Everything You Need to Know About Sugar in Fruits

There is so much nutrition advice found online today. A lot of these online advisors offer sound advice; however, like all data and information—interpretation leads to differing understanding, just like sugars found in fruits. The world has deemed sugar as a whole as something evil, but sugar in fruits are metabolized differently than table sugar.

Sugar in Fruits Come in a Variety of Forms

To get a better handle on fruit sugars, let’s take a look at the different varieties. Commonly, sugar in fruits come in two forms, and these are glucose and fructose. Glucose is the simple sugar that most of our complex carb foods are broken down in the body and which needs insulin to push it into our cells for each cell to process and use it as fuel. Fructose, on the other hand, uses a different mechanism, it is metabolized in the liver and hence does not affect sugar levels in the blood, unlike its counterpart, glucose.

Fruit Sugars vs. Sugars in Processed Foods

The majority of processed foods contain sugar in various forms. Corn syrup is 100% glucose and is used in making fruit snack bars, soda products, and a whole lot more. Sucrose or table sugar is made with equal amounts of glucose and fructose. Galactose is a type of sugar found in milk which can be broken down to glucose and lactose. All of these sugars differ from the sugar in fruits because they are refined sugar, which means that the body can break them down fast and hence spiking blood sugar levels.

Sugar and Health Problems

We already know the evils of sugar like predisposing us to heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and others. But what is not emphasized is that these sugars being studied and linked to these health problems are added fructose and refined sugars. Thus, you can see a lot of mainstream and fad diets eliminating fruit totally. However, there are no conclusive studies made yet to prove that fruit is harmful.

Increasing Our Awareness

Hands down, consumption of whole fruit trumps processed or packaged fruits. For instance, fruit juices are highly processed and sweetened heavily, which leads to higher amounts of added sugar in their nutrition data. Thus, we can generalize that these juices are not a substitute for whole fruit consumption and will only increase an individual’s sugar intake.

Something to ponder, just like with anything, overeating fruit can lead to obesity, but this can be a bit hard to achieve. Example, in a daily 2,000-calorie diet, this would mean eating more than 15 apples or 18 bananas a day to be considered overeating fruits. The truth to the matter is, fewer people can even achieve their five servings of fruits in a day.

All in all, fruits and its sugar as a whole provide a lot of health benefits to the body. It helps in lowering your risk for obesity, optimizes your health, helps reduce your sugar intake, and above all adds bulk and fiber to your diet.

Inspired by www.medicalnewstoday.com