Oranges versus orange juice: Which one might be better for your health?

Often the advice is given to eat an orange and drink water rather than drink oroange juice, which contains a relatively high amount of sugar. But it’snot quite so easy to say which option is more healthy, according to scientists.

Although juice is indeed high in sugar, your body might find it easier to extract the goodness from juice than from the fruit itself.

Oranges are packed with carotenoids and flavonoids that can make it less likely you’ll develop cancer, or problems with your heart and blood vessels.

Ralf Schweiggert, Julian Aschoff and colleagues found that making pasteurized orange juice slightly lowered the levels of carotenoids and vitamin C. (Pasteurizing juice means heating it to kill germs). Sounds bad, right?

But making the pasteurized improved the amount of carotenoid and vitamin C the body can absorb and use.

And although juicing oranges reduced the levels of flavonoids, the ones left in the juice were much easier for the body to use than the ones in oranges.