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  #1   ^
Old Tue, Aug-27-19, 01:51
Demi's Avatar
Demi Demi is offline
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Default Is Fruit Much Higher In Sugar Than It Used to Be?

From the American Council on Science and Health:

Is Fruit Much Higher In Sugar Than It Used to Be?

Quote:
Heard the one about fruit being unhealthy because it has much higher sugar levels than it did in the good ol’ days? This claim has been doing the rounds on social media, with those making it – generally fully paid up members of the low carb cult – willing to go for broke with their assertions, while offering absolutely no shred of evidence in support.


https://www.acsh.org/news/2019/08/2...t-used-be-14243

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  #2   ^
Old Tue, Aug-27-19, 05:26
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GRB5111 GRB5111 is offline
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I agree with the article that I'd like proof that fruits today contain more sugar. If untrue, that in no way means that I'll increase my currently extremely small consumption of nature's candy.
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  #3   ^
Old Tue, Aug-27-19, 06:11
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Calianna Calianna is offline
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I still need to go read the article (so I don't know if they mentioned this), but consider that the analysis of fruit nutrients was done before the advent of genetically modified foods. Hybridization and genetic modifications have given us lots of "super sweet" varieties of fruits these days, so I really wouldn't be surprised if there's a higher sugar content than there was when I was a kid - because what else would make it taste super sweet aside from a higher sugar content?

Fruit sure tastes sweeter to me these days though - I can't stand to even take a bite of cantaloupe - it tastes sickeningly sweet to me. I don't know how much of that is due to different varieties being developed, and how much of it is from being off sugar for so many years that anything sugary tastes exceptionally sweet to me.

It's probably time for the USDA to analyze the newer hybrids and GMO fruits, and compare them with the analysis done on old varieties from way back when the analysis was originally done.

I had trouble finding information about when the first food composition analyses were performed, but here's a small quote from a book on Food Composition data first published in 1992:

Quote:
Early food composition studies were carried out to identify and determine the chemical nature of the principles in foods that affect human health. These studies were also concerned with the mechanisms whereby chemical constituents exert their influence and provided the basis for the early development of the science of nutrition (McCollum, 1957), and they continue to be central to the development of the nutritional sciences. Current knowledge of nutrition is still incomplete, and studies are still required, often at an ever-increasing level of sophistication, into the composition of foods and the role of these components and their interactions in health and disease.

Somogyi (1974) reproduced a page of the earliest known food composition table, dated 1818. Ever since, it has been customary to record food composition data in printed tables for use by both specialists and non-specialists. While printed tables will continue to be produced, computerized data systems have replaced them in some settings because of the ease with which data can be stored, and the facility with which the large amounts of data can be accessed and processed.


It went on to explain how information has been updated over the years:
Quote:
Direct method

The advantage of the direct method, in which all of the values are the results of analyses carried out specifically for the database being compiled, is that close control of the sampling, analysis and quality control procedures yields highly reliable data. Early UK food composition workers analysed different purchases of the same food separately, but without duplicate determinations, with the intention of gaining some limited information on nutrient variation in each food (McCance and Shipp, 1933). In subsequent versions of the UK tables, however, the various purchases of the food were combined, reducing costs and increasing the number of foods that could be analysed in a given period of time (McCance, Widdowson and Shackleton, 1936). Even with this procedure, the direct method remains costly and time-consuming, and imposes pressure on the analytical resources available in many parts of the world.


Indirect method

The indirect method uses data taken from published literature or unpublished laboratory reports. There is consequently less control over the quality of the data, which may be uneven. Great care must therefore be taken in their appraisal for inclusion in the database. In some cases, values are imputed, calculated (see below), or taken from other tables or databases, and it may be impossible to refer back to the original source; these values carry a lower degree of confidence. The indirect method is most commonly employed when analytical resources are limited, or the food supply is largely drawn from food imported from other countries where compositional data are available. Although the indirect method is clearly less demanding of analytical resources than the direct method, the level of scrutiny required often makes it time-consuming and costly.

Combination method

Most food composition databases nowadays are prepared by a combination of the direct and indirect methods, containing original analytical values together with values taken from the literature and from other databases as well as imputed and calculated values. This combination method is the most cost-effective and is particularly successful when staple foods are analysed directly, and data for less important foods are taken from the literature (including that from other countries, if necessary). However, minimization of the amount of imputed and calculated values in principle increases the reliability and representativeness of the database.


In other words, the data can be based on data gathered from as long ago as the 1818 data referred to above, or as recently as the most recent direct method. The individual checking the USDA database to know how much sugar is in that apple will have absolutely no idea which study the information is based on, so there's no way to determine just how accurate it is.

In addition to that I have yet to see anything in the USDA database that compares the sugar content of a very tart Granny Smith apple to the super sweet Honey Crisp apple, but I can't imagine that the sugar content of the two is the same.
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  #4   ^
Old Tue, Aug-27-19, 06:27
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Ms Arielle Ms Arielle is online now
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I grow fruit trees and lots of tomatoes. Yes, there is a push for sweeter fruit. Measured as brix.

Tomatoes. Sungold is very sweet, Peach is the least sweet of the varieties I have tasted.Green Envy is a surprize: rather bitter until truly ripe, then a hint of richness and moderately sweet.

My son picks the sungold for his lunches. No other.

Apples. The most popular are the very sweet, like Yellow Delicious and its offspring; and the number one apple Honey crisp.
Kingston Black is a bitter sharp and used in cider making, otherwise not edible.

Generally, we humans have bred out bitterness, and increased the brix.

Im not a professional, still learning....

We like sweet, and sweet sells.

Last edited by Ms Arielle : Tue, Aug-27-19 at 06:36.
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  #5   ^
Old Tue, Aug-27-19, 06:28
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teaser teaser is offline
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A lot of fruit is sweeter not because it contains more sugar per gram of fruit, but because they've bred out bitter compounds that compete with the sugar and make it seem less sweet. That is, they've bred out the very "phytonutrients" that we're supposed to benefit from if we take the advice to gorge ourselves on fruit.

The granny smith might have the same sugar as the honey crisp--but the tartness might have us eating less apple.

Wild blackberries are all over my lot. They don't taste all that sweet, even to this low carber. The ones in the store are like candy--but will never have as much flavour as when I add sweetener to the wild variety.

Quote:
Discussion. The Alaska wild berries collected and tested in the first experiment ranged from 3 to 5 times higher in ORAC value than their cultivated cousins. For instance, cultivated blueberries have an ORAC scale of 30. Alaska Blueberry (Vaccinium alaskensis) measured 76.
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  #6   ^
Old Tue, Aug-27-19, 06:55
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Ms Arielle Ms Arielle is online now
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I too prefer the wild blackberries.

I like bitter apples, and loved sampling the trees, as a kid. As they colored up and ripened, the sweetness increased.

Brix is measured separately from bitter. There are bitter sweet and bitter sharp apples for cider making.

Sometimes apples are rated as percent sugar.
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  #7   ^
Old Tue, Aug-27-19, 10:22
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Little Me Little Me is offline
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I’m thinking a slice of prosciutto wrapped around that melon could offset the sweetness.
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  #8   ^
Old Tue, Aug-27-19, 13:01
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Bob-a-rama Bob-a-rama is offline
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I think it depends on how far you look back.

Humans have been selectively breeding the sweetest and largest fruit for almost the entire history of agriculture.

"This tree makes the tasting apples in the orchard, so let's plant it's seeds." Repeat again and again, generation after generation.

I understand the original wild apple wasn't much bigger than a crabapple and was quite tart.

Corn used to be much smaller and probably had less fructose.

On the other hand, is the apple sweeter than it was in my mother's day? Probably not. But the apple of a few hundred years ago was probably less sweet. The apple of the cave man/woman era was definitely much less sweet and much smaller.

Sadly it doesn't matter to me, an apple has more than 20 carbs, and that's my limit for the day.

Bob
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  #9   ^
Old Wed, Aug-28-19, 09:01
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GRB5111 GRB5111 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob-a-rama
I think it depends on how far you look back.

Humans have been selectively breeding the sweetest and largest fruit for almost the entire history of agriculture.


This is an important point, as when you are fortunate enough to encounter berries growing in the wild, they are not even close in sweetness to what you can buy in a store. Wild blueberries in Maine and other parts of eastern New England are small, succulent, and very lightly sweet. Agriculture has changed all that and it started many years ago with selective breeding. We don't have store-bought fruits that even come close to a similar species in the wild. So, for a fair comparison, you'd have to go back many years. Not possible today. The danger with these observations refuting higher fructose content is that there are many people who will continue to over-consume fruit because they are continually told to for health improvement. Some people do fine, others, myself included, don't.

And yes, one apple would be my carb meal for the day. Not worth it due to the lack of satiety and essential nutrients.
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  #10   ^
Old Wed, Aug-28-19, 09:54
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Ms Arielle Ms Arielle is online now
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Imho wild blueberries are sweeter than any cultivated variety Ive sampled.

Seems in the process of developing large berries, the sweetness and complex flavor was lost.
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  #11   ^
Old Wed, Aug-28-19, 13:32
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rightnow rightnow is offline
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Quote:
I have yet to see anything in the USDA database that compares the sugar content of a very tart Granny Smith apple to the super sweet Honey Crisp apple, but I can't imagine that the sugar content of the two is the same.

GS does have its own entry in the USDA. Not sure how many others do.



I agree it would be great if the many main types were evaluated -- modern versions we get in the stores, maybe at the length of time they are normally purchased.



By that I mean they are being bred for things like shipping, and are often picked well pre-ripe. Something picked pre-ripe, boxed, shipped or trucked, that you eat some time after its picking, might have some different values than something picked when ideally ripe from the vine and evaluated right then.



I see the gaming of the USDA system already -- such as only providing the 'serving size' for evaluation (as opposed to a larger size they could divide into serving size) and which allows a label to come out saying something like 0 everything -- I have about five spices in my personal spreadsheet with the note "they hide it, USDA says 0 even for cups of it" -- so anything that can be done to game the system, food producers will.


PJ
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  #12   ^
Old Wed, Aug-28-19, 14:04
Ms Arielle's Avatar
Ms Arielle Ms Arielle is online now
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Apples naturally come is a wide varierty of sizes. From tiny crab apple 1/2 inch across to supersized, like Wolf River.

Carbs per 100 grams would be MOST helpful.

IMO ripeness matters.
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