| ||
 Sugar and Acid Content in FruitJump to page : 1 Now viewing page 1 [25 messages per page] | View previous thread :: View next thread |
| Food Group -> Food Group General Discussion | Message format |
Anne Thomas |
| ||
Extreme Veteran Posts: 319  | There has been a lot of publicity recently about the negative health effects of sugar and certainly after 18 months of a low sugar diet, a stone lighter and much healthier, I can vouch for this. See anything by American Paediatrician Robert Lustig for background but particularly his youtube videos and this recent article. http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/aug/24/robert-lustig-s... It is particularly the fructose which seems to be the problem as it is treated by the body in much the same way as alcohol i.e. is only digested in the liver and if too much is consumed at a time it goes straight to fat. This is OK in an environment where fructose is generally only available in the Autumn just in time to put on a bit of weight for the winter which is used up by the Spring, but not great when there is lots of tempting stuff around all the time. Fruit grown in northern latitudes is generally sweeter than that from further south because it takes a lot of energy to manufacture the sugar, but we do have long summer days and in a good summer I suspect more of the acid gets converted to sugar. The other complication is that for several hundred years we have been selectively breeding things like apples and oranges to be sweeter. The original varieties were all a lot more sour. Local fruit still looks better than exotic on average though, with the obvious exceptions like lemons and limes. Fructose is less of a problem if taken as whole fruit with a meal as it takes longer to digest due to all the other food. The following chart comes from The Curious Cook by Harold McGee. Fruit Sugar Content Acid Content %of fresh weight %of fresh weight Lime 1% 5.0% Avocado 1 0.2 Lemon 2 5.0 Tomato 3 0.5 Cranberry 4 3.0 Red Currant 6 1.8 Grapefruit 6 2.0 Guava 7 0.4 Cantaloupe 7 0.2 Strawberry 7 1.6 Raspberry 7 1.6 Blackberry 8 1.5 Papaya 8 0.1 Apricot 9 1.7 Watermelon 9 0.2 Peach 9 0.4 Black Currant 10 3.2 Pear 10 0.1 Honeydew 10 0.2 Orange 11 1.2 Plum 11 0.6 Blueberry 11 0.3 Gooseberry 11 1.8 Passion Fruit 11 3.0 Prickly Pear 11 0.1 Mango 11 0.5 Pineapple 13 1.1 Pomegranate 13 1.2 Apple 13 0.8 Cherry 14 0.5 Kiwi 14 3.0 Persimmon 14 0.2 Fig 15 0.4 Grape 16 0.2 Banana 17 0.3 Litchi 17 0.3 Fruit juice is worse than the whole fruit and may have as much fructose as coke, so probably should only be taken in smallish quantities with a meal. http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/06/09/319230765/fruit-juice-v... Maybe we need to juice our apples with a health warning. | ||
| |||
| Jump to page : 1 Now viewing page 1 [25 messages per page] |
| Search this forum Printer friendly version E-mail a link to this thread |