Are you eating right? Are your kids eating right? It’s hard to know the truth when even nutritionists debate among themselves about the composition of a nutritious diet. One rule that rings true is to keep sugary snacks to a minimum. However, even the seemingly healthiest foods contain large doses of sugar, most especially fruit.
So is the sugar in fruit healthy for kids?
Yes, Fruit Has Sugar
There’s no denying that fruit contains sugar. In fact, the ratio of fructose and glucose in most fruit is about the same as in the sugar you buy in the grocery store in five-pound bags.
There is also no denying that ingesting too much sugar is bad for you. Common sources of sugar, such as high-fructose corn syrup, cane sugar, dextrose, etc., are the major cause of weight gain, diabetes, and can increase your risk of heart disease, cancer, and depression.
Limiting sugar intake is a smart dietary move. Does that mean you have to limit the fruit you give to your children?
Fructose Facts
Fruit contains mostly fructose and glucose. Fructose is considered a bit of a fiend. In order for your body to use it as fuel, it has to be converted into glucose first, which makes your liver work hard. Studies have shown that ingesting large amounts of fructose can lead to adverse metabolic effects, like leptin resistance which messes up body fat regulation and can lead to excessive weight gain.
The important words in that description are “large amounts” of fructose. In the eons before the mass production of sugar, people ingested very little fructose in their daily diet. Our ancestors mostly got it from fruit, which provides, in contrast to refined sugars, a very small amount of fructose.
Fruit, Wonderful Fruit
Fortunately, fruit also contains a lot more than just sugar. All fruits have a considerable amount of fiber, usually in the form of hard-to-digest cellulose in the skin and cell walls, which slows down the release of the sugars within the fruit into your child’s digestive system.
Fruit fiber fills up your stomach long after the last bit has been eaten, bringing a sense of satiety. Because of this satiety, the chewiness of the food, and the metabolic brakes on quick release of sugars into the bloodstream, it’s unlikely your child will be tempted to eat such a mass of fruit that he’ll experience any ill-effects from the small amount of fructose within his afternoon snack.
So the next time your child asks for something sweet, toss him an apple. It’ll fuel him up in the healthiest of ways.
