Daily Limit of Cranberry Juice

Cranberry juice has several benefits for your body. In order to get the most from drinking cranberry juice, it’s recommended not to go over the suggested serving amount.

Read more to learn about cranberry juice’s benefits — and how much is too much.

Nutritional Information for Cranberry Juice

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), a cup of unsweetened cranberry juice contains the following:

• 30.6 grams (g) of total sugars
• 23.5 milligrams (mg) of vitamin C
• 116 calories
• 30.9 g of carbohydrates

The American Heart Association recommends two cups of fruit per day, which it says is equal to half a cup of 100-percent fruit juice.

What Happens When You Drink Too Much Cranberry Juice

Cranberry juice can be tasty and provides some benefits, but there can be too much of a good thing when adding this drink to your diet.

Side Effects of Too Much Cranberry

According to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, high doses of cranberry can come with minor side effects like nausea, abdominal discomfort, and diarrhea. Cranberry juice or cranberry extracts also cause food-drug interactions with medications like proton pump inhibitors and some antihistamines.

Additional Calories and Sugar

Going beyond the daily limit of cranberry juice can increase the number of calories you consume.

Since 1 cup of unsweetened 100-percent cranberry juice provides about 116 calories, drinking 1 liter, for example, provides 460 calories or more. If you normally follow a 2,000-calorie diet, this equates to nearly 25 percent of your total calories for the day just from juice.

The same can be said for the sugar content. One cup of cranberry juice comes with 30.6 g of total sugars, and the upper limit of the American Heart Association’s recommended daily limit of sugar is 36 g. This means that one cup of cranberry juice could represent — or even exceed — a person’s daily recommended sugar allowance.