Hey I’m really curious why there’s no warnings about too much sugar from fruit like bananas but added sugar like coke is so bad for you? If someone could explain that would be great I’m more worried about heart health than weight. I also heard sugar in yogurt is bad? Is that just fake yogurt or Greek too?
The top voted comment here is literally wrong or misleading and continues to gain upvtotes so I feel like adding something.
The sugar found in fruit vs yogurt is not healthier or less healthy. You have several types of sugars, and while their effects are slightly different, the healthy consequences can be chalked up to basically 1 thing, excessive consumption.
Fruit can contain sucrose, fructose and glucose so the type is pretty much irrelevant.Consuming fibre can slow digestion and help control blood sugars, and over consumption will be harder but you will still suffer if you consume excess, just less so.
Yogurts can often have added sugar, which means they tend to lack this fibre and increase the amount of sugar we consume rarher easily, and though fat can be satiating sugar can also cause cravings and interrupt this.
Simply put, the sugars are no different, and the key thing to focus on is excess sugar. Eating nutritionally benefits our health, and those foods make us feel satiated easier too so that our blood sugar levels stay more under control by consuming less. Consuming nutritionally empty foods high in sugar triger cravings that make over consumption easier and thus blood sugars worse.
There’s nothing inherently unhealthy about a can of coke, it’s just that you quickly exceed your added sugar quota so best to avoid drinking them 3 times a day.
not an expert but is not just the ‘sugar’.
sugar is sugar, and might not be bad by itself.
the difference is that the banana has also other vitamins, fibre, and the sugar on it is not processed.
on the other hand in yogurt might have more process which swipes away most of its properties leaving sugar -mostly- alone.
but not an expert as i said
In a nutshell:Natural sugars found in fruit as fructose and in dairy products as lactose contain essential nutrients that keep the body healthy and help prevent disease. Natural sources of sugar are digested slower and help you feel full for longer. It also helps keep your metabolism stable. Refined sugar, or sucrose, comes from sugar cane or sugar beets, which is then processed to extract the sugar. The body breaks down refined sugar rapidly, which causes insulin and blood sugar levels to skyrocket. Since it is digested quickly, you don’t feel full after you’re done eating, regardless of how much you have eaten.
It all depends on if your insulin levels spike. Sugars are not dangerous in and of themselves. It is when you absorb too much sugar too fast and you spike your insulin levels that the real unhealthy issues arise.
Spiking your insulin is the worst thing you can do. But of course eating too much sugar, without fiber to slow it down, will cause your insulin levels to surge.
Small amounts of sugar with some fiber will slow down the absorption of sugar over a longer period of time and your insulin levels need only increase a moderate amount.
Excessive sugar consumption is particularly bad. Beyond the immediate needs of the body to fuel itself, excess sugars will cause excessive fat build up and cause many other harmful releases of chemicals which cause inflammation leading to arthritis and arterial disease.
So, a small amount of sugar is OK, but only when combined with fiber to slow down the absorption process. One banana as a whole food, takes longer to digest, and has a relatively OK amount of sugar when combined with a meal. Eating a whole bunch of 6-8 bananas is probably not OK and too much sugar.
Because fruits are “natural” and added sugar isn’t.
No, it doesn’t make any sense from a biochemical perspective, but the idea that fruit is healthy has been engrained for so long that it is gospel. Many people won’t even entertain the notion that maybe eating large quantities of a food that is mostly sugar might not be the best thing nutritionally.
The glycemic index for pure sugar is 65, and the glycemic index for bananas is about 50. That means you get about 75% of the effect of pure sugar if you eat the same amount of carbs.
Glycemic indexes aren’t great as they don’t take serving size into account - glycemic load is a better measure for that.
The glycemic load of a banana is from 10-22 depending on the size of the banana. The glycemic load of a can of coke is 24.
I imagine no one warns you because within reason fruit is healthy bc of the fiber and the fact fructose takes longer to break down (though a banana is a bad example it has glucose and sucrose.)
I, for example, am told to limit my bananas, because I have prediabetes. But if you’re generally healthy and not having like a pile of fruit you should be fine.
which sugar in yogurt are you talking about? there are different types of yogurt - unsweetened yogurt has naturally occurring sugar in the milk - flavored and sweetened yogurt can have any of a number of sugars added for sweetness - corn syrup, cane sugar, fructose, beet sugar and sugars from any fruit added.
‘sugar’ is a meaningless word, this is why these conversations get confusing. every article you’ve ever read about the detriments of sugar are referring almost exclusively to sucrose, which is what you find in candy and soda. of course there are exceptions, e.g. diabetics. your body can handle “sugar” though, in fact it absolutely needs it. your brain is a glucose hog and complex carbohydrates are what fuel your muscles. your body is extremely resilient and capable of keeping you alive even relatively extreme situations, like deciding that eating exclusively red meat and living in a state of ketosis is a good idea.
About once a month I culture a large pot of milk into yogurt and I’ve found my homemade yogurt needs a lot of sugar to improve the taste so I’m guessing many commercial yogurts contain quite a bit of sugar. I know longer use sugar in my yogurt now I use Stevia so I don’t experience the blood sugar spikes. Greek yogurt is just regular yogurt that strains out some of the watery whey in the yogurt making it thicker. Coke contains a lot of sugar but not fiber creating blood sugar spikes. Bananas contain fiber which slows down the uptake of the sugars that they contain helping to prevent the blood sugar spikes.
Any refined sugar is bad, sugar from fruit is fine in moderation. They have different chemistry
EDIT: Metabolism is a CHEMICAL process, while the sugar in whole foods may have the same MOLECULAR structure, the CHEMICAL process of metabolization is different.
“Metabolism
The biochemical processes by which all living organisms sustain life. Metabolism is the sum of all chemical processes occurring within living cells and organisms.”
https://chem.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Biological\_Chemistry/Supplemental\_Modules\_(Biological\_Chemistry)/Metabolism#:\~:text=Metabolism%20is%20the%20sum%20of,within%20living%20cells%20and%20organisms.&text=Metabolism%20consists%20of%20two%20main,are%20being%20degraded%20or%20oxidized
There are different types of sugar molecules (monosaccharides). Glucose, fructose, galactose. Glucose is what’s in fruit and that’s what your body uses for fuel. When your body breaks food down into usable energy, it breaks it down into the form of glucose. Eating glucose means you’re eating sugar in its most efficient form for energy. Sugar in the form of fructose or galactose (think high fructose corn syrup or dairy) has to be broken down into glucose in order to be usable by your body. At that point, it’s more likely your body will not need the energy and will choose to store it in fat cells instead. That’s why they say sugar is the ultimate cause of excess fat - it’s not really referring to sugar from fruit, even though fruit technically has sugar, it’s more efficient sugar.
Source: I took biology and chemistry/orgo in college. There’s more to it than that obviously, that’s just a basic introductory explanation to sugar metabolism. Fiber and insulin also affect your metabolism/“blood sugar levels” but I’m not really qualified to talk about that ^_^
Monosaccharides require no insulin and are converted to ATP with little simplification required. Bananas sugars are connected to vitamins, and minerals that are also beneficial.
Yogurt would be rife with hormones, perhaps antibiotics, liquid sugar, and other preservatives…