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Comment by rtpg | Hacker News Reader

Fruits are kind of amazing. A tasty apple cut up into slices is more delicious than more or less any concoction Mars & co. can come up with.

Even more "gnarly" stuff like figs, eating them just generates such a positive reaction. And something like mango if you're lucky enough to live in places with it... If you don't have to deal with cutting it up, that's something amazing.

Getting fruit from some farm way far off in the distance to me is a feat of logistics. I always feel a bit stupid about how I reach for convenient stuff because I don't want to take a 5 minute break to do a bit of prep and cleanup.

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In principle, I agree. However, I haven't had a tasty apple in ages - they're all way too sweet for my taste.

I've been thinking about how modern fruit optimize for (among numerous other things) sweetness, and whether modern fruit are actually healthy in terms of glycemic index / glycemic load / etc.

My SO is basically like "fruits _are_ filled with sugar" and they're not wrong. It feels pretty hard to make strong qualitative judgements on this stuff. Feels better than a snickers bar, surely?

The only real thing that feels kind of easy to say is that any sweet drink is probably worse for you than just drinking water. Easiest diet in the world is to just never buy soft drinks, and the extra trick is to also not replace it with orange or apple juice.

It seems like fruit are preferable due to fiber, sugar content equal.

While fruits are packed with sugar, eating fruit also comes with fiber. This extra digestion slows the intake of sugar into the bloodstream, and getting fat/unhealthy from sugar comes from to much of it going through the liver. Because you may have too much sugar at a time, the liver needs help from the pancreas, which secretes insulin to store the sugar, which makes you fat.

Do you know if there's a good rule of thumb for how different that ratio might be? I do like having some quantitative ballpark to go along with the qualitative texture

You may be interested in the glycemic index [1] which represents how much a particular food causes your blood sugar to spike compared to pure sugar. Based on a cursory search, the GI for an apple is somewhere in the 30s which is way less than a candy bar which can be 70+.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycemic_index

Most fruits are also somewhat acidic, which helps digestion and insulin sensitivity.

This is biologically confused. Fructose is processed by the liver. Glucose stimulates insulin release from the pancreas. Sucrose is one glucose and one fructose, but as you might guess from the name, fruits often contain free fructose.

Fiber doesn’t slow sugar absorption by very much. It is better than, say, HFCS, but mostly because you can’t ever eat as many calories as you can drink.

Fruits have sugar but unless you're on a diet that heavily restricts sugar intake it's not an alarming amount. A normal sized apple for example is larger by volume than a Snickers bar but has 1/4 the calories and half the sugar.

Eating too many fruits can provide too much sugar, but fresh fruits have low sugar content in comparison with any artificial sweet food.

Only dried fruits, like raisins, dried figs, dried dates, dried prunes and so on, have high sugar content, well over 50%, so they are comparable with chocolate or candy bars.

Most fresh fruits contain only around 10% sugar, with a only a few, like grapes or fresh figs exceeding 15% of sugar (but less than 20%).

This means that for most fresh fruits you can eat a half kilogram (or a pound) per day, while still avoiding an excessive sugar intake.

I know I read several years ago that some zoos were cutting back on the amount of fruit they feed their animals because modern cultvars are too sweet.

when my parents sold my (passed away) grandfather's farm, they took a sapling of the 150 year old apple tree. Those apples are so delicious.

They're tiny and acidic, but the flavors are so complex compared to a supermarket apple that's giant and sweet.

Would have to be a branch that was spliced, and wouldn't be 150 years old, apple trees don't live that long.

Either way, the worst office snack IMHO is the apple, the person sitting next to me, taking a big bite, munching with their mouth open.

I raise you one Apple tree estimated to be around 370 years old:

https://www.ancienttreeforum.org.uk/ancient-trees/ancient-tr...

But yes, most Apple trees seem to stop bearing fruit around 50 years of age max and rarely live beyond 90-100 years as far as I can tell.

Graft would still produce genetically identical apples.

Could also be. In any case it was old and the apples tasted like nature intended them to

> In principle, I agree. However, I haven't had a tasty apple in ages - they're all way too sweet for my taste.

You may be interested in Apple Rankings:

* https://applerankings.com

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33639206

This is not a very good site though. It's basically "Apple Rankings of Some Random Dude" and not much else.

This. Commercial fruits are as engineered as candy bars. Well.... Almost.

In any case, apples are often too sweet. I don't eat candy either.

If you like tart apples, try Granny Smith. They are usually harvested a little bit too early, so they are often very sour and very green (the ripe version has a very slight shine of red). Their skin is thick and requires a little effort to chew. I love them.

Where we shop (in western Europe) there are these shiny huge apples, often each of them has a separate sticker. All ultra sweet because, well, people are often stupid and our instincts are too strong for some situations that we didn't yet evolve to handle better. Sugar addiction from early age is one of them. Human liking of sugar developed during times where sweet fruits were rare and no ultra cheap refined sugar or HFCS was discovered. Companies deliver what people buy more.

Then at the side there are big bags (~3kg) of these not so appealing small apples with various flaws. These are the ones we buy, either bio or not, and they are much less sweet. They last less, presumably less chemistry within to keep rot away for longer, which is a good (even if annoying) sign.

A great way to boost the logistics score of fruits like mango is to buy dried. To remain true to the scientific method I didn't include dried mango because it's not provided at the office. I do frequently bring it in.

I love dried fruit, but I kind of assume it is a sneaky way of consuming more sugar. A handful of grapes is plenty, but I can eat many handfuls of raisins. Without the water bulk it is easy to over indulge.

you should try a mangosteen or cherimoya. discovering the broader fruitiverse was pretty eye opening.

Mangosteen are freaking amazing. I got addicted to them when I was living in Thailand. Impossible to get in my city here in the US East coast.

Lowtax tried to enlighten us in 2006, but we weren't ready to listen :( https://i.imgur.com/Fox9wMc.jpeg

I found it to be a US thing to cut fruit in slices (at least this is the country I see most doing this).

In France you get your apple whole and you bite into it. If someone prepare fruit for say a picnic, it will either be a fruit salad or a while fruit.

Children from kindergarten eat while fruit, or cut in two of they really cannot bite in. Adults never eat pre-cut fruit.

> If you don't have to deal with cutting [mango] up

What's the problem? I just peel it one half at a time and cut off huge chunks or strips around the pit. Flip it and keep going.

The flip is messy but also satisfying.

>A tasty apple cut up into slices is more delicious than more or less any concoction Mars & co. can come up with.

I love apples, but this is silly.

You obviously didn't make it down to "lemon"

Well... I try to avoid junky candy bars. And actually can even be disgusting when you're not into that habit. But lots of fruits aren't great either. If I'm hungry and have to choose between an acid apple and a kit kat, I think I'd pick the latter.

Every office needs nuts and raisins

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