Eat, don’t juice fruits to prevent diabetes, doc says

MANILA (PNA) — Eating whole fruits, including the fructose gives a sweet taste, does not raise blood sugar levels, an endocrinologist said.

“Fiber in fruits reduces the rate of absorption of sugars in your intestine and so your blood glucose and your blood fructose don’t spike, Dr. Robert Lustig said in an interview following his talk on “Fats and Sugars: Friends or Foes” forum at the Shangri-La Hotel in Makati on the other day.

Lustig said eating the fiber in fruit would actually protect one from diabetes and other diseases associated with the overconsumption of sweets.

On the other hand, drinking juice extracted from fruits and throwing out the fiber would increase blood sugar, he warned, noting that this could cause diabetes the same way soda does.

The fructose in fruits is not an added sugar if the entire fruit is eaten, he explained.

”But once you take the fiber away, then it might as well be added sugar and it’s just like soda,” he pointed out.

During the forum, Lustig emphasized that health care starts with one’s diet.

“You can’t solve health care until you solve health. And you can’t solve health until you solve diet,” he said, adding that consuming too much sugar causes Type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease, heart disease, and tooth decay.

Fructose in sugar, he said, is not easily broken down by the body and is deposited in the liver, turning into triglycerides, a type of fat in the blood that increases one’s risk of heart disease.

Lustig cautioned against the consumption of processed food – cakes, candies, sodas top name a few – as they are high in sugar or salt but low in fiber.