Eli5: Whats the difference between “processed sugar” and sugar found in fruit, bread and milk etc? arent processed sugar the same sugar molecules as those?

Question

And more specifically, what is it that makes processed sugar worse than consuming sugar from those products, is it blood sugar spike or something?

In: 311

Answer 1

Health-wise, processed sugars and natural sugars are almost identical. Processed sugars may be slightly purer and thus absorb into the bloodstream faster, but the difference is pretty negligible. The difference between processed and natural sugars is largely a marketing tool, to convince consumers that buying foods with “no added sugar” is healthy, even when they may still contain plenty of sugar in the form of fruit products.

Even starches, which are chains of simple sugars bonded together, and which we used to think took longer to break down and absorb, are metabolized pretty much just as quickly. A jolly rancher, a glass of grape juice, a slice of white bread, they all just turn into glucose in our bloodstream almost immediately after we eat them.

What really matters is how much sugar you’re consuming at once. Processed sugars allow us to create foods with much higher sugar content than anything in nature, like candy bars and ice cream sandwiches. A fast spike in blood sugar puts strain on your pancreas, which produces insulin to regulate the flow of sugar in and out of your cells, and doing this too often or too extremely can lead to diabetes. Also, natural sugars typically come packaged with other important nutrients such as fiber, so to say that they’re generally healthier is somewhat true. A fruit smoothie with no added sugar might be just as sugary as one with added sugar, but it might have more other nutrients if they had to use more fruit to get that same sugar content. (That’s not always the case though.)