Thread: Sugar?
View Single Post
Old 09-15-2005, 06:19 PM   #2 (permalink)
pje120
Upright
 
The difference is how fast the sugar absorbs and the type of sugar. Fruit sugar is mostly fructose and the fibre in fruit will slow down the absorption. Fructose apparently doesn't need insulin to absorb and improves insulin sensitivity, but I've seen contradicting studies (not that I would trust them anyway).

You don't want sugars to absorb fast; that's why simple carbs have a bad name compared to complex carbs (even though both are just sugar). Foods are given a property called the glucose index depending on how fast the sugars absorb. There's several sites which have databases of glucose indexes for foods, which you can search for.

Putting a maximum sugar intake is oversimplifying. You want to avoid any fast sugars/carbs (junk food, like cereal and sweets and cookies). Fruit has fibre to slow down the sugars, and besides, it's got plenty of good stuff in there that you need. So I wouldn't cut the raisins even if I was trying to keep under 48 grams/day and it was putting me over.

Read this about sugar and insulin. I know it's long but it explains what you want to know about sugar better than anyone could in a short reply. Once you get comfortable with understanding sugar's affects on your body, you should be able to tell if you are eating too much sugar just through self-analysis... read the article, you'll understand then.
pje120 is offline  
 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360