I have just got a bottle of orange juice from the rather cool robot vending machine, and looking at the back it reads:


OK, now this is a 500ml bottle, so am I over dosing on Vitamin C? Drinking over 200% of my RDA? And why does the bottle not count as three of my five a day?

I would have thought a "rather cool robot vending machine" would vend rather cool robots.

You'll be OK with the Vit C intake as long as you don't drink another 10 bottles today.

The 5 a day thing is to stop people drinking 2 bottles then eating crap for the rest of the day.

Alas, no It only vends drinks, but it's very cool. You select what drink and an arm goes to the shelf and pulls the bottle into a little bucket, it then carries the bottle to a little door and pops the bottle through, then a transparent window lights up so you can see your drink and the little room the drink is in swivles round allowing you to get your drink...


Right, note to self, don't consume more healthy things today that may give high amount of Vitamin C...


Bugger, they seem to have foiled my plan!

Also, you should eat a variety of fruits and vegetables, not just 5 of 1.

The RDA on foods is the minimum you should be taking in, not the maximum. So if it's 100% congrats, you've achieved the minimum recommended for the day.

Also, as others have said you should eat a variety of fruits and vegetables. No matter how much you eat/drink of one type of thing it only counts as 1 portion.

It might be 1 of your five a day and 100% of your daily allowance of Vit C, BUT... and it's a HUGE but... They probably will contain about 100% of your daily sugar allowance too.

Don't be fooled, fruit juices are just as bad for you as pop or fizzy drinks are.

Too much fruit is bad for you. To many natural sugars.

My advice?

Take a lemon, any lemon, cut it in half. Cling film one half and put it in the fridge. Squeeze the other half into a 2lt bottle which is clean.

Fill it to the top with freezing cold water.

That is how to make a nice drink that wouldn't pile on the pounds.

There are moves to stop 'them' saying a drink of juice is one of 'five a day'. I strongly also feel that it should be a proper portion of an actual vegetable or fruit, only. Orange juice is basically refined orange, as Bish says just a load of concentrated sugars (but not sucrose in this case) and has no fibre or any of the other benefits of eating an actual orange. However I would count vegetable juices as portions of 1 of 5 as they tend to contain more of the original vege than a fruit juice and way less sugars.

Orange Juice has a low GI ( glycaemic index) of about 45 so its not as bad as drinking some fizzy drinks, but all the same fruit was never intended (by nature) to be consumed in such a refined form.

Making your own orange juice with a juicer is better though, but eating orange flesh with the piff is a better idea, just don't eat the skin, its not nice !

Vitamin C is water soluble, its toxic but in an amount vastly greater than the 60mg RDA, which historically is a figure that you should intake to avoid a defficiency disease, although this isn't widely known. I take 2 grammes of Vitamin C a day and you are generally likely to wizz out most of it after 4-6 hours so you need regular intakes of it. Deffiencies of Vit C that are most obvious are things like Scurvy.

Vitamin C is great!!

When your body has had enough, your poo will go runny and you'll know you've got your "daily required amount" which can differ quite a lot from the RDA. Taking it 250mg at a time twice a day (from one of those dissolvable tablet things) can vastly reduce your cold symptoms as well

Make sure you watch your iron intake though, if you take too much it can break down the Vitamin C before it's done it's job.

I tend not to drink much juice, just copious amounts of water and black tea (no sugar). It was there (in the cool robot vending machine) and I really fancied it...
My tea comes with no such information...And if it did, the mug is black, so I guess the probably write the info in black

Ascorbic Acid (vitamin C) is required to absorb iron properly, but too much vitamin C shouldn't have the effect you describe. If you have Haemochromatosis (basically a disorder where you accumulate too much iron in tissues and organs) or similar, then taking large amounts of Vitamin C can exacerbate it, but unless this is the case, then excess Vitamin C should not effect Iron metabolism adversly or indeed lead to Haemochromatosis in itself.

Most people won't encounter the high level of vitamin C required to cause side-effects and other damage.

As stated before, it's water soluble, so it won't accumulate in the body. However, it can still, as mentioned previously, cause gut problems (including diarrhoea).

I tend to ignore the RDAs for most vitamins. I regularly take 500mg of Vitamin C a day, bumping it up to 1g prior to the onset of flu/cold symptoms (I know when it's gonna hit before it does). I megadose on Vitamin B too, though recently I've run out of both vitamins.

I'm wary of megadosing on Vitamin A, as its toxic effects are easily achieved at a lower dose.

Ah, no, I was commenting on the Iron breaking down the Vitamin C, not the other way around. I worked for 9 years in gelatin vitamin capsule development science and we had a uggbre of a job putting Iron and Vit C in the same capsule without micro-encapsulating the Vit C, otherwise the Iron would just break it down as soon as they were in the same solution. If you keep your Vitamin C levels high enough then Iron absorption shouldn't be an issue anyway, but if your Iron levels are high it will be harder for your body to use Vit C properly (and Calcium Pantothenate as well oddly - aka Pantothenic Acid or Vitamin B5.)

The moral of the story? Don't intake your daily requirement of Vitamin C, then blow it all away with eight pints of the good stuff

Or munching on Polar Bear Livers ?

Maybe I misread your post I keep misreading stuff these days. Did you try putting the Iron into an Amino Acid Chelate ? Aids absorption and stops what you describe. The way most cheap skate vitamin firms avoid it also is to just bind up the supplement with loads of Calcium binders or phosphates and microcrystaline cellulose which buffer everything up, and in general make the supplement worthless.

I did some work for a supplement firm and the way they tested their supps for 'absorption' was to put them in a placcy bag full of vinegar and get the work placement person to waggle the bag about to simulate the stomach. High Tech !