Fruits Are Now So Sweet That Zoos Had to Stop Feeding Them to Animals | Hacker News Reader

Fruits Are Now So Sweet That Zoos Had to Stop Feeding Them to Animals

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48 pointsthunderbong8 comments

Yeah. I tried a Constant Glucose Monitor for fun. Seeing what fruit did to my glucose levels was shocking.

Did you record any data? Would love to read more.

It wasn't enough data to be interesting to anyone.

An entire apple got me up over 180 as did half a bag of In N Out fries with no ketchup, and I'm not diabetic. Glucose response is very personalized. One monitor for two weeks was enough to convince me I should follow a low carb/keto diet. The instant feedback of the CGM was very motivating.

Low carb has been amazing for me. I have much better energy and strangely enough my vision has improved. I know because I can read small type on my phone when I wake up without reading glasses. I almost never need my reading glasses since I started low carb/keto, and was using them daily prior to that.

Fruits are so sweet now that we can't cut it in smaller portions after using a brix test to adjust the sugar content given to animals... like real veterinarians do all the time. Yeah. Sure.

Replace too sweet by too expensive and you'll have the real reason

I, uh... what? This doesn't track. At all.

“Sir, here’s your half of a cheese burger and your milkshake shot glass” - not a satiating option to deal with caloric density.

And while it reduces the quantity of sugar, it doesn’t reduce its rapid absorption

Red pandas aren't humans. Zookeepers are (or should be) providing them yet with a lot of satiating fiber in the diet. Apples are just a treat to reduce boredom.

But fruit prices had increased in the last years. And zoos are economically exhausted after two really difficult COVID years without visitors. So they are replacing fruits with a pear flavored pellet.

Finding fruit at a supermarket that tastes like cardboard is not difficult. Even the most sweet varieties are picked green or treated chemically to look nice and last much longer in the market (the process burns sugar).

The lack of available, organic, non treated fruit at an affordable price is obviously the real problem. Zoos need to explain to the public why the animals are not receiving fruit. Articles like those solve the PR problem providing a silly excuse.

> The lack of available, organic, non treated fruit at an affordable price is obviously the real problem

The real problem is that the organic, non treated fruit have the same quality (sweet, poor nutrients) like the other fruit. The only differences are the price and the lack of pesticides.

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