Why is the sugar in fruit more healthful and natural than table sugar?

Answer 1

Several reasons:
1. It contains vitamins and nutrients.
2. It is not processed
3. It is usually a lower glycemic index and does not cause as severe of an insulin spike.

Answer 2

blossom,

Dr. Frank is right--again. While the fruit is healthful, the sugar in fruit is not any more healthful than any other sugar.

Table sugar, sucrose, is actually two sugars, glucose and fructose. Our bodies process them a little differently, which is what gives fructose the illusion (and it is an illusion) of being more healthful. It doesn't raise our blood sugar as quickly as does glucose.

Our digestive system breaks the two sugars in table sugar apart. The glucose, being essentially blood sugar, goes into our blood stream immediately where anyone looking for it can easily see it. Then our body responds with insulin, and everybody knows that doing this repeatedly every day is not good for us.

But the fructose in table sugar--which exactly the same stuff in an apple or banana or eggplant--goes to our liver and is absorbed there, so it doesn't make such a dramatic appearance in our bloodstream, so we think that it is somehow "healthier" than table sugar. The liver receives it, puts it through a four-step process that turns it into triglycerides, our body's main form of energy storage and which we know commonly as "fat."

That's why it doesn't raise our blood sugar level--it goes to our waistlines.

So while the fruit has a lot of stuff in it that is very good for us, and we must, simply must, eat fruit, the sugar in it is not any different from the stuff on our tables.

Eat veggies. Less sugar, as many vitamins. But eat fruit, too. Just don't believe that the sugar is "better." It isn't. Eat enough fruit and we'll get just as fat. The trick is "enough," but do that and we will.

Answer 3

when you consume fruit not only are you getting calories from the simple sugars you are getting nutrients (vitamins, minerals, etc.) when you consume processed cane sugar in the form of table sugar (sucrose) all of the nutrients have been stripped away in the manufacturing process so you are consuming nothing but simple sugars which there is no daily requirement for.

also every fruit contains many types of sugars not just one with some common ones being fructose, sucrose and glucose. take sucrose for example it is the combination of fructose and glucose at a 1:1 ratio, one molecule of fructose and one molecule of glucose. glucose is digested very rapidly and can cause a fast increase in blood sugar which causes a corresponding increase in the storage hormone insulin. fructose is metabolized using a non-insulin dependent pathway. it is metabolized directly by the liver and does not cause an increase in blood sugar or insulin.

* but to make things simple when dieting try to consume fruits and or processed sugars as early in the day as possible. and as the day progresses the carbohydrate intake should tapper down with each meal with the last couple of meals or snacks of the day being carbohydrate free

Answer 4

Any sugar is pretty much empty calories.
Fructose (fruit sugar) is only slightly harder for the body to digest than glucose (cane sugar). It will therefore have a lower glycemic index (your blood sugar won't spike as fast with fructose as it will with glucose.
A blanced diet is basically low in REFINED sugars. It's the refining process that removes any other nutrients.

Answer 5

Because table sugar is refined. Anything that is processed and refined is not as good as the natural source, as the vitamins and nutriens diminish during processing.

Answer 6

they probably put a lot of artificial stuff into table sugar

Answer 7

Because it's from fruit.Fruit is healthy so that type of sugar i healthy too.

Answer 8

It is no healthier and has no positive effects, however fructose is sweeter than sucrose so you can use a bit less to produce the same level of sweetness.

Answer 9

it contains vitamins and minerals. processed sugar does not.

Answer 10

Fructose is a much smaller carbon chain than sucrose,so it's much more easily digested and absorbed. ;-)=