Recently started eating dates and wondering is the sugar in them actually bad for you or have some sort of benefit I know I should have them in moderation due to the sugar content but just curious
Diabetics can eat them in moderation due to their low GI value.
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/dates-for-diabetes
I use them for the same purpose as fuel on a long hike.
If you want a special treat - run them under water and peel the papery skin off them before eating by lightly squishing between your fingers. The inside will taste more like a jam consistency. It’s messy but the taste/texture upgrade is worth the extra trouble for me.
Note this does not work for baking dates but rather for the “fresh” dates.
Enjoy!
I don’t think either of these answers are properly answering your question. To put simply, while the sugar found in fruit (fructose/glucose) is not chemically different to sugar you might find elsewhere, the benefit to eating fruit is that the fiber content slows the absorption of the sugar into your bloodstream. In order for nutrients to be absorbed into your body it has to make physical contact with the walls of your intestines. Fiber is indigestible and acts as a sort of physical barrier to this contact, although your intestines work to move around the mush of food in order to maximize contact/absorption. Additionally, dates will provide you with vitamins and minerals. It’s the added benefit of fiber/vitamins/minerals that make the sugar content of fruits less of a concern than eating something like a gummy bear.
Most people don’t consume enough fruits/veggies. The sugar content in fruits is offset by their fiber and other phytochemical content (health-promoting compounds that exist in plants), and isn’t ‘used’ the same way as processed sugar by your microbiome.
From studies I’ve seen examing daily fruit intake, higher fruit intake was associated with more health benefits/lower risks of metabolic conditions.
So overall - It’s not worth it to worry about natural sugars in fruits/vegetables provided you don’t have a condition that requires you limit all sugar, just focus on eatting a diverse diet that includes plenty of them.
There’s definitely a lot of benefits for eating dates. I don’t know what exactly but they’re not bad. Sugar from fruits or stuff like dates isn’t as bad as sugar from processed foods because the real stuff still has fiber and doesn’t raise your insulin as high and crazy. Doesn’t mean you should go crazy and eat them. Moderation is important I believe for everything. Consuming too much of anything will be bad
Sugar is sugar no matter where it comes from. We make table sugar by squeezing it out of plants. What’s better for you is that when you eat the fruit you get all the vitamins and fiber. The bulk material fills you up, provides essential nutrients, and you end up eating less of the actual sugar while getting to the “satisfied by my meal” end point in better shape. But again, we make table sugar by grinding up sugar cane or sugar beets, squeezing the juice out, and then boiling the excess water away. We could make table sugar out of apples and peaches and mangoes, but those are already premium sources so that would be like burning carbon fiber rods in power plants instead of coal… that is, it would be super expensive and require a lot of extra work to end up with the exact same pedestrian result. Sugar. Sucrose. Even high fructose corn syrup. It’s just the same molecule from whatever source was picked. Turning regular corn syrup, which is actually “better for you” than sugar for being low in fructose, into normal sugar is just bringing it into parity with the other sources via chemistry.
It depends on your age, metabolic condition & organ, cellular health. For many people fructose in any form & anything that coverts to sugar is a time bomb. Humans didn’t evolve eating processed carbohydrates, sugar, fruit & vegetables with high sugar content, 365 days a year for their entire lives. Many don’t get past their teens before finding out their liver is damaged or, for a woman they have PCOS. Your question was about fruit, again it depends, & it was never intended to be eaten in high quantity year round. Yes, Government & BigFood will say otherwise & studies to compare ancestral eating with long term sugar consumption, don’t exist. Don’t buy into the hype, studies showing tobacco as harmless & glysophate as safe were once accepted as fact. Even in moderation, fruit sugars I can’t touch & they are not essential.
The human body thrives on sugar. It’s just that sugar is best when packaged with water, fiber, and micronutrients (fruits, vegetables, intact grains), because those things are also good. Free sugars are easy to over-consume due to their caloric density.
Eating simple sugars in excess is bad in general. You are correct if you think that fruit is good for you though, due to the many beneficial nutrients it contains. Fruit is a great snack / small meal to have as opposed to i.e. eating a snickers bar. Note that many studies that look at the intake of sugars and the deleterious effects of sugar overconsumption do not necessarily take into account the cause and correlation between health conditions like heart disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes, etc, and the sugars eaten. Let’s say that people who eat sugar type A have a higher incidence of type 2 diabetes, than people who eat sugar type B. Does that mean that sugar type A causes diabetes? Maybe. Can general obesity or overeating any type of food cause diabetes as well? Yes. Simply put, all sugars in excess are bad. Fructose vs glucose, small difference. Fruit benefits due to its nutrient-density vs a block of sugar –> fruit. Fructose tends to be preferred and recommended over various other sugars by some sources (European health commission to name one) due to lower glycemic index, no stress and subsequent insulin production by pancreatic beta cells, and also the fact that fructose is sweeter than many other sugars, causing one to use less of it. While some sugars, fructose being one, tend to be more lipogenic (“fat forming”) according to some research, other factors regarding how and to what extent you would consume other sugars (as well as the effect of the sugar itself) can cause the same or very similar “health results”. At the end of the day, the benefits of eating a VARIED DIET, including various fruits and vegetables (regardless of their sugar content) is beneficial, regardless of the sugar type, as long as excessive eating of any kind of sugar is avoided.
Chemically speaking, the sugar in fruit and i.e. candy are the same, but the effects on your health are very different. The natural sugars in fruit are processed differently by your body because the fiber in fruit minimizes the sugars’ impact on blood sugar levels. In addition, you also get vitamins, minerals, and other healthy nutrients found in fruit. Thus, sticking to whole fruits as your primary source of simple sugars (and not the processed white stuff) is a good idea from a health perspective. Fruit juice though is stripped away from all the fiber and contains (usually) a lot more sugar than your body needs and oftentimes can process.