Natural Sugar vs. Added Sugar?

Tblackdogs

I recently had some blood work done and for the first time ever I've slipped into the "pre-diabetic" range. I'm 59 and have gained about 20 pounds since menopause. I've had great luck using mfp in the past and am again losing weight by logging everything and making good choices! But I can't get conclusive answers by Googling and thought I'd ask here about sugar. Overall, I'm staying under my goal every day but fruit is high in sugar and I'm wondering if I need to be as careful about those "sugars" as I am being about added sugar. Thoughts?

SafariGalNYC

For pre diabetes/diabetes .. total sugar counts. I’d look at glycemic indexes of foods. Though fruit has sugar, it also has fiber .. it moderates insulin spiking.

Check out a glycemic index online and choose lower sugar varieties of foods. For instance, an apple has a lower glycemic index than a date.

Theoldguy1

SafariGalNYC wrote: »

For pre diabetes/diabetes .. total sugar counts. I’d look at glycemic indexes of foods. Though fruit has sugar, it also has fiber .. it moderates insulin spiking.

Check out a glycemic index online and choose lower sugar varieties of foods. For instance, an apple has a lower glycemic index than a date.

True, but will add it's pretty hard to eat too much natural occurring sugar (diabetics and those with other medical conditions check with your provider).

Strive to eliminate all added sugars will take one a long way.

neanderthin

It's generally from a lifetime of consuming too many carbohydrates and diabetes use to be called adult onset type 2 diabetes because most of the food consumed back then was for the most part, whole foods, which worked within our normal hormonal regulation which also helped regulate our weight and the disease really never manifested until we were older. Now unfortunately UPF are a mainstay in the diet which mucks with those hormones and people eat too much and now 70% of the population is fat and those UPF as basically mostly refined carbs and sugars and why we have kids on insulin injections, a lot, and it's quite normal where pre 1980 it wasn't even seen, or almost never.

Diabetes is basically a disease of hyperinsulinemia, where the body produces excess insulin in response to those excess carbs and insulin resistance begins to manifest. This overproduction of insulin can eventually wear out the pancreas, leading to a decline in insulin production and elevated blood glucose levels. A whole food diet with a focus on animal protein would be my advice and with a reduction in total carbs as well and within this context fruit is perfectly fine to consume in moderation and where berries would account for a more favorable outcome. Short answer.

poodle_whisper

sugar is sugar in this case. if you must eat fruit, make sure to include some protein at the same time.

hguilfoy

The American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology attribute Added (not naturally occurring) Sugars as one of the 7 traditional risk factors linked to heart disease.

In May 2016 the USDA required labeling of added sugar content on all packaged foods and beverages. https://www.cardiosmart.org/news/2019/5/new-sugar-labels-to-prevent-1-million-cases-of-heart-disease-and-diabetes

As you can see tracking ADDED SUGARS is as important as tracking all sugars. Currently there is not even a way to update a database entry with ADDED SUGAR.

With this in mind, when can we expect to be able to track this information in MFP?

AnnPT77

hguilfoy wrote: »

The American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology attribute Added (not naturally occurring) Sugars as one of the 7 traditional risk factors linked to heart disease.

In May 2016 the USDA required labeling of added sugar content on all packaged foods and beverages. https://www.cardiosmart.org/news/2019/5/new-sugar-labels-to-prevent-1-million-cases-of-heart-disease-and-diabetes

As you can see tracking ADDED SUGARS is as important as tracking all sugars. Currently there is not even a way to update a database entry with ADDED SUGAR.

With this in mind, when can we expect to be able to track this information in MFP?

As others have mentioned on one or more of the many sugar threads you've cut & pasted this on, here you're just talking to other regular MFP users with no more power or insight than you have yourself. We have no real idea when this will be added, or if it ever will.

If you want to lobby for this change in a more effective way, at least post in the area intended for such posts, an area MFP staff do read:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/categories/feature-suggestions-and-ideas

Also, FWIW, it wasn't required on US labels until 2020-21; the regs came out in 2016, with time allowed for implementation. It still isn't required in at least some other developed countries.

neanderthin

hguilfoy wrote: »

The American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology attribute Added (not naturally occurring) Sugars as one of the 7 traditional risk factors linked to heart disease.

In May 2016 the USDA required labeling of added sugar content on all packaged foods and beverages. https://www.cardiosmart.org/news/2019/5/new-sugar-labels-to-prevent-1-million-cases-of-heart-disease-and-diabetes

As you can see tracking ADDED SUGARS is as important as tracking all sugars. Currently there is not even a way to update a database entry with ADDED SUGAR.

With this in mind, when can we expect to be able to track this information in MFP?

The problem is as I see it, the gov't is driven to get rid of animal products and that's been pretty obvious for decades and they don't understand fat at all and suggest to consume less which leaves carbs, they love carbs. Telling people to eat less added sugar means people would need to consume more starch which are derived from whole foods, which then would mess with the vitamin and mineral deficiencies which is why they want people to consume half their grain products in the refined type in the first place because they can fortify these refined foods with vitamins and minerals for the nutritional requirements needed for the general population to meet their guidelines which if they left out the recommendation for people to consume half their grains in refined, they would be deficient and the reluctance over the years to mess with sugar consumption, that too complicated a task to meet all the pressure from interest groups or advocacy groups with certain profit margins that need to be maintained by their shareholders.

Those refined grains are powders and people don't eat grain powders, they eat processed and ultra processed food made from those starch powders and considering all these gov't agencies are partially funded by big agra and big pharma it would be better for people to do their own research on nutrition then hopefully making people better informed to make their own decisions and reducing added sugar is probably not rocket science for the vast majority of people to understand. Eat whole foods and this problem goes away for the most part, but you might have to consume more animal products to make up for the deficiencies, whoops. imo of course.