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Comment by zdean | Hacker News Reader

Naturally occurring sugars in fruits and vegetables have a completely different impact on your body than the processed sugars found in packaged foods (and directly through sugar, of course):

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/06/08/is-sugar-really-bad...

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The article doesn't say that - it says that glucose and fructose are handled differently (which is true; both occur from natural and processed sources) and that naturally-occurring sugars often come in high-fiber foods, and fiber impacts sugar uptake (which is also true). Sucrose is sucrose, whether naturally occurring or from processed sources.

The issue with "processed sugars" is that they appear in forms which cause you to not necessarily get enough fiber with them, and in form factors that are very easy to overconsume, but biochemically, 19g of table sugar and a couple of Benefiber caps are going to do approximately the same thing as an apple. Being processed doesn't make it magically toxic.

I may be nit-picking here but I said that the impact of the 2 sources is different...because of fiber, etc. I didn't mean to imply that the sugars themselves were different.

Sorry, the way I read it was "the sugars have different impacts". Even if you didn't mean it that way, it is a common pseudosciency belief that "natural" and "unnatural" sugars are chemically different. So many people ignore that at the end of the day, the body is just making glucose out of the cabrohydrates you feed it.

Actually both are true, glucose and fructose have way different biochemical impact on the both. For starters, only 20% of glucose is metabolized by the liver, rest goes to muscles, brain etc. While fructose completely goes to the liver, since muscles and brain cannot make use of fructose directly. Another effect fructose has is that it sort of suppresses ghrelin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghrelin), the hunger hormone. So it is highly likely that you will not feel full when you have food with fructose. The advantage of having sugars (especially) fructose in fruits is that due to fibers you tend to feel full faster. Fiber also helps in ensuring that fructose is releases at a slower rate vs. a can of soda.

Different sugars are digested differently, but natural fructose in a fig is the same C6H12O6 that's in a processed fructose source like HFCS.

People like to talk about "processed" sugars like it's the sugar itself that has transformed, when really the problem with processed sugars is that it's just the sugar, and it's too easy to consume too much of it.

I think "completely different" is overstating it, the money quote from the article you linked is “the liver doesn’t know whether it came from fruit or not”.

Naturally occurring sugar is just as bad, but has some other ingredients deemed to have positive impact. The analogy here would be opposing the claim that smoking is bad for you with the statement that some cigarettes can contain menthol or eucalyptus, which are known to have soothing effects and pleasant odors, and therefore are "completely different".

But back to sugar. The usual pro-sugar argument with naturally occurring sugars involves vitamins and nutrients. Unless you have a severe case of vitamin deficiency, your body does not need extra supply of those vitamins, at least doesn't need them urgently enough to justify sugar as a delivery mechanism.

Nutrients can be obtained from zero-sugar green leafy vegetables - watercress and kale tend to be the bomb as far as nutrient load.

Also "naturally occurring" is a misnomer by itself - modern commercially available fruit has been bred to have longer shelf lives and higher contents of sugar to appeal to general public.

Recently I tasted a wild orange. The seller at a health shop warned that it would be rather bitter. That was a severe understatement. Eating it was initially OK, but the bitter aftertaste was extremely strong and stayed dispute mouse washing. And I have not perceived any trace of sweetness.

So indeed nothing stays natural after a touch of civilization.

There's a wild tangerine grove on a path I occasionally hike. The taste is so intensely sour and bitter, I've had lemons that were sweeter.

Are you sure it's not a sour orange? They are a distinct breed and not really the same as sweet ones.

https://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/sour_orange.html

mouse washing, LOL!

The article you cite says essentially the opposite of what you claim it does: that in effect there is no difference between sugar added to food and sugar naturally occurring in food.

In practice, I think the difference between naturally occurring sugar and added sugar is satiety: sugars that occur naturally are bundled with fibers, and fiber makes it more difficult to overeat. That's what's so dangerous about sugar soda (which really needs to be legally regulated).

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