Limiting Your Child's Juice Consumption

Despite our best intentions, children are consuming far more juice than is good for them these days. A daily four- to eight-ounce glass of orange juice with breakfast is fine, and you might even give your child a little more juice when she's constipated, but overall, cutting down on juice consumption is the right trend.

So how much juice can your kids have? Children ages one to six should have only four to six ounces of juice a day. Children ages seven to eighteen should have only eight to twelve ounces of juice a day. In the short run too much juice can cause diarrhea, abdominal pain, and gas, and it can even lead to malnutrition if the juice replaces milk or formula. Over time too much juice consumption leads to obesity and tooth decay.

Something to be careful about is the deceptive marketing for beverages that are labeled as "juice flavored" or "a fruit drink." These beverages usually contain only a small percentage of actual fruit juice and are instead loaded with sugars and artificial flavors to make them appealing to children, while not offering the nutritional benefits you were hoping to give them.

It's great that you want your kids to get the nutritional benefits of fruit, but juices often have the fiber strained out and sugars added for flavor. You should encourage your kids to eat whole fruits instead.

More on: Healthy Meals for Families

Excerpted from:

From Raising Healthy Eaters: 100 Tips for Parents by Henry Legere, M.D. Copyright © 2004. Used by arrangement with The Perseus Books Group.

To order this book visit perseusbooksgroup.com.