Home/Guides/Does juice count as water?
Juice looks like the healthy pick next to soda, and like cheating next to plain water: all that natural sugar, surely it can’t count the same. The 2016 trial that built the Beverage Hydration Index tested that exact question, and juice’s fluid holds up fine. What actually changes the picture isn’t hydration. It’s sugar.
Does juice count as water intake?
Short answer: yes. In the same 2016 trial that built the Beverage Hydration Index (BHI), orange juice scored 1.39 against a plain-water benchmark of 1.00, measured by how much fluid people retained over the next two hours (Maughan et al., 2016). That raw number placed juice above water, in the same range as milk and an oral rehydration solution. On paper, a glass of orange juice out-hydrated a glass of water.
But raw wasn’t the whole story, and the researchers who ran the trial knew it.
The correction that changes the story
Orange juice isn’t pure water to start with. It’s roughly 89% water by volume, with pulp, sugar and everything else making up the rest. Score a drink against plain water without adjusting for that, and part of its apparent edge is really just extra water volume wearing a hydration effect’s clothes.
So Maughan’s team recalculated. Corrected for each drink’s own water content, orange juice’s score dropped to about 1.24, and its edge over water stopped being statistically significant (P=0.11). Milk and the oral rehydration solution kept a real, significant lead either way. Juice didn’t.
Once corrected for the water juice already contains, orange juice’s edge over plain water is not statistically significant.
That’s not a strike against juice. It just means juice hydrates about as well as water, not meaningfully better.
| Drink | Raw BHI | Corrected BHI |
|---|---|---|
| Skimmed milk | 1.58 | 1.44 |
| Oral rehydration solution | 1.54 | 1.50 |
| Water | 1.00 (benchmark) | 1.00 (benchmark) |
| Orange juice | 1.39 | 1.24 (not significant) |
The sugar trade-off
Here’s the part the fluid math skips. A 100% juice keeps the fruit’s own natural sugar, with little of the fiber that would normally slow it down. Typical orange juice carries roughly 9 to 10 g of sugar per 100 ml, squarely in the range of regular soda.
For scale, the American Heart Association caps added sugar at about 25 g (six teaspoons) a day for women and 36 g (nine teaspoons) for men. That guidance targets sugar added during processing, not sugar that’s naturally inside fruit, but the size of the number still makes the point: a single 240 ml glass of juice carries around 22 g of sugar, natural or not, close to a whole day’s added-sugar allowance for a woman, in one glass.
Whole fruit carries that same sugar with its fiber still attached. Juice loses that fiber in pressing. It hydrates about as well as water. It doesn’t eat like whole fruit.
How to count juice toward hydration
So should a tracker count a glass of juice the same as a glass of water? Our honest answer: almost, not quite, and the reason isn’t hydration.
The corrected trial data says juice’s fluid is statistically tied with water. That side of the ledger is settled. What it doesn’t settle is the sugar riding along with that fluid, and a hydration score that ignores it would be its own kind of misleading. That’s why we built Brim to credit a glass of juice at 95% of water (Premium), a few points under the lab tie, while tracking its sugar (about 9.2 g per 100 ml in our catalog) alongside it. Cautious beats clever where a sugary drink is concerned, even one that hydrates fine.
| Drink | Brim hydration credit |
|---|---|
| Water | 100% (benchmark) |
| Juice | 95% (Premium) |
| Soda | 80% (Premium) |
| Smoothie | 70% (Premium) |
Free logging in Brim covers water only; crediting juice, and every other drink in the catalog, toward your daily goal is a Premium feature. If you want the full sugar picture across drinks, not just juice, our Sugar in Drinks tool lines it up against soda, sports drinks and more, gram for gram.
Key takeaways
Orange juice’s raw hydration edge (1.39) mostly disappears once corrected for its own water content (P=0.11, Maughan et al., 2016).
Juice’s fluid genuinely counts toward your daily total, about as well as water.
The catch is sugar: roughly 9 to 10 g per 100 ml, in soda’s range, with little of whole fruit’s fiber.
Brim credits juice at 95% of water (Premium), while tracking its sugar behind the scenes.
Frequently asked
Does orange juice count as water intake?
Yes. In a 2016 randomized trial, orange juice’s raw score (1.39) beat water, and once researchers corrected for the water juice itself contains, the gap was no longer statistically significant (P=0.11) (Maughan et al., 2016). Its fluid counts toward your daily total.
Why did orange juice’s hydration score change after correction?
Orange juice is only about 89% water by volume, so part of its raw advantage over plain water was really just extra water volume. Corrected for that, its score dropped to about 1.24 and stopped being significantly different from water.
Is juice as healthy as eating the whole fruit?
Not quite. Juice carries the same natural sugar as the fruit it came from, with little of the fiber that slows how fast that sugar hits your bloodstream. It counts as fluid, but it isn’t a fiber source the way whole fruit is.
How does Brim count juice toward hydration?
Brim credits a glass of juice at 95% of water (Premium), close to the lab finding, while tracking its sugar (about 9.2 g per 100 ml) alongside it. Free logging in Brim covers water only.
