Sugar Sugar Everywhere!

Rhayne05

I've been faithfully logging my food since July. I try to get just under or meet my nutrition goals. Besides Sodium (which is SO HARD to keep low) my daily sugar intake can range from 50-120grams!!!
Now before you tell me to cut it down, understand its coming from lots of fruit. I'm a fruit fiend! Apples, Bananas, Pears, peaches, plums, even most vegetables have a fair amount of sugar in them. Fruit is my snack food!
My question is, are all sugars created equal? Am i endangering myself by eating surplus amounts of fruit? I supplement my diet with leafy greens, lean proteins and whole foods. I feel silly asking, but my family has a history of diabeties.
Any insight would be appreciated!

Thinwithin2010

My thought on the subject is to try to eat your fruit in the am so you have all day to burn off the sugar. Don't over do it with the fruit because remember bread, pasta and ok pretty much everything has carbs which is also sugar...

When reading a package you don't look at the sugar contant. Just look at the carbs amount because the package has already built the sugar into the carbs number. Learned that in my diabetics class.

neanderthin

Well, as far as the body is concerned, sugar is sugar regardless of the source, it all gets metabolized the same way for the same purposes of those sugars. Saying that, natural sugars like in fruit and vegetables also have their matrix attached which includes vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, antioxidants etc that the body benefits from. Refined sugars on the other hand have no nutritional value whatsoever and in order for the body to actually metabolize refined sugar it will draw upon the body's reserves of vitamins and minerals for that process. Refined sugar is often called an anti nutrient because of that reason.

As far as getting too much sugar from fruit, it could be possible, maybe you are, but it would have to make up a very big part of your diet calorie wise and interfere with your essential protein and fat requirements, otherwise there's much benefit from consuming fruit and vegetables.

Also, as far as raising a concern regarding diabetes or if someone is IR, or has MetS, sugar intake should be monitored. You also have to keep in mind if your dieting and consuming fewer calories than your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) any sugar you consume is never going to be stored as fat and gets used first and foremost for ATP production. Every peripheral tissue in the body uses this as energy with the brain generally taking up over 70% of all glucose production from carbs for it’s fuel and secondary uses go to muscle and red blood cell production, which is essential for oxygen transportation. Next sugar (glucose) is stored in our muscles and liver as gylcogen, which if your dieting is pretty hard to completely top up, especially if your exercising, then the excess glucose is converted to fatty acids and stored as triglycerides in adipose tissue (our fat stores). But like I said, fat storage while eating in a deficit and taking into consideration de novo lipogenesis which is how the body stores fat, you really shouldn't fear putting on body fat eating fruit and it's excess calories over an extended timeline that does that, but it's basically the deficit that makes eating excess sugar from fruit redundant....it simply gets used up through the course of the day and because of that deficit the action of gluconeogenesis which converts amino acids which come from our muscle and organs into glucose is taking place as well.

I quess what I'm trying to say is, don't fear natural sugar, it comes with a bunch of other good stuff and if your dieting fat storage isn't going to happen. If someone can go on a twinkie diet and improve most symptoms of metabolic disorder including improvements in insulin sensitivity, improved lipid profiles and reduce triglycerides eating mostly junk carbs, then eating natural sugars in an otherwise healthy diet is a bonus.

Rhayne05

Thanks neanderthin, I appreciate the scientific response I make sure to burn my 2000+ calories per week, and usually remain in a deficit. Fruits are a big part but not my main source of calories, and looking at my numbers it appears i always have a deficit in Carbs as well, even when my sugar is above goal.
I remember reading about that proffessor that went on the junk food diet. I think seeing that was what triggered me to start counting calories.

I won't fear my fruit, and i'd still rather grab an apple for a snack then a candy bar :P

neanderthin

Your welcome.