HOW THE SUGAR IN FRUIT WON’T MAKE YOU PUT ON WEIGHT

THERE are a few popular diets that urge people to stop eating fruit because their natural sugars (fructose) are thought to contribute to weight gain.

The truth is that only fructose from added sugars appears to be associated with declining liver function, high blood pressure and weight gain.

How could the fructose in sugar be bad, but the same fructose in fruit be harmless?

In nature, fructose comes pre-packaged with the fibre, antioxidants and phytonutrients that appear to nullify adverse fructose effects.

Studies show that if you drink a glass of water with three tablespoons of sugar (similar to a fizzy drink), you’ll have a big spike in your blood sugar levels within the first hour.

That causes your body to release so much insulin to mop up the excess sugar that you overshoot and become hypoglycemic by the second hour, meaning that your blood sugar drops even lower than it would if you were fasting.

Your body detects this low blood sugar, thinks you might be in a famine and responds by dumping fat into your bloodstream as an energy source to keep you alive. This excess fat in the blood can then go on to cause further problems.

But what if you eat 120g of blended berries in addition to the sugar?

The berries, of course, have sugars of their own — an additional tablespoon’s worth — so the blood sugar spike should be even worse, right?

Actually, no. Study participants who ate berries with their glass of sugar water did not show an additional blood sugar spike or hypoglycemic dip afterward. Their blood sugar levels merely went up and down, and there was no surge of fat into the blood.

Consuming sugar in fruit form is not only harmless, but helpful. Eating berries can blunt the insulin spike from high-glycemic foods such as white bread.

This may be because the fibre in fruit has a gelling effect in your stomach and small intestine that slows the release of sugars or because of certain phytonutrients in fruit that appear to block the absorption of sugar through the gut wall and into your bloodstream.

So eating fructose the way nature intended carries benefits rather than risks.