Black Coffee vs Orange Juice – Which is Healthier?

Our Verdict

When comparing black coffee to orange juice, we picked the coffee.

Why?

While this one isn’t a very like-for-like choice, it’s a choice often made, so it bears examining.

In favor of the orange juice, it has vitamins A and C and the mineral potassium, while the coffee contains no vitamins or minerals beyond trace amounts.

However, to offset that: drinking juice is one of the worst ways to consume sugar; the fruit has not only been stripped of its fiber, but also is in its most readily absorbable state (liquid), meaning that this is going to cause a blood sugar spike, which if done often can lead to insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and more. Now, the occasional glass of orange juice (and resultant blood sugar spike) isn’t going to cause disease by itself, but everything we consume tips the scales of our health towards wellness or illness (or sometimes both, in different ways), and in this case, juice has a rather major downside that ought not be ignored.

In favor of the coffee, it has a lot of beneficial phytochemicals (mostly antioxidant polyphenols of various kinds), with no drawbacks worth mentioning unless you have a pre-existing condition of some kind.

Coffee can of course be caffeinated or decaffeinated, and we didn’t specify which here. Caffeine has some pros and cons that at worst, balance each other out, and whether or not it’s caffeinated, there’s nothing in coffee to offset the beneficial qualities of the antioxidants we mentioned before.

Obviously, in either case we are assuming consuming in moderation.

In short:

• orange juice has negatives that at least equal, if not outweigh, its positives
• coffee‘s benefits outweigh any drawbacks for most people

Want to learn more?

You might like to read:

• The Bitter Truth About Coffee (or is it?)
• Caffeine: Cognitive Enhancer Or Brain-Wrecker?
• Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?

Take care!