Fructose is bad for you. A couple pieces of fruit every day is generally fine, because fruits are packed with fiber, but if you e.g. drink 3 glasses of fruit juice per day, that’s terrible for you.
Even eating fruits isn’t the best though. Modern fruits are bred to be as large and sweet as possible.
They are all bad when consumed in large quantities because the human body can only metabolize a small amount of fructose per day. One fruit contains little total sugar and also contains fiber which is an important fermentation substrate which aids in reducing the quantity of fructose entering the body.
Fructose is bad for you in isolation, but so is almost anything, but packaged in the fruit is a different story.
Do you think eating 5 oranges is any different than drinking the juice of those 5 oranges?
"Eating fruits is not best" is something that not only goes against science but common sense. Perhaps eating high amounts of fruits could be bad and but im not aware of a study confirming this (when the fruit is eaten whole).
No, because fruit includes a lot of fiber and releases the fructose into your digestive tract over time. Fruit juice is bad, though. It's essentially uncarbonated soda, and sometimes has a higher sugar content than soda. Compare grape juice to Mountain Dew, for example.
I'm probably behind the times but I haven't heard it said that any amount may be harmful. Even fructose's harshest critic, Dr. Lustig, says that fructose's harm comes when an large acute volume of it overloads the ideal metabolic pathway and results in the using metabolic pathways with harmful byproducts. This is why he says whole fruit consumption is generally ok. The fiber in the fruit slows down absorption and gives your liver time to process the fructose without resorting to the harmful fallback methods.
Fructose is the main problem, according to Lustig. Whole fruits aren't bad because they also contain fiber, which counteracts the fructose, but fruit juice is a problem because the fiber has been removed.
What people really mean here is that when you consume real fruit, you get fiber, vitamins, other micro nutrients and, yes, fructose. But the quantity of fructose you get is relatively small. When people drink fruit juice, basically all they are getting is the fructose (with water). And you're getting many apples worth at one time. This overloads the liver which starts turning the fructose into fat.
So eating an apple or an orange is fine. Drinking fruit juice is not. Hope this helps
This seems in line with other research. Sugar, when separated from the fiber in fruit is bad for you in any form. If you want to eat something sweet, whole fruit is your best bet.
> From a combination of drinking fruit juices and [other stuff] ...
Yes! Juices and smoothies are bad for you. Eat fruit in solid form only, to make your digestive system work harder (as designed), and slow down your rate of calorie ingestion.
It's getting harder and harder to find fruit that hasn't been bred to maximised sugar content, though.
There is a lot of evidence that even the sugars naturally present in fruit are not good for you in large amounts either, e.g. in fruit juices. Oranges are best consumed as oranges, not as orange juice, which contains all of the sugar and none of the good stuff like fiber. Also drinking a single glass of orange juice equates to eating a whole bunch of oranges at once, which just doesn't sound healthy.
I'm no where near an expert on the subject, But I have heard convincing arguments[1] that fructose is very bad for you (especially when concentrated in a fruit drink).
Sugar even in the form of fructose isn't particularly healthy. Fruit counters through higher fiber for the most part. Ie grapes and watermelon have pretty high sugar content. Still compared to processed food fine but wouldnt want to eat them nonstop
Fruit tends to be healthy because the sugar (fructose) is wrapped in protein and fiber. In other words, it's very very distilled. That's the reason why eating an orange is a lot healthier than drinking orange juice. But we do know that fructose is VERY bad for you (high fructose corn syrup is much worse than sucrose alone).
The amount of fruit you’d have to consume to ingest unhealthy levels of fructose is astronomical. Worrying about whether fruit is unhealthy is most likely causing you more harm than the fructose in fruit. Don’t worry about eating fruit.
Fruits are fine occasionally, but they aren't a health food. Fructose is totally contraindicated. People need to keep this in mind when suggesting to eat plenty of fruits. There is no need to do so even from a Vitamin C standpoint.
Even eating fruits isn’t the best though. Modern fruits are bred to be as large and sweet as possible.
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