Fruits

One interesting aspect of sugar is that fruit sugar is not turned into blood sugar. Instead it is turned directly into fat. For our ancestors this was a good thing. It allowed them to gain weight in the summer and fall to help survive the winter. Most people today do not need to gain weight in the summer to survive the winter. Thus eating sugar, of any type, is a little dangerous if you feel that you weigh too much. The metabolism of this is discussed in a previous blog post where I discuss the video—The Bitter Truth About Sugar.

Still fruit is better for you than grains. Why? The grains, having no fruit sugar, are turned into sugar in the blood much quicker than fruits. This is counter intuitive. Thus bread or rice are converted into blood sugar quicker than sugar is. Whether it is whole grains or not does not matter as much as one would expect. There are some exceptions to this, as there always are. Barley is converted into sugar slowly, and grapes are converted into blood sugar more quickly. I will talk about this more in a future blog post. 

This brings us to the video I am posting today. The idea that humans need 6 to 11 servings of whole grains is nuts. Since most grains are converted into blood sugar quickly this is the same as saying eats lots of sugar. Grains do have a few advantages over sugar, a few artificially added vitamins and fiber, but trust me, if you are eating your vegetables, neither fiber nor vitamins will be a problem.

Personally I eat one or two servings of grain a day. if I had my own personal Food Pyramid, grains and starches would be a smallish sliver above nuts and below herbs. (Note that as I am gluten sensitive this does not include wheat.) My goal of 9 servings of vegetables a day has been hard to achieve. It is doable. The government recommendation of 2 to 3 servings of fruit a day actually seems about right. Remember that a banana is two servings. Also remember that alcohol and the fake sugar alcohol are digested exactly like fruit sugar and are converted directly into fat. Thus I try to limit my intake of fruit, alcohol, and alcohol sugars to 3 servings a day as my triglycerides in my blood are too high. Triglycerides are an end product of fruit, alcohol, and sugar alcohol metabolism.

The main point of this video is that it makes no sense to use the fake gluten-free products as they are still converted rapidly into sugar. We have some of these products, but use them infrequently.