>> That’s a very simplistic way of looking at things which isn’t supported by medical science.
I agree with you on this one but from what I've heard, it is likely that fruit juices and smoothies are not fruits either. If that is correct, the message can get very muddied.
>> Specifically glucose, fructose, sucrose, are worth treating differently for the purposes of diet management.
Now we need to not only treat different sugars differently, we also need to treat the delivery methods differently as well. At some point, the message just becomes too complicated.
> from what I've heard, it is likely that fruit juices and smoothies are not fruits either. If that is correct, the message can get very muddied.
Not really. The original comment in this chain talked about processed foods vs unprocessed. Fruit juices are fairly obviously processed so this rule works for them too.
It is simplistic, but for most people it is probably a great start.
When people talk about sugar like this they are talking about fructose. Bringing glucose into it confuses people since it is scientifically sugar, but not what people mean when they talk about eating sugar, which is just eating sweets, soda, juice, etc.
> Fructose is the monosaccharide and is the problem
Glucose is also a monosaccharide.
"sugar" (table sugar, maple syrup, etc) are mainly sucrose, which is one part fructose and one part glucose (joined together, into a disaccharide)
I agree that fructose is the troublesome part of this pair. But when people say "sugar", they aren't referring to fructose, they're referring to sucrose.
It is in the context of dieting advice “instead of a chocolate bar, eat an apple” (still about 20 grams of sugar/100 kcal, but about half that of the chocolate bar)
The other difference is that while chocolate bar makes you more active if you was low on sugar, you are still quite empty, hungry and looking for more to eat shortly after you ate that.
If you eat apples, you hit limit soon. Apples also do not work all that much if you actually need quick energy when doing something straining. It does not have that "immediately feel better" effect (which motivates you eat more and more).