How is fruit which contains natural sugar any different than candy/artificial sugar? Does the body process it differently?
Fruit is very healthy for you, you should have some every day (as well as veggies)
Obviously with everything there is a limit, but it’s hard to hit that limit eating whole foods.
And no the sugar is not different, but because of the fiber, it digests slowly in your system and doesn’t spike your insulin near as much
To answer your question, most fruit contains fiber which helps regulate your blood sugar. Candy doesn’t. Fiber has a long and varied list of positive health benefits.
Most fruit is also high in phytonutrients, vitamins, and minerals that you just don’t find in candy. You’d be hard pressed to overdo it on fruit.
Unless you’re a diabetic then no the fructose is not bad for you. The fiber inside of the fruit is very valuable and the low-calorie nature of most fruits makes it very good for you to eat. If you’re. diabetic, I would limit it to a certain extent. Fructose still raises your blood glucose either way, but it’s still perfectly fine to eat if your blood sugar is in check.
As others have said, it’s due to how the fruit is processed in the body. The fiber blocks absorption of sugar, slowing it down allowing your body to process it normally. Flood the body with sugar too quickly and you overwhelm the liver. The liver then converts the sugar to fat. Same process that happens with alcohol. When I was a kid only alcoholics developed fatty livers. Today kids are developing it which is why we now have a disease that was unheard of years ago - NAFLD.
Looking at some of the other comments, I think people are overstating the effect of fiber on the sugar absorption. Like, if someone had hypoglycemia and you gave them apple sauce to raise their blood sugar, it’s not like the fiber would stop it from working.
A lot of fruits are low calorie density because they have fiber and water. Fruits with pits (eg cherries) or inedible skins (eg kiwis) also take longer to eat, since you have to stop and deal with those. Both these factors mean you probably will end up eating less overall.
Fruit is low GI (because the main sugar is fructose, which is low GI even in isolation) there is a few expections to this, particularly melons.
It also contains fibre, which also regulates Gi very slightly.
But the major point is: why is sugar ‘bad’
Sugar is bad because it’s added to heaps of things for flavour. When you add something that has calories to something that had calories already, you’re increasing it’s impact without increasing its nutritional worth.
If you think of it as a ratio of nutrients:calories, you’re skewing the ratio towards calories.
Fruit naturally has sugar as it’s energy source. Sugar is just an energy storage method that plants use, like how fat is an energy storage method that animals use. It’s low calorie, because there isn’t typically that much sugar actually present, and it’s low GI and a great source of fibre and nutrients.
A reason fruit was/is vilified by some is that fructose (a kind of sugar) was proven to be one of the worst sugars for us humans, and since the name of that sugar is FRUCtose (frukt means fruit) it was/is easily thought of as fruit = bad. So it is true that one of the worst kind of sugar is in fruit, but in such small amount that it isn’t that bad for us, and if you consume fructose with glucose it’s even less unhealthy (which is the case in most fruits and vegetables). Some of the studies showing that fructose was bad for us used corn syrups and other fruit syrups which are refined and can be up to 100% fructose, that’s when it’s an issue, too much fructose is problematic for you.
But most fruits sugar content don’t contain more than 10-30% fructose of it’s sugar content, and equally they contain more glucose, there are some fruits that you should limit if you’re concerned about high fructose and low glucose, mango comes to mind and if I am not remembering incorrectly grapes as well. One of the reason that fructose is bad for you is that it causes bigger insulin spikes in your blood which is generally problematic in the long run.
All processed & used differently. Like many things, the devil is in the details. Depends on our metabolic health, age, disease status. Fruit of any kind is unnecessary & bad for ME. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2714385/
If you have too much, yes fruits can be a problem. But it’s miles from refined sugar and process sugared item. Your body knows what to do with an apple. Giving your stomach a pop tart is a curve ball. It may not have immediate effects, but think big picture especially if you aren’t spending the calories at some point after consumption
Fruit is indeed high in sugar compared to other plant foods, but I wouldn’t say it’s “unhealthy.”
I think the biggest difference is that fruit is not JUST sugar. Every fruit is different of course, but there are a multitude of other compounds and health promoting chemicals (vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, fiber, etc.) present in fruit that would make them leaps ahead of candy.
From a strictly sugar standpoint, the main sugar in fruit is fructose and it’d be processed essentially the same as any other sugar. Most candies are probably made with “high fructose corn syrup,” which is very high in, you guessed it, fructose.
In general, you’d probably want to limit fruit to 1-2 servings a day, also depending on the “sweetness” of the rest of your diet.