Added sugar should be limited, but what if a person eats a lot of natural sugar per day?
Depends on the fruit. Depends on the type of fibre. Depends on the fat and protein content.
However, I’m going to take the obvious stance which is that generally fibre in fruit on somewhat blunts fruit sugar. Otherwise, it still shoots up your glucose/insulin response just not as bad raw sugar.
Don’t set random made up limits on these things, just don’t take the piss.
The natural sugar is called sucrose and it’s actually found in table sugar. When broken down it produces glucose which will then be stored and/or used in the body. Too much glucose in your blood for a long time can mess with ur insulin sensitivity and can increase risk of type 2 diabetes.
So no, it’s not recommended to excessively eat fruits; 2-3 servings a day is the recommended amount.
However, we have what we call low GI (glycemic index) fruits where it slows down the spike of blood glucose. Examples include apples, oranges and berries. Fruits high in fiber (especially those with edible skins) slows down glucose absorption. So if you wanna eat more than 2-3 servings of fruits, eat those with high amounts of fiber; fruit juices are not included (unless enriched with fiber) but I’d recommend eating within the recommended amount (unless your doctor or registered dietitian tells u otherwise)
Basically, yes. The fiber in natural sugars like fruits helps to slow the absorption of sugar into the bloodstream because the body can’t absorb and break down fiber. I mean– eat in moderation, but there’s no real harm unless you become Freelee.
To your body, sugar is sugar is sugar, it spikes your insulin levels and makes you want more. However naturally occurring sugars are a million times better than added sugars or sugar substitutes because they aren’t just empty calories they have fiber and vitamins and minerals.
Natural sugar is still sugar. Unless there’s enough fiber to digest and offset the sugar intake it is just as bad as added sugar. So a food source with 16% of added sugar will be the same as 16% of natural sugar provided everything else is the same.
There have been studies showing that surpassing like ~70g of fructose per day from whole fruits can have negative effects on metabolic health.
It is pretty easy to reach that if you eat a bunch of bananas or raisins.
I would focus more on eating vegetables. If you have a sweet tooth, eat sweetish veggies like carrots that still have less sugar.
It’s not nearly as bad as eating processed foods, but remember that the sugar in poptarts and coca cola comes from Corn and Beets. No such thing as an “unnatural sugar”, just aritifical sweeteners which are a whole different thing.
Tldr: eat a couple servings of fruit for the benefits, eat lots of veggies, and avoid Fruit Juice or dried fruit for your insulin-related health.
Sugar is limited for two reasons: if it’s added to other products for flavour alongside fat, it adds to the calories/energy of that thing without increasing the nutrient content.
The other reason is related to blood sugar. If you’re blood sugar is constantly kept high then your body can develop a tolerance to insulin.
This can be worked around by only eating low or medium low GI food, or by not eating sweet things constantly throughout the day (snacking constantly, etc)
Fibre can slow down the absorption of sugar, but to make it easy just google ‘(name of food item) GI index) to find the numbers.
Fruit is typically okay to eat in pretty large volumes, but may have a laxative effect if you eat too much of it.
If you look at elite marathon runners, you can see that under some circumstances in sports nutrition, you can get away with a lot of added sugar, where it aids performance.
Outside of that though, my main concern is obesity from the excess calories. Fruit can have low calorie density and high eating time because of fiber, water, and pits/rinds. So that offsets the calories from sugar by potentially allowing people to eat less overall.