Thought for food

PER USDA, an apple has 19 gms of sugar and a banana 29 gms, so together 47 gms of sugar. The American Heart Association recommends men limit _added_ sugar to 36 gm and women to 24 gms. An apple and a banana a day can't possibly be bad and how could you get your 5-9 servings of fruits a day under 36/24 gms of sugar. To be explicit, the AHA recommendation is about _added_ sugar, so there is no contradiction here. Yet you wonder, since people do believe that all sugar is sugar and in the age of micro tracking of dietary intake by decomposition, you just get one read out.

Here's a paper where they fed the same foods separately and as a meal to 30 individuals and found that the measured Glycemic index of the meal was sometimes lower by 50% of the averaged, measured GI of the meal's components on the same individual. So it seems that the Glycemic index of a meal is a convex function of the Glycemic indices of it's components. That is another way of saying the average of the GI is greater than the GI of the average. If we can figure out the nature of this function we can predict the right GI. If not we may be led astray. It is hard to meet the default sugar quota in MFP while consuming 5-9 servings of fruit a day. And there is no way to good way to figure what the right quota should be. In the meantime, maybe MFP should track added sugar separately but this too could be tough since packaged foods may not call them out separately.

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/94/4/992.long

Replies

  • Firefox7275
    Firefox7275 Posts: 2,040 Member
    You have misunderstood: you are not supposed to eat five to nine servings of fruits, most governments and healthcare organisations recommend seven to nine of fruits AND VEGETABLES heavily skewed in favour of veggies. There are a number of fruits that are far lower sugar than a banana, raspberries are about 4g per 100g for example, and many of us here do make those choices instead of fruits that spike our blood sugar and are relatively low in antioxidants and micronutrients (both apples and bananas).

    Portion size is also highly relevant, if you strictly adhere to the full UK guidelines a serving of produce is 80g which makes an apple or banana one and a half to two servings each so up to four servings in total. The US cups system of servings is likely designed to be simple for Americans but it makes no sense when you are dealing with macro and micro nutrients that are by weight not volume. IIRC the GI research is standardised across foods by being the same number of carbs (NOT just sugars) per serving so the tested amount of non starchy vegetables is actually massive, numerous servings.