different molecular makeup. i’m pretty sure it’s because natural sugar crystals have stronger bonds between the molecules/ atoms which means your body has to expend energy to break them up and digest them, while processed and artificial sugars have their molecules very available to our systems so they go right through and don’t require extra energy to be broken up. another knock on effect (?) is because as well as artificial sugars in those foods, you’ll usually find a lot of flavourings, “bad” fats, and and other processed stuff, but in natural sugary foods you’ll find fibre, phytonutrients, protein and other things that your body has to work for to break down :)

[removed]

Sugar is sugar, regardless of processing (for example, if you have diabetes, you might be able to eat a piece of chocolate but not an apple, depending on the sugar content of both).

However, added sugar is generally not necessary for survival and adds calories that are just pure sugar, which do not come with that many other benefits.

It’s not necessarily that it’s processed sugar but it’s the added sugar that’s bad for you. You end up consuming a lot of sugar when you eat processed foods and other sweets because they are made with a lot of added sugar to make it taste sweet. It’s all about quantity of sugar mostly

Two parts of this:

1. The amount of sugar in fruit is fairly low compared to the amount of sugar in candy and soft drinks. You’d have to eat an enormous quantity of fruit to consume as much sugar as you can from sources with all this added sugar.

2. The sugar in fruits is normally mostly tied up in the various plant cells. It takes your body a little time to actually get at it all, so it doesn’t spike your blood sugar as much. Added sugar in candy/sodas is almost all immediately absorbable so hits your system all at once and spikes blood sugar and then spikes insulin production.

These aren’t comprehensive, but are two factors.

The sugar is the same, but in fruit, the calories for the volume of food is much lower compared to desserts in general. This is due to the fiber and water content.

The sugar in fruits isn't "good for you". It's just sugar.

Why fresh fruits are good for you is mostly due to all the things they have that aren't sugar. Dietary fiber, vitamins and minerals, moisture content, antioxidants...

The fiber especially has the effect of reducing the glycemic index and increasing your satiety response, meaning that when compared to a processed sugar-containing food, you end up eating less sugar and having it hit your bloodstream more slowly, which reduces stress on your pancreas.

false premise. sugar in fruit is not good for you. fruit is nature tricking you into eating fiber and vitamins by luring you with sugar.

One word, fiber. Fruits have fiber which prevents excessive sugars from getting absorbed in our body.

Refined sugar is devoid of fiber and gives you the entire dose spiking blood glucose levels.

BTW fruits means fruits. Not fruit juices. Fruits juices fall in same category as refined sugar as it doesn't have fiber.

[removed]

If it's high fructose syrup that is used, some people are even allergic to excess free glucose (myself included)

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29587887/

[removed]

Your parents might be tricking you that way, but "Nature" most certainly isn't.

"Nature" is telling you to eat the fruit because it has lots of sugar and you need lots of sugar to be running down gazelles in the African savanna. It's not "Nature's" fault that you do so little gazelle hunting.

I think you are directionally correct on this, but I would challenge “enormous.” The sugar in a 12 oz soda is less than two apples , and a little more than two oranges. That’s more than most people eat as a serving, but not enormous imo.

>I think you are directionally correct on this, but I would challenge “enormous.” The sugar in a 12 oz soda is less than two apples , and a little more than two oranges. That’s more than most people eat as a serving, but not enormous imo.

This is quite wrong. A can of soda contains 39 grams of sugar. An apple on average contains 11 grams of sugar.
https://www.coca-colacompany.com/faqs/how-much-sugar-is-in-coca-cola
https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/food-types/how-does-sugar-in-our-diet-affect-our-health/

"sugar in fruits is good for you but processed sugar [...] is not"

Flawed premise.

Sugar is sugar. Fructose is no better or worse than other sources of sugar. Drinking orange or grape juice is in effect just as bad as soda; they contain similar concentrations of sugar and virtually none of the things that make fruit healthy.

Eating fruit is good for you, to a point, because it contains lots of water, fiber, and phytonutrients.

im pretty sure their apple numbers include carbohydrates

Basically what this means is it takes a longer time for your body to process natural sources of sugar- which is something humans have been doing for millennia. Versus something highly processed that hits the system extremes quick & the body cannot process it quick enough & may lead to diabetes.

Who says sugar in fruits is good for you? Neither is good for you

That's true in the summertime when I'm doing a 4 Mile run and I run by an apple tree an Apple has never tasted so delicious because typically I don't like apples. But my body needs it at that point so the craving spikes and the resulting energy is definitely welcome.

Sugars are carbohydrates

Sugar is sugar. Too much is bad for the body.

Fruit has fiber. Fiber makes your body use up the sugar slower.

Chocolate and desserts don't have the fiber that slows it down so it uses it quickly.

When your body uses sugar in a quick way like when you eat chocolate, it spikes like you're going up a really high rollercoaster. When the rollercoaster has to come down from the peak, you will feel bad but feel like you want to go on the rollercoaster again.

If you keep riding the rollercoaster over and over again, your body will eventually not be able to keep up and you will end up with insulin resistance or diabetes. This means your body can't send the right signals to use the sugar in an efficient way anymore.

Imagine a basket of apples. It is good for you. If you eat many of them, you might eat too much, but you need to eat for a little while for that to happen.

Now imagine that we blend those apples into apple juice. It is much easier to drink, than to eat the same apples! Now you need to make sure you dont drink tok many, and almost all the sugar is in the juice.

Now lets boil the juice for a while, and clarify it. All the tangy cider taste is gone, and it is much easier to drink.. Suddenly it is like drinking a juice box, and you shouldnt have many of those.

When we make sugar we basically take that juice, and boil it until only the sugar is left. Suddenly you can eat the whole basket off Apples in one go!

The sugar itself in the fruit is not particularly better or worse for you than the sugar in sweets, but fruit is better for you than processed sweets. You’re eating the entire unit of food, not just one component of food. It depends on the fruit exactly how much but fruit will have fiber and many vitamins, but lack things like sodium or saturated fat. The fruit (as long as it’s fresh) also has no added sugar, and is usually also hydrating. A piece of chocolate cake has not too much in the way of vitamins or fiber (though it has a surprising amount of iron), but is full of added sugar and saturated fat.

Also, since you separated “chocolate” from desserts, I’m going to say that “chocolate” itself isn’t necessarily bad for you or so high in sugar that you shouldn’t eat it ever. (To be fair, desserts aren’t bad enough for you that you should never eat them either.)

>It takes your body a little time to actually get at it all, so it doesn’t spike your blood sugar as much

And that's also the reason that fruit juices are really not that healthy.
Sure, you're getting some vitamins, but because most of the fiber is gone there is nothing keeping the sugar from being absorbed very fast.

It's better than sodas but not really good altogether.

>It's not "Nature's" fault that do so little gazelle hunting.

Look, I tried, but the closest gazelles are in a zoo and apparently now I have "the right to remain silent" or something.

Is an UK apple comparable to an US apple? Whenever I am in the states, it seems like fruit is absurdly sugary.

For most fruits, the nutrition in the fruit is the plant's way of either providing their own seeds with resources in order for it to grow successfully - in which case the fruit will usually be protected from being eaten by other critters with toxic chemicals (like capsaicin), spines, or hard shells.

For other fruits, the sugar and other nutrients in the fruit are a bribe to other critters to get them to eat the seeds and poop them out somewhere else - a quick and easy way for a plant to both increase their dispersal range and get some free fertilizer.

So it's not so much a "trick" as much as it can be a transaction of mutual benefit to both species.

Humans have of course, hijacked both of these pathways for our own benefits. For one, we bizarrely actually enjoy being the victim of some of the chemical defenses that plants have derived. Many of our recreational activities and favourite cuisines revolve around selectively breeding some of the plants to produce even more of the defense chemicals!

We also breed them to produce fruit that is even bigger and sweeter, so we can get even more sugary bribes. Then we get upset when squirrels, birds and bugs try to take advantage of the same thing.

There are very different nutrition numbers between types of apples. Some types have 2.5x as much sugar as others. Probably won't change much between UK and US, but the types and prevalence might so it would affect the averages. Possibly size too.

Asterisk: sliding scale

The more pulp and other fruit matter in a juice, the less this is a problem. Clear juice is the worst - and in some cases, can be as bad as soda (especially if there is sugar added). Juice with pulp is better; and smoothies made from the entire fruit is only marginally worse than eating the fruit straight.

glad to see reasons that aren't just processed sugar is the devil.

What about making orange juice by smooshing the orange against your forehead?

And we don't even give back as we don't poop around every where. So the seeds just go down the drain ! Or just breed the plant to not make seeds at all!

I decided to look into this. The answer seems to be maybe there is a bit more sugar, but it's probably more likely they taste sweeter because they're bred to be less bitter/sour rather than increasing their sugar content, which is quite hard to do. Go to the link to James Wong's Twitter post near the end of the article to get his (above) take.

https://www.acsh.org/news/2019/08/26/fruit-much-higher-sugar-it-used-be-14243#:~:text=And%2C%20yup%2C%20the%20%E2%80%9Cmodern,been%20a%2054%25%20sugar%20increase.

Goddamn Miranda, keeping us away from the gazelles!! SMH

Instructions unclear

Dick stuck in an orange

Sugars from fruits are real. Sugars which are processed, (like all processed foods) are fake. Fake food isn't food.

I saw another label that said 19 grams of sugar per apple. So there is variability. At any rate, even 3.5 apples is not “enormous” in my book.

You mean there's a better way??

Sugar is actually good for your body as long as it doesn't get too much at once. The problem with processed sugar is it gives your body too much sugar at once, and it doesn't give you the other things your body needs.

Your body's main source of energy is a type of sugar called glucose. Glucose is like fuel for your body's gas tank. There are many different kinds of sugar, but your body turns them all into glucose. Then your body uses the glucose as fuel for everything from thinking to moving. Our bodies slowly turn a lot of other food into glucose too, which is why things like bread and rice still give us energy even though they're not sweet.

Because our bodies need sugar, they try to make us eat lots of it. They do this by telling us sugar tastes sweet and good. This is why we like sweet things - it's how our body convinces us to eat the sugar we need for energy.

But sugar isn't the only thing our bodies need. Just like a car also needs oil, your body needs other nutrients, like protein, fiber, vitamins, and of course water. Your body can't taste all of these things, but in nature we would get all of these things anyway just by eating and drinking what we can find when we're hungry or thirsty.

In nature, fruit is one of the foods with the most sugar, and this is part of why it's good for us. Before we invented processed sugar, people loved fruit because they thought it was so sweet. Fruit has a lot of other things our bodies need too, like fiber, water, and vitamins. So when we eat fruit, we get the sugar we need, but also a lot of other things our bodies also need.

Processed sugar is actually made by taking the sugar from fruits and leaving the other good stuff behind. This make processed sugar very sweet, and a powerful source of energy. But because it doesn't have all the good stuff, it's not nearly as good for you as fruit. If all you ate was processed sugar, you'd die because you wouldn't get any of the other stuff your body needs.

Also, getting enough energy from food isn't as big a problem for most people these days like it was when we all lived in nature. In fact, a lot of people get too much energy. When you eat processed sugar, you get way more energy than with fruit, because the sugar's not mixed in with other things. Your body turns the extra energy it doesn't need into fat. This can cause health problems if there's too much.

And because processed sugar isn't mixed in with a whole lot of other food, your body always gets a huge amount of it all at once. This is hard on your body, because it has to suddenly work really hard to turn all of that sugar into glucose all at once. Over time, this can cause things like diabetes. With fruit, your body gets the sugar more slowly. It's like how when just a little bit of gas burns in a car engine, it makes your car move, but if you light a lot of gas on fire suddenly, it can explode.

[deleted]

This guy confused the world “head” with the world “skin” lol

Depends on the variety. The bag of Sweetango apples in my fridge say they have 16g sugar per 154g apple. This is a newer variety that is sweeter than some of the older varieties.