Is Fructose as inert as they claim?

[MikeTurin]

disagree slightly.. apples are available for what 1 month in nature?

Apples could be stored easily, and in any case other fruits are available almost all the year. I've eaten wild apples and they are more acid-tasty if compared with a Golden delicious or a Fuji, resembles more a russet apple. I think that the main difference with old good times is that now we're all the day seated in an overheated room, and not working with a spade or an hammer all the day outside. So eating five apples and then digging a hole in the ground or in a steel bar will rapidly consume the fructose contained. Eating five apple the sitting not. Drinking lots of fructose and then sitting is worse.

 

[bulkbiker]

Apples could be stored easily, and in any case other fruits are available almost all the year. I've eaten wild apples and they are more acid-tasty if compared with a Golden delicious or a Fuji, resembles more a russet apple. I think that the main difference with old good times is that now we're all the day seated in an overheated room, and not working with a spade or an hammer all the day outside. So eating five apples and then digging a hole in the ground or in a steel bar will rapidly consume the fructose contained. Eating five apple the sitting not. Drinking lots of fructose and then sitting is worse.

True as well...but m talking a couple of thousand years ago rather than hundreds.

 

[Indy51]

The fruit that scares me is dried fruit - and I guess that method of preserving fruit has been around forever? Probably even worse once sugar started being used as a preservation agent

 

[ickihun]

That still does not explain why some people who have never been overweight or had a high sugar high starchy carb diet still get T2 .
For some of us there is no clear answer as to why we have it because we do not fit the image given almost daily now in the media as to what someone with T2 is which is overweight and living on junk food and eating loads of refined sugar but they never say this is not the case with many people yet they still have T2 diabetes..T2 is now seen on a par with smoking and alcohol related illnesses one that it is self inflicted so our own fault and we should feel guilty about how much it will cost the NHS

It is how your liver and gut processes glucose. Not how fat you are. Fat deems the extent of insulin resistance.

 

[Brunneria]

Let's look at this from a slightly different perspective. Our bodies are set up to use fructose. We metabolise it. We eat it in all fruits. The key point being that when we digest it from said apple, it takes a number of processes to be metabolised. It takes a while to hit the liver and is only consumed in small amounts.

When we consume it as an HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) it is not metabolised slowly. It hits the liver really fast and usually in significantly higher quantities. That's when the real problems start.

So no, an apple a day doesn't give visceral fat storage. Artificially added fructose however is a different story.

Total agreement.

With the addition that some of us seem to be more sensitive to the fructose than others (genetics, environment, wacky hormone shenanigans), so that for some of us, an apple a day may push our boundary, while others can glug 2 litres of HFCS cocacola with no ill effect.

 

[Indy51]

while others can glug 2 litres of HFCS cocacola with no ill effect

I very much doubt that anyone can get away with that long term. I'd love to see a liver ultrasound

In some ways I think the genetically gifted/obesity resistant are worse off than the people who know by their weight that something is going wrong.

 

[ickihun]

The fruit that scares me is dried fruit - and I guess that method of preserving fruit has been around forever? Probably even worse once sugar started being used as a preservation agent

Which was consumed in smaller portions than now, i bet.

 

[MikeTurin]

The fruit that scares me is dried fruit - and I guess that method of preserving fruit has been around forever? Probably even worse once sugar started being used as a preservation agent

In Eurpoe the sugar cane became used in the middle ages. But romans and greek used honey to make the jam. Beet sugar was made industially at the start of the XIX century.
Drying the fruits was surely used in the ancient Egypt.

Of course in the XIX century and before the quantities available were less and the calorie consumption were higher that todays.

 

[ickihun]

Consumer wise. When did you last see small portions sold not costing the earth?Not profitable to shops to sell small portions.

 

[ickihun]

In Eurpoe the sugar cane became used in the middle ages. But romans and greek used honey to make the jam. Beet sugar was made industially at the start of the XIX century.
Drying the fruits was surely used in the ancient Egypt.

Romans suffered with gout, not sure about diabetes?

 

[Indy51]

Drying the fruits was surely used in the ancient Egypt

And I believe Egyptians are the first evidence we have of CVD - the mummies (both rich and poor) are riddled with atherosclerosis. Dr Michael Eades has a great video on the subject.

 

[MikeTurin]

Romans suffered with gout, not sure about diabetes?

From http://www.springer.com/us/book/9780387098401 "Principles of Diabetes Mellitus, Second Edition"

Aretaeus of Cappadocia, a Greek physician who practiced in Rome and Alexandria in the second century AD, was the first to distinguish between what we now call diabetes mellitus and diabetes insipidus. In his work On the Causes and Indications of Acute and Chronic Diseases, he gave detailed account of diabetes mellitus and made several astute observations, noting, for example, that the onset of diabetes commonly follows acute illness, injury, or emotional stress. Aretaeus wrote: Diabetes is a dreadful affliction, not very frequent among men, being a melting down of the flesh and limbs into urine. The patients never stop making water and the flow is incessant, like the opening of the aqueducts. Life is short, unpleasant and painful, thirst unquenchable, drinking excessive and disproportionate to the large quantity of urine, for yet more urine is passed... . If for a while they abstain from drinking, their mouths become parched and their bodies dry; the viscera seem scorched up, the patients are affected by nausea, restlessness and a burning thirst, and within a short time they expire.

 

[Oldvatr]

disagree slightly.. apples are available for what 1 month in nature? so our bodies are more likely adapted to eat an apple a day for one month a year not 365 days a year. Would be interesting to know (although probably impossible to find out) how much fructose was in apples before they started to be tweaked to make them taste sweeter. Maybe if we ate 30 apples a year we'd be fine with that. Pedantic, possibly but a different view.

According to Livestrong.com
The amount of fructose in an apple depends on its size. A single, medium-sized, raw apple -- approximately 3 inches in diameter -- contains approximately 11 grams of fructose. A small apple, at 2 and three-quarter inches in diameter, contains 9 grams of fructose, while a large apple -- 3 and one-quarter inches in diameter -- contains 13 grams.

Also from same site:
The number of grams of net carbs in a small apple varies slightly with the type you choose. Yellow and green apples like golden delicious and Granny Smith may be your best bets, with 15 and 16 grams of net carbs, respectively. Gala and red delicious apples come in at about 18 grams of net carbs, while Fuji is at the high end, with 21 grams. Leave the skin on your apple to increase its fiber content. Also, eating your apples in the form of applesauce makes them high carb; a cup of unsweetened applesauce contains 25 grams of net carbs. Dried apples have 34 grams of net carbs in a cup.

I add that turning apple into puree or a smoothie also increases carb content. Even grating or shredding it increases carb effect.

I like your hypothesis BB. Maybe Paleo wins here. I note that several diet advice sites say LC diets should not include fruits apart from some berries, especially where carb is restricted to 50 g / day or less.

 

[tim2000s]

Disagree again.. that may be the case now.. although not even convinced of that
http://www.englishapplesandpears.co.uk/english_season_apples.php
but without modern storage methods they wouldn't last very long. When I used to fruit pick in my student days and just after in the UK it was all september/october work. Anyway I avoid them to preserve my lower blood glucose levels.

As I said, not just apples.... Things we don't consider fruits - e.g. Tomatoes & Carrots, and of course berries such as Gooseberries, Raspberries, Strawberries, etc.

 

[Indy51]

If this link doesn't carry across the sorting, you can sort the list of fruit/veg by fructose content:

http://familywellnesshq.com/fructose-in-fruits-veggies-nuts-seeds-legumes-grains/

 

[Oldvatr]

I

Disagree again.. that may be the case now.. although not even convinced of that
http://www.englishapplesandpears.co.uk/english_season_apples.php
but without modern storage methods they wouldn't last very long. When I used to fruit pick in my student days and just after in the UK it was all september/october work. Anyway I avoid them to preserve my lower blood glucose levels.

I also remember farmers using clamps to store apples so they were available through Autumn. Also, one bad apple spoils the barrel is an old saying, possibly maritime.

Any storage method that reduces exposure to oxygen and damp will prolong storage life. Apples decompose giving off CO2, and this is how a barrel works - the oxygen is replaced by naturally generated CO2 which is trapped.

 

[ickihun]

From http://www.springer.com/us/book/9780387098401 "Principles of Diabetes Mellitus, Second Edition"

Very very interesting. Few men suffered it. I wonder if more common in women, in pregnancy etc?

 

[tim2000s]

If this link doesn't carry across the sorting, you can sort the list of fruit/veg by fructose content:

http://familywellnesshq.com/fructose-in-fruits-veggies-nuts-seeds-legumes-grains/

This kind of brings back the point, which is that as a human eating seasonally, you will eat Fructose throughout the time in which you are eating fruit, and to some extent vegetables. As, even in the UK, you can eat fruit and fructose containing veg seasonally for a significant portion of the year, even in the period before the drastic onset of T2 diabetes, there is a very low correlation between the sugars content of these and becoming T2.

There is a much higher correlation between the introduction of foods with added sugars/HFCS/etc. To badly misquote a famous phrase:

"These aren't the monosaccharides you're looking for...."

 

[Oldvatr]

I know if all I had was an apple, carb and sugar wise in my diet, I'd have raised bgs compared to no apple a day. But that's just me.
So does raised bg cause visceral fat? Two different things. Visceral fat usage and processing higher bgs. When I have higher bgs (ketones) I lose weight but cause complications in doing so.

Generally, I think carbs and sugars get converted to glucose in the blood, which gets stored as glycogen and water in cells and muscles throughtout the body, not really as visceral fat. It is the fats in the form of trigs that gets attached to the liver and internal adipose tissue that adorns our expanding waistlines. So both contribute to weight gain and girth, but are stored differently and used differently. If Fructose metabolises into trigs rather than glucose, then, yes, fructose will tend to increase visceral fat. Remember that table sugar i.e. sucrose, contains 50% fructose anyway.

 

[serenity648]

I think the UK doesnt have the High Corn Sugars in their foods? Isnt it banned?

About the apple: my take on it is that naturally ocurring sugars, in small quantities, dont have the same effect as the processed sugars found in all sorts of food where they would not have been found in nature. It is the addition of these sugars, in everything possible, that is exacerbating the diabetes problem. And I am one of the ones whose bs spikes when an artificial sweetner is used instead - dont know why.