as well, this is not enough yet. Currently, the average consumption per person of fruit juices is around 54 ml.
Sugar content
The study also addressed concerns regarding the sugar content of fruit juice. According to German and European regulations, the juices cannot contain any additional sugar on top of the natural sugar content. A small glass of fruit juice equals merely 3 percent of the given reference value of 2.000 Kcal for women. This means that it could perfectly well replace one portion of fruit occasionally and decrease the lack of consumption of fruit and vegetables in Europe at the same time.
Additionally, drinking fresh juice or juice from fruit juice concentrate does not make a difference. According to legal regulations, the quality of juice from concentrate must be equal to that of fresh juice.
Source: Association of the German Fruit Juice Industry (VdF)
