Many people believe that fruit should be eaten only in limited qualities because of its high sugar content. Now this sounds like it makes sense. Fruit has sugar and sugar is bad, right? Well, that’s not the whole story. To understand why this is not true you first have to understand why sugar is labeled as bad in the first place. Having HIGH BLOOD SUGAR is bad because high blood sugar = oxidative stress and high insulin levels. Oxidative stress = damage to the lining of arteries, damage to cells and their receptors such as the insulin receptors (which can cause insulin resistance aka type 2 diabetes) and it also depletes the body of energy and nutrients because the body must create more of its endogenous antioxidants to quench the oxidative load caused by the high blood sugar. These antioxidants require nutrients to create.
Now the second part of this is high insulin levels. Insulin is a hormone that is required for glucose to be able to get into the cell in order to create energy. When there are huge spikes in blood sugar, there are huge spikes of insulin as well to escort all of the sugar into the cells. High insulin levels can create insulin resistance just like oxidative stress can, because the cell starts to get sick of hearing insulin knocking at the receptor all the time so it starts to turn down its sensitivity to it. The insulin receptor essentially puts on earmuffs and can’t hear insulin as well anymore. This causes the pancreas to produce more insulin to try and force the sugar into the cells, but this just creates more insulin resistance, which causes more insulin to be produced and the cycle continues. Chronically elevated levels of insulin have been linked to obesity because insulin is a fat-storing hormone. High levels of insulin have also been linked to cancer. We all have cancer cells in our bodies, but our immune system normally takes care of them before they cause any issues. But with chronic high levels of circulating insulin, the chances increase that these cancerous cells can grow out of control before the immune system can take care of them properly; because insulin is also a growth hormone.
All of our hormones are interconnected, they all affect each other. In women, when insulin levels go up, testosterone levels also go up. This can cause issues with ovulation, which can then cause issues to the balance of estrogen/progesterone in the body because progesterone is mainly produced during ovulation. If estrogen & progesterone are out of balance, this can create estrogen dominance issues like Poly cycstic Ovarion Syndrome, mood swings, anxiety, headaches and much more.
In men, high insulin levels have been linked to low testosterone levels and estrogen dominance which can lead to weight gain, low sex drive, low energy, mood swings, anxiety etc.
So having blood sugar spikes and chronically elevated blood sugar is definitely bad. This comes from eating foods like doughnuts, pastries, cookies, bread, most types of pasta, rice, cereal, candy, any kind of processed sugar and also from drinks like soda pop, most store-bought fruit juice, things like Gatorade, or anything with added sugar like coffee or lemonade.
But sugar itself is not evil. Sugar is actually an essential nutrient that we need to make energy, called ATP. Mitochondria are the powerhouses of our cells. They produce all of our energy, and their preferred way to produce this energy is to mix sugar, oxygen and a bunch of other co-factors in a process called respiration. Sugar is essential to us, just in the right amounts at the right time.
Fruit does not spike our blood sugar like processed carbs do (the only exception is dried fruit which is why that should be limited). Fructose is typically the sugar that is more abundant in fruits then glucose. Most of fructose is metabolized in the liver into glycogen (or stored energy) but the rest of the fructose that isn’t, does not require insulin to be brought into the cell; it gets pulled in by diffusion instead, so no insulin has to be released by the pancreas. Fruit does not come with just fructose and glucose like table sugar, but it comes along with fiber, phytochemicals, water, vitamins, minerals and antioxidants which all work together synergistically to ease the release of sugar into the blood stream and utilize it the way the body wants to.
This study here showed that when drinking a cup of table sugar and water (which normally spikes your blood sugar) was mixed with eating some whole berries, the blood sugar spike and insulin release was drastically reduced even though more total sugar was consumed then just the sugar water itself. This is because of all the co-factors found in fruit, especially the fiber and phytochemicals. This study shows how fiber can ease the release of sugar, by slowing its digestion and this study here shows that the polyphenols found in fruits decrease the absorption of glucose, meaning it enters the bloodstream at a slower rate. Free radicals and oxidative stress are created as part of our normal metabolism, but when you eat foods with antioxidants in them such as fruits, this oxidation effect is quenched and no damage is done. Nature understands how to package everything perfectly for the human body. Homo sapiens are a frugivorous species, fruit is perfect for us. It’s only when you try to isolate and extract sugar from whole fruits and vegetables that you get problems with it.
There are tons of myths out there about fruit. One is that too much fruit causes diabetes. That’s not true because of what I’ve already stated earlier – diabetes is caused when insulin receptors get damaged by oxidative stress, receptors get overloaded with insulin or another reason for diabetes that not many people know is that it can be caused by too much saturated or trans-fats in the blood. These fats essentially “gum” up the insulin receptors making it hard for insulin to communicate its message to the cell to let the sugar in. This usually happens from eating too many animal products (saturated fats) , and/or processed foods, fried foods and partially hydrogenated oils which are where trans-fats are found. This 7 year study on half a million people here showed that fruit is actually extremely good for diabetics and for lowering the chance of getting diabetes.
A lot of the fruit phobia that people have is based off of studies done on fructose and the negative health effects of it. There are many negative effects of consuming extracted or isolated chemistry such as processed sugar. The body only knows how to respond to whole food, all of the constituents work together in the body. They are not separate from each other, they are all interconnected, so when you extract and isolate things it’s not surprising the body responds poorly; because that’s not what it was designed to consume. Unfortunately people have taken these studies done on isolated fructose or other sugars, such as high-fructose corn syrup and assumed it must automatically be the same for the sugar found in fruit.
An example here is that fructose causes glycation effects which cause us to age. But here is a study I found that showed fruit has an ANTI-glycation effect.
Looking at health through the reductionist point of view, examining specific macro and micro nutrients will only get us so far. We need to stay focused on the bigger picture which is always consume WHOLE food, the way that Nature prepared it for us. There are countless other examples of this, such as fructose leading to insulin resistance, cancer, obesity, heart disease and virtually every other dis-ease of the body, but there are studies showing that fruit itself helps all of those conditions and always contributes to better health, NO MATTER the quantity. This study here showed that people thrived on a mostly fruit diet and their blood work came back perfect after 6 months. I also had my blood work done after 12 months of being on a 100% vegan, high-fruit diet and everything came back perfect, the doctor was pretty impressed J
So I hope you can see that sugar ITSELF is not the enemy, foods that are UNNATURAL to the human body are