Sugar in fruit???

psuLemon

kcannis wrote: »

We Asked: Joy Dubost, R.D., is a nutritionist, food scientist and a spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

The Answer: Whether it’s in a piece of fruit, your soda or a pastry, sugar is made up of the same two components: fructose and glucose. The molecular structure and composition of sugar molecules is the same no matter where they come from.

The ratios of fructose and glucose are pretty much the same in both fruit and table sugar. Most fruits are 40 to 55 percent fructose (there’s some variation: 65 percent in apples and pears; 20 percent in cranberries), and table sugar (aka sucrose) is 50/50. Neither type of sugar is better or worse for you, but your body processes them differently. [/b]Fructose breaks down in your liver and doesn’t provoke an insulin response. Glucose starts to break down in the stomach and requires the release of insulin into the bloodstream to be metabolized completely.

Don’t get the idea that because the sugar composition is the same in fruit and cake, they’re interchangeable. (Seriously, they’re not.) For one thing, fruit offers good stuff like vitamins, antioxidants and water, while candy and desserts are nutritionally void. Fruit also tends to have less sugar by volume. Half a cup of strawberries: 3.5 grams of sugar. Half a cup of strawberry ice cream: 15 grams.

Plus, whole fruit has a lot of fiber, which actually slows down your body’s digestion of glucose, so you don’t get the crazy insulin spike (and subsequent crash) that candy causes. That also means your body has more time to use up glucose as fuel before storing it — as fat. Even dried fruit, a notoriously sugary treat, has all the fiber and nutrients of its plump forbear. But do watch out for dried fruits with added sugar(check the nutrition label), and don’t eat a ton just because they’re smaller. Picture how many pieces are in a handful of raisins compared with a handful of grapes. See what we mean?

On average, Americans don’t eat enough fruit, so don’t cut it out of your diet in an attempt to limit your sugar intake! Sugar itself isn’t toxic. But getting too much of it from cookies and cake is.

If you actually understand the article, it's not the sugar that is different... it's that fruit comes with other beneficial nutrients. Even the bold would suggest that. The fact is, you are less likely to over eat fruit. But if you do, it can still convert to fat... well semantically, the carbs will decrease fat oxidation and increase carb oxidation causing fat to store as fat first and DNL would suggest that carbs are less likely to store as fat, but that a different story.


Anyways (and sorry for the tangent), no one is actually suggesting to stop eating fruit and only eat candy. But you can incorporate both into your diet in a healthy manor. And since you are new, maybe the below will be beneficial.

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10460011/the-ultimate-guide-to-mfp/p1


OP, if you enjoy fruit as much as I do, and it fills you up, I would recommend eating it. It's nutrient dense and can support lowering cholesterol and aid in weight loss (as it's generally lower in calories than other hyperpalatable foods).

ndj1979

kcannis wrote: »

You can eat a lot more apples than you can candy bars. A calorie is just not a calorie.

again, wrong.

a calorie is a unit of energy, so all calories are equal in that all provide the same unit of energy. So one calorie of cake = one calorie of apple.

However, all calories do not have the same nutritional profile, and that is where they differ.

psuLemon

kcannis wrote: »

You can eat a lot more apples than you can candy bars. A calorie is just not a calorie.

The volume of food doesn't disprove the unit of measure. You will get a lot more full on chicken than avocado. It doesn't mean the calories are different, but the macronutrients that drive the calories is different.

TimothyFish

The sugar in candy was once in fruit, or corn, or some other sugar rich plant. Where sugar comes from doesn't matter. What does matter is that eating too much of it can be harmful.

CharlieBeansmomTracey

Im glad sugar doesnt make you fat. if it did I would have been fat as a teen/young adult

ferd_ttp5

We've got the same question or either related. As mostly of MFP users here answers that sugar is not bad as long it's fit your calorie budget! Diabetic or pre diabetic person should control their sugar intake not us good luck

LucasWilland

sijomial wrote: »

kcannis wrote: »

You can eat a lot more apples than you can candy bars. A calorie is just not a calorie.

@kcannis

Care to explain precisely what a calorie actually is?

And then perhaps explain how two calories can be different.....

I think what she means to say is that two things can have the same energy density yet produce very different effects based on satiety and volume. For instance, it is far easier to overeat a hyperpatable food like cake or soda than it is to overeat Fuji apples because Fuji apples have more fiber, which adds bulk to the chyme digesting in your stomach, mimicking the effect of filling it, and contribute a greater amount of water than a piece of cake, which has also shown to be beneficial in satiety.

A food like cake for instance, doesn't take up much volume in the stomach, and so it has the illusion of being empty despite having eaten something.