Are Naked drinks healthy?

When browsing for a drink to include in our meal deal, a Naked juice seems like the perfect option. It looks healthy, it’s delicious and is great value for money. But are Naked juices actually as healthy as they seem?

Currently one of the biggest juice companies in the world, Naked market themselves as natural juices made up of fruit and vegetables with added vitamins. Available in a variety of flavours, some of their most popular drinks are red machine, green machine and blue machine.

THe different Naked drinks

Alongside having a wide range of flavours, they also have different ranges of juices promising different benefits.

Their Half Naked range is a selection of smoothies that contain “50% less sugar than the leading brand”. These drinks also contain the least amount of sugar out of all their products.

Naked’s Machine range are smoothies made from fruit juice boosted with added ginger, kale, spirulina, flax seeds, and wheatgrass.

And for a post workout snack, Naked also has a Protein range which contains 18-30 grams of protein and is available in flavours such as Peach Mango and Tropical.

Benefits of Naked Juice

We all know how important it is to get our daily dose of fruit and vegetables and having a Naked Juice will do just that. If you take a look at the packaging of any of their juices, they simply breakdown the contents of the drink so you know exactly what you’re getting.

For example, a 450ml bottle of Naked Juice’s Red Machine juice made up of almost 2 apples, 11 strawberries, half of a banana, 13 raspberries, 2/3 of an orange, 7 grapes, 1/4 of a pomegranate, and 3 cranberries.

Consuming moderate amounts of fruits and vegetables helps you to meet your daily antioxidant needs and this is extremely important as antioxidants can help lower the chances of diseases like high blood pressure, cancer, heart disease and diabetes.

Downsides of Naked Juice

Whilst Naked Juices don’t have any added sugar, they have an extremely high sugar content from all the fruit it contains.

Even though this high sugar content is the result of naturally occurring sugars, some of their drinks have up to 53 grams of sugar from one drink, which makes our teeth hurt just thinking about it.

The naturally occurring sugars in fruit and vegetables, which are predominantly fructose and glucose, are not inherently bad for you. But excess sugar that is not used for energy by the body is then stored as fat. This can then increase the risk of having high cholesterol, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, and fatty liver.

As the drinks market themselves on having no added sugars, this may seem misleading for some people who mistake their drinks as being sugar free.

Alongside their high sugar content and despite the fact that they are made up of so much fruit and veg, the drinks are low in fibre. This is because most of this fibre and nutrients is removed during the juicing process.

Fibre plays a key role in weight management by promoting feelings of fullness, which regulates your appetite and food intake.

Fibre is also linked to a reduced risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and metabolic syndrome. As well as this, it helps to stabilise blood sugar levels and insulin secretion, a risk factor for type 2 diabetes.

What’s in a Naked juice?

If we take a look at one of Naked’s most popular drinks, Green Machine, we can find out exactly what nutrition it provides.

One 450ml bottle of Green Machine contains:

Whilst calories don’t always equate to health, it is important to notice the high calorie content of Naked Juices. Some of their drinks hit around 400 calories for a 450ml bottle, which makes us cringe to think that most of it is sugar.

As well as this, liquid calories like those in Naked Juices, are less likely to make you feel full in comparison to calories from food, which could lead to a higher overall calorie intake.

Is Naked Juice Healthy?

Whilst the premise of Naked Juices is a healthy idea - being free of preservatives and additives with no added sugar, after taking a further look at the label you might realise this isn’t quite the case.

Yes, they created a product that is free of all these things which is made up of 100% fruit and vegetables with vitamins, however this isn’t an entirely good thing. The drinks high sugar levels, which are indeed natural, are still teeth-achingly high for a drink and are equally high in sugar as a fizzy drink (something that we wouldn’t originally consider the healthy option).

Paired with the fact that they are low in fibre and high in calories, these drinks might not be the health kick you think you need.

That’s not to say however, that they aren’t okay to drink in moderation. Having a Naked Juice here and there isn’t going to do any damage, but if you rely on these drinks everyday thinking that they’ll provide you with all your daily nutrients - then you might want to reconsider.