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Comment by chris_va | Hacker News Reader

(1) is technically incorrect. Humans have evolved to process fructose into triglycerides in the liver. This is different than getting a glucose spike in the bloodstream.

(2) unfortunately reality is complicated. Most of what you care about is the glucose curve after consumption. You are correct in that different foods cause different curves. This will change per person, and some people will spike on soda, and some (smaller group)/actually will do the opposite on broccoli. It also depends on what else you eat around the same time. Interestingly, you can often see a change over time, or if you travel (presumably different gut bacteria)

4) there is a reason it tastes good. Getting fat is good for not starving in the winter, and it is easier to get energy quickly if you need it, but point taken.

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(1) Fruit juice is still sugar water. The fact that it's fructose instead of sucrose doesn't make it healthy. Maybe it's better for you than soda, but still not healthy.

(2) Who is having a glucose spike from broccoli? I don't believe this is a real thing. A glucose spike implies a significant amount of absorption in a short period of time. I doubt that broccoli digests quickly enough or suddenly enough in anyone's GI tract to cause a blood sugar spike.

I found (2) really fascinating. I read a story recently about a study where they paired two people, gave them the exact same diet for a few weeks, and used continuous glucose monitoring to determine their glucose curves. It was striking that different people could have extremely different reactions to eating the exact same thing.

They speculate that it may be due to differences in gut bacteria, but still aren't sure why people react differently to the same food.

There's a lot of interesting research at the moment on gut bacteria eg. the fat mice, thin mice thing

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-gut-bacteria-h...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/health/gut-bacteria-from-t...

Surprising how complicated the whole weight loss thing can be

The good thing about broccoli is it contains nutrients that the body can use, for example, to enhance its ability to manage sugar levels.

Whereas a cheap soft drink is inert from a nutritional perspective, it probably has a load of flavouring and colouring that's out-of-place too.

(1) Not really. The liver does a good job of handling small amounts of fructose, as present in many sweet fruits and such. But in high quantities, as in HFCS soda, it's unable to cope and you will end up with waaaaay too much triglycerides. Which, unlike glucose, cannot be regulated by insulin.

Have you looked at the numbers for fruit juice vs soda? Fruit juice has more fructose than most sugars.

None of the orange juice on the shelves is even made from squeezed oranges. They add flavor packs (often made from oranges so they can get away with it being 100% juice; and yes this goes for the natural/organic brands as well).

When you consume oranges, the fiber helps your body feel full. The fiber also helps reduce the insulin response and changes the absorption process. In juice form it digests very differently.

Orange juice is not healthy (and really, neither are oranges in large quantities).

"Fake" fruit juice is not juice. If you fresh squeeze an orange it's not the same as most of the crap made from concentrate in the store. Also if you buy cherry juice or such from most stores it's 90% apple juice. The ingredients are listed in order. I hate this kind of trickery at the store.

Well yes, fruit juice is fine in moderation (especially since it contains polyphenols and carotenoids) which is your point I think. However fruit juice makes it all too easy to take much more sugar than if you ate the raw fruit. As you say, fructose metabolizes to lipid in the liver but it's easy to over do it.

'a high intake of fructose (>20% of energy) can have a deleterious effect on lipid levels.'

[just like alcohol]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2682989/

Small point: fructose is a ketose sugar so fruit juice is indeed 'sugar water' - confusing bearing in mind the different metabolic fates of glucose and fructose.

Humans have evolved to process fructose into triglycerides in the liver. This is different than getting a glucose spike in the bloodstream.

From what I've heard, what happens to your liver when you process fructose isn't so great for you. It taxes your liver in many of the same way alcohol processing taxes your liver.

Do you have a source for this? Genuinely interested in this linkage, as I'm supposed to be taking it easy on my liver after recovering from a bout of antibiotic-induced jaundice, and apples are one of the things I've been relying on to help with nausea. Thanks!

You can find studies by searching on "fructose metabolism liver"

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/86/4/895.full

Also, here is the relevant Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fructolysis

Seems like the choice is between more work for the liver or more insulin tolerance.

Is there a difference between natural fruit juice and the kind of "fruit juice" with high levels of marketing behind it e.g. Tropicana?

Big Beverage fruit juice may have added sugar. Regardless, fruit juice (which is fruity sugar water with no fiber), is terrible for us.

Fruit was given to us in a high-fiber package, and should be consumed that way. The fiber also ensure we don't over consume. You might be full after 1 apple, which is like 1/8th a glass of apple juice.

So eating real fruit, you'll get less sugar, and the fiber helps with digestion and getting the other nutrients that are in fruit.

Regarding "real fruit", how much sweeter is a tomato, an orange, or an apple today compared to past centuries?

Haven't most if not all of the commonly available (popular) fruits today been refined through selective breeding to be more appealing to us? What was lost vs. gained in this process?

(I have no idea, I'm not trying to be rhetorical. My guess is lots of more sweetness and perhaps less fiber, in a much larger fruit.)

Purely anecdotal, sample of one, thing: Eating anything raw feels like free safe guard. Fiber and other nutrients quickly feel bad, your mouth say stop. You rarely eat two apples in a row and wants 2 more. Same for veggies. I believe 90% of cooking is pleasure driven (other than eating / roasting things a bit which helps your stomach apparently) and is detrimental.

At least in EU fruit juices may not contain added sugar. Those mixes have to be called nectar, or something other like that [1].

Don't really know if there is a difference though.

[1] http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:320...

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