I saw my friend eating a banana, and he said “I’m trying to eat more fruits instead of junk like bread and crackers”, and my other friend said “that doesn’t matter. Carbs are carbs.”
Now at face value, it seems a bit silly: we are all brought up to believe that fruits have other nutrients that are beneficial to us. But in the end, are the carbs in both sources the same? Similarly, can one say that the sugars one obtains in a fruit are the same as those obtained in a candy bar?
My intuitive understanding is, while “sugar” is in fact just sugar (irrespective of the source), the reason we consider fruits or vegetables important is because of the other nutrients and vitamins they contain, giving them an overall better nutritional profile than their processed counterparts. In addition, I think that the chemical modifications that manufacturers make to their goods are considered unhealthy. But In the end, is it fair to say that a “carb is just a carb”? Or sugar a sugar?
In: Biology
There are complex and simple sugars. Things like candy bars and sodas have simple sugars, which don’t require as much time to be broken down and can be used very quickly to create energy . This is what people call a sugar high. The sugar crash happens when we quickly exhaust the sugar and are left with low energy.
Complex sugars require time to be broken down, so they are absorbed and converted into energy much slower. This means that they provide sustained energy over a longer period of time.
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