14 Fruits to Eat if You’re Cutting Back on Sugar
We’ve been told for decades to eat our fruits and vegetables. Government guidelines recommend five to nine servings a day because these foods are full of nutrients, fiber, and phytochemicals critical for optimal health.
But lately, some of that advice has been questioned—particularly the advice on fruit.
A lot of our favorites, including grapes and bananas, are high in sugar. It’s natural sugar, and it’s combined with fiber and other nutrients, but still, it’s sugar. And we’re eating more sugar today than ever before.
While we’re cutting back on sugary treats and snacks, should we be limiting our intake of certain fruits, too?
The Health Benefits of Fruit
Eat whole fruit, and you get a lot of healthy things:
- Fiber that fills you up, keeps you satisfied, and eases digestion.
- Vitamins like vitamin A, B, C, E, and K—all critical for good health
- Minerals like potassium, calcium, magnesium, copper, zinc, phosphorus, and more—often 10 or more minerals in one piece of fruit!
- Antioxidants like vitamins A, C, and E, plus flavonoids like quercetin, catechin, epicatechin, and anthocyanidin—all nutrients known to fight disease and keep you healthy.
- Healthy fats: Some fruits, like avocados, have healthy monounsaturated fats that can help lower cholesterol levels and even support healthy skin.
- Disease-fighting factors: All fruits have been linked with reducing risk of disease. Blackberries, for example, because of their powerful antioxidants, have been linked to a reduced risk of stroke and cancer. Apples may help reduce risk of diabetes, and blueberries may help you retain your memory as you age. Cantaloupe, because of its high levels of beta-carotene, may help reduce the risk of developing cataracts. And the list goes on an on.
Still, all these fruits have natural sugars, too. Could they cancel out the health benefits?
Stick to Eating Whole Fruit
Most experts say that as long as you eat the whole fruit, you’re getting three key things:
- fiber,
- water content,
- and what they call “chewing resistance.”
These three things combine to slow down digestion. That means the natural sugars will slowly enter your system, which is important when we’re talking about disease.
We raise our risk for diabetes and heart disease and obesity when we eat those sugars that spike blood sugar levels. In other words, they digest quickly and go straight to the bloodstream, forcing the body to release more insulin to process them. This describes the action of all added sugars.
Natural sugars in whole fruits, however, because of all the other nutrients in them, don’t cause the same type of blood sugar ups and downs. An apple has fiber and water, which fill you up and slow digestion. Soda runs right through you, spikes blood sugar levels, and leaves you still feeling hungry.
In addition, you get significantly less fructose (the disease-causing sugar) from fruit than you would from a food with added sugars. One apple, for example, contains about 23 grams of sugar, of which 13 are fructose. A can of soda, on the other hand, contains about 52 grams of sugar, about 30 of which are fructose.
But of course, there are limits to how fruit we should be consuming, and it differs according to our individual needs and activity levels.
If you want to cut back on sugar and continue to enjoy fruit, opt for low sugar fruits.
Fruits to Choose if You Want to Cut Back on Sugar
In general, dried fruits (like raisins, dried currants, and dried apricots) are high in sugar. Similarly, most juices on the market are full of added sugars. Even if you get an organic variety that’s 100 percent fruit juice, you’re getting a product that will spike your blood sugar levels, as there’s nothing in it to slow down the digestion of the sugars.
We have the two lists here for you—10 fruits lower in sugar, and 10 that have higher levels. (Based on raw and frozen samples.) Keep in mind that sugar content varies, even among fruits of the same type, depending on how long they were allowed to ripen, as well as on the variety of the fruit.
(Source: USDA Database for Added Sugars Content of Selected Foods)
(Source: USDA Database for Added Sugars Content of Selected Foods)
Low Sugar Fruit (8 grams or lower)
- Avocado
- Rhubarb
- Lemon and lime
- Cranberry
- Raspberry
- Papaya
- Watermelon
- Blackberry
- Strawberry
- Grapefruit
- Loganberries
- Boysenberries
- Currants
- Mulberries
High Sugar Fruits (12 grams or higher)
- Raisin
- Date
- Fig
- Pomegranate
- Grape
- Mango
- Cherry (sweet)
- Banana
- Persimmon
- Plaintain
Fruits That Land Somewhere in the Middle (between 8 and 12 grams)
- Nectarine
- Peach
- Cantaloupe
- Honeydew
- Blueberry
- Kumquat
- Orange
- Pear
- Plum
- Apple
- Apricot
- Guava
- Pineapple
- Sour cherries
Are you concerned about the sugar in fruits? Please share your thoughts.
Sources:
R. Bethene Ervin, and Cynthia L. Ogden, “Consumption of Added Sugars Among U.S. Adults, 2005-2010,” NCHS Data Brief, No. 122, May 2013, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db122.pdf.
Nanci Hellmich, “Adults consume 13% of calories from added sugars,” USA Today, May 1, 2013, http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/05/01/sugar-calories-soda-food/2121743/.
Quanhe Yang, et al., “Added Sugar Intake and Cardiovascular Diseases Mortality Among US Adults,” JAMA Intern Med., 2014; 174(4):516-524, http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1819573.
Sanjay Basu, et al., “The Relationship of Sugar to Population-Level Diabetes Prevalence: An Econometric Analysis of Repeated Cross-Sectional Data,” PLoS One, February 27, 2013; 8(2):e57873, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23460912.
Stanhope KL, et al., “Adverse metabolic effects of dietary fructose: results from the recent epidemiological, clinical, and mechanistic studies,” Curr Opin Lipidol., June 2013; 24(3):198-206, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23594708.
Kimber L. Stanhope, et al., “Consuming fructose-sweetened, not glucose-sweetened, beverages increases visceral adiposity and lipids and decreases insulin sensitivity in overweight/obese humans,” J Clin Invest., May 1, 2009; 119(5):1322-1334, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2673878/.
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