Thinking Out Loud About Fruit and Alcohol

Surely people need to eat more fruit.

Surely.

Maybe.

First a little biology. Sucrose, table sugar, is made up of a combination of glucose and fructose. Fructose is the sugar in fruit. These two carbohydrates are metabolized quite differently by the body. Glucose is turned directly into blood sugar, and its presence in the digestive system causes the body, in a healthy person, to produce insulin. However, fructose is metabolized by the liver and turned directly into fat.

Maybe I am easily amused, but what this means is that someone who thinks they are on a low fat diet, but eats a lot of fruit, is eating a lot more foods that turn to fat than they think. Some vegans eat ten servings of fruit a day. The reason this may work for them is that a high fruit vegan diet metabolically is actually not a low fat diet.

Now this is a beer belly! This phenomenon explains the notorious beer belly. Alcohol is also metabolized by the liver in the same way that fructose is--it is turned into fat. This is why I am suspicious of the claims alcohol is good for you.  Most people who drink, even in moderation, are drinking in addition to their normal daily calories. What this means is that the alcohol they drink is directly changed to fat and is stored in the waistline in men and the posterior in women.

For someone who is balanced metabolically at their individual correct weight, drinking alcohol means that they have substituted alcohol for something else. Which would you rather have, a glass of wine or a serving of fruit?

Hmm, maybe I worded that wrong. Let me try again.

Which food do you think is more healthy, a glass of wine or a grapefruit? A lot of the questions I ask have an obvious answer, at least to me. This is one of those questions.

So should a person drink alcohol or eat fruit since both are turned into fat by the body? The answer is not obvious this time. It depends on the amount of triglycerides in your blood. My triglycerides vary from high to crazy high, thus my reluctance to endorse either alcohol or fruits.

However, since I am losing weight and my body is dumping all kinds of fat into my blood, it is too early for me to say what I will be eating once I lose this last 15 pounds. If my triglycerides are still too high, alcohol and fructose will be something I limit.

Below I have again embedded Dr Lustig's notorious lecture on sugar, "Sugar, the Bitter Truth." While I agree with Lustig philosophically, there is something about his style, his video "bedside manner," that I do not care for. I am trying to read his latest book, but I am having trouble finishing it.

If you want more information on this topic, click here for my last blog post on this lecture.