It's been a long time I did biology in high school, but a quick fact checking on WP suggests I'm not too far off: This is true for most/all(?) fruit and yet untrue for humans because sucrose is broken down into glucose and fructose by the body anyway.
Everyone says this but it misses the point. Fruit in it's natural state is a complete package of nutrients, fiber, and unrefined sugar. It has less of an impact on blood sugar than processed food with the same amount of sugar.
Well, right, but that’s just CICO in the end. It’s not a sugar thing. That’s fully understandable. It’s the added sucrose vs fructose in fruit discussion that’s interesting.
Fruits are nothing like candy, and it's sad that diet science has gone so backwards as to make this type of statement seem reasonable--that all of diet can be boiled down to carbs, fiber, protein, and fat.
A fruit is a complex matrix of sugars, fiber, enzymes, vitamins, and minerals which undergo a type of metabolism that our bodies are principally adapted for and which allows us to assimilate the various components at a relatively optimal rate and quantity, with many self-limiting reactions along the way.
Candy is highly distilled; impacts the GI tract, liver, and pancreas fast and hard; has no nutritional value outside of calories; and is generally a food that the human body has no biological intelligence for assimilating.
Contrast that to fruit, which is the oldest source of nutrition for hominids. We like sweet things and have color vision because fruit has been such a valuable source of nutrition.
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