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Unripened Fruit / Vegetables

Listlad

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Messages
3,971
Type of diabetes
Prediabetes
Treatment type
Diet only
Do we know if unripened fruit and vedge carry less carbs per 100 grams than their ripened counterparts? At first thought one might not be happy with the idea of eating unripened produce.

I have eaten fried green tomatoes and green papaya. The former is quite commonly eaten in the Deep South in the USA where I first ate some in a local cafe.

The green papaya is often used chopped up as part of salad. As they are both unripened produce then they have differing nutrients and maybe less carbs than their ripened counterparts.

My wife has eaten a range of unripened fruits and vegetables including unripened mango which she eats with salt.

I must say, fried green tomatoes are delicious and there seems to be a keto version.

https://farmtojar.com/low-carb-fried-green-tomatoes/
 
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Not sure as a general rule but certainly it’s said that fully ripe bananas contain measurably more sugar than their greener brethren.
 
My belief (although I have not confirmed this) is the starch turns to sugar as fruit ripens.
I base this on the assumption carbs do not fly through the air and attach themselves to fruit as they ripen - the carbs have to come from somewhere so they are probably in the unripened fruit.
(If only they did and we could design a "carb catcher" - I picture something like a large fine net.)

However, not being a biologist, I don't know where the carbs come from as the fruit grows.
 
As fruit ripens the starches turn to sugar - so though less sugar in unripe stuff there's still the same amount of carbs - I'm assuming it takes your body longer to deal with less ripe stuff but it all affects your blood sugar in the end
 
Posted the same time lol
 
I have tried to google it. There is some suggestion of an acceleration in the process of the ripening effect which might render the fruit more carby overall.
 
lovinglife said:
As fruit ripens the starches turn to sugar - so though less sugar in unripe stuff there's still the same amount of carbs - I'm assuming it takes your body longer to deal with less ripe stuff but it all affects your blood sugar in the end
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Some of the starch in unripe fruit can be of the resistant type and not digested so that would be an advantage but which fruit and how much of a difference it makes I have no idea.
 
Mr_Pot said:
Some of the starch in unripe fruit can be of the resistant type and not digested so that would be an advantage but which fruit and how much of a difference it makes I have no idea.
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I think I am seeing this when I google. So still a bonus for someone needing a lower carb diet.
 
Best way to find out is to try it and see, using a meter and set portion sizes.
Of course, personal reactions to the type of fruit, and physical state at the time of eating (bg rising or dropping? current insulin resistance, etc) is going to make the results approximate, but general trends should show.
 
Mrs Listlad eats ripened strawberries with salt. Aswell as unripened mangos and unripened papaya. I try to ban her from eating the strawberries with salt but have not succeeded thus far.
 
It should be said as always that when testing blood glucose reactions to fruit, to all intents and purposes only the glucose will raise your blood sugars. The silent assassin is the fructose which will not directly impact your glucose load but will to one degree or another increase hepatic fat deposition and therefore insulin resistance. If ever there was a case where “eat to the meter” was not the best idea, then it’s when eating fruit.
 
There might well be something in that, Jim. I am reading stuff about exactly that ie. fructose / glucose ratio changes as the fruit ripens.
 

Photosynthesis.
 

I disagree that eating to your meter is bad advice in this thread, where starches are as much under discussion as sugars. My experience is that fruit spikes my blood glucose in under an hour. So it took some testing at 30 and 45 and 60 mins to realise quite how high fruit was sending my bg. It was an excellent deterrent! lol.

Eating to your meter is the one, handy, home tool that we have to guage the impact of food, whereas assessing the development of a fatty liver requires periodic hospital scans, and is therefore unavailable to most of us.

Fructose, in excess, has been shown to be a contributing factor in non alcoholic fatty liver disease. But that doesn't mean that home testing using a blood glucose monitor is not a good idea.
 
Guzzler said:
Photosynthesis.
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Sunlight. And there we have it. Hydrocarbons as opposed to carbohydrates are also generated initially from a similar process, giving rise to fossilised sunlight. The fuel we use to run our cars in most cases still, is fossilised sunlight.
 
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I didn’t say it was bad advice, I said it was not the best idea. I should have expanded to say that it’s not the best idea to assume that a certain fruit is okay based on a blood glucose reading that tells you nothing about what the fructose is doing to your liver. Nothing to do with excess. Fructose is metabolised exclusively by the liver, and unless there is a shortage of glucose in the body, it will be turned directly into hepatic fat right there and then.

My only point is that eating to the meter - especially in this context - only tells half the story.
 
lovinglife said:
As fruit ripens the starches turn to sugar - so though less sugar in unripe stuff there's still the same amount of carbs - I'm assuming it takes your body longer to deal with less ripe stuff but it all affects your blood sugar in the end
Click to expand...
I guess that answers the question. And we know where the off the planet source of change comes from i.e. the sunshine. But Jim makes an interesting point about the glucose fructose ratios. Mr Pots comment seemed also to be valid.

Thanks.
 
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