As parents, we’ve been conditioned to think that juice is a wholesome and nutritious beverage for our children. But drinking juice is not the same as eating fruit. When you eat a piece of fruit, you ingest the whole of it, which includes not just the juice but the skin and fiber. The “bulk” of that fruit, to put it plainly. That bulk fills you up and keeps you from eating too much. Your stomach fills; your body feels satiated; you stop eating. That fiber also helps to slow down the absorption of the sugar in the fruit so that you have sustained energy.

But when you extract just the juice without any fiber, you no longer have that safeguard, that trigger that tells you to stop eating. Sure, the juice still contains vitamins, minerals and things like antioxidants,  but to your body, it’s basically sugar water. Consider that eight ounces of apple juice can have as much sugar as a Snickers bar – nearly 30 grams.

According to pediatric endocrinologist, Dr. Rober Lustig, sugar is toxic. He says that excessive sugar consumption – to the tune of 130 pounds of sugar consumed per person each year – is plunging America into a health crisis, implicated not just in weight gain and obesity but heart disease and cancer.

So what about 100%, all natural juice from sugar? Dr. David Ludwig, an expert on pediatric obesity at Children’s Hospital Boston, says that “juice is only minimally better than soda.”

In her bestselling book, Suicide by Sugar, author Dr. Nancy Appleton lists 141 reasons sugar ruins your health (actually, it’s 143 but by the time you get to #99, you’ll stop counting and begin a complete remake of your pantry). Dr. Appleton compares sugar to another highly addictive white substance – cocaine.

Sugar in its many forms – be it the white  granules, the unrefined raw stuff, maple syrup, honey, etc. – is simply killing us. Juice is only adding to the problem, jacking us up on a substance that for all intents and purposes, is no different than sugar water. Because it has a healthier perception, though, we’re not as careful with our consumption, further exacerbating children’s’ sugar addiction.

So the next time you reach for a juice box for your child, think about that Snickers bar. If you wouldn’t put that in your child’s hand, why would you give them a juice box?