sugar

xomariie

mfp says that i should have 29 grams of sugar a day and I keep going over. I've already cut out things like cookies (not easy) and I love eating fruit but it's full of sugar. I can eat two pieces and i'm already over my sugar for the day. Any suggestions?

xomariie

mfp says that i should have 29 grams of sugar a day and I keep going over. I've already cut out things like cookies (not easy) and I love eating fruit but it's full of sugar. I can eat two pieces and i'm already over my sugar for the day. Any suggestions?

Helawat

Here's why it's better to go over in fruit sugar (fructose)r than table sugar (sucrose):

There are differences between the different sugars. When we eat sucrose, our bodies quickly break it down into roughly equal parts of glucose and fructose. Glucose is the sugar our bodies use for both physical and mental energy. When our bodies sense an increase of glucose in the blood, it immediately directs the pancreas to push insulin into the blood stream.

With the insulin, the body is able to burn the glucose as energy. If there's too much glucose in the blood stream to be used as energy, the glucose can be changed to glycogen, the body's short-term storage energy supply. And if the glycogen pool is already full, the body will turn it into long term storage in the form of fat. Different blood-sugar effects possible after eating a high concentration of sucrose sugar.

Eating a huge amount of sugar at once with it's resultant spike in the blood-sugar level can cause stress to a weak pancreas as it struggles to deliver enough insulin to bring down the blood-sugar to acceptable levels
.
This cycle is especially hard on people who have an abnormal pancreas. If the pancreas doesn't produce enough insulin that person is considered diabetic. If it produces too much insulin they are considered hypoglycemic. These people will generally suffer from an abnormal glucose level depending on what their condition is.

Using fructose instead of sucrose puts a strong damper on many of these problems. Your body can't use fructose without converting it into glucose in the liver. Actually, most of the time, however, unless your body needs to immediately increase it's blood-sugar level, the liver changes fructose into glycogen first. We have already mentioned glycogen which is the body's short term energy supply.

A typical adult will have as much as 3/4 pound of glycogen in their various tissues at one time, mostly stored in the liver and muscles. As the glucose level in the blood begins to drop, the liver can rapidly convert this stored glycogen into glucose.

Blood-sugar level differences in a hypoglycemic person when using sucrose and fructose.
Fructose/glucose differences in the body. As the liver must change fructose into glycogen then change the glycogen into glucose, there is a delay in the energy in fructose being utilized in the body. Fructose doesn't produce that high blood-sugar spike the pancreas over-reacts to in a hypoglycemic person.

So, what does all this mean about fructose? When you use fructose as a sweetener instead of sucrose, you shouldn't get those big high blood-sugar spikes.

http://waltonfeed.com/fructose.html

abbychelle07

My sugar recommendation is 37 g. I had two large pears for breakfast one day, and it logged as 41 grams!!!!

I decided to not worry about it. "Natural" sugar in fruit and other things aren't as worrisome to me as "added" sugar in sweets. I don't want to cut down on fruit, because I can't imagine I eat too much just because I love fruit for breakfast.

I track fat, fiber, and protein, sometimes calcium.

Don't worry about "natural" sugars found in fresh foods. Even 20 baby carrots has 14g of sugar!