Fruit Sugar Fear: Facts & Fictions

Sometimes it seems our relationship with sugar resembles a turbulent tango. We pull it close when we want it, in cookies, cakes, and sodas. But even when we pull away, it’s there – in prepared foods, condiments, and crackers. It plays with our brains and makes us want it more. There’s no sugar-coating it – we love it, and we can’t quit it.

Yet we must. Unhealthy amounts of sugar in our diets are adding calories, increasing rates of obesity and its associated diseases, and even adversely affecting those who are not overweight. Our tumultuous affair with sugar is linked to high blood pressure, heart disease, high cholesterol, diabetes, inflammation, and even stroke.

Because of the dangers associated with Americans’ high sugar consumption, moderating sugar intake is a priority. But for some, sugar fear has lead to Atkins-level abstinence, causing some of us to blame all sugars, including fruit sugars. Some dismiss fruit completely because they consider it full of sugar, high in calories, or a danger to blood glucose levels. Some reckless diet peddlers even recommended eliminating fruit altogether as a way to lose weight.

We know getting the recommended amounts of fruits and vegetables is important for proper nutrition and disease prevention. We also know that avoiding fruit sugars is simply wrong-headed.

Putting Fruit Sugar in Perspective 

What are fruit sugars? Fruit sugars are naturally-occurring simple sugars found in many plants. Known by the names fructose, sucrose, and galactose, these natural sugars vary in their amounts from food to food with fruits generally weighing in at around 4-25 grams. Wild blueberries, for example, have 7 grams per 100 gram serving, while a banana contains around 15 (depending on its size). To put this figure in perspective, added sugar in a soda adds up to approximately 60 grams – and that’s without any of the benefits that fruits offer.

Naturally-occurring fruit sugars are part of food’s structural elements. They give fruit and some veggies their sweet taste. When we eat whole fruit, we consume these simple sugars along with a multitude of vitamins, nutrients, minerals, fiber, and valuable phytonutrients. Whole fruits, with their sugars, are the natural delivery system for anthocyanin, a flavonoid with potent antioxidant capacity for powerful health protection potential, including the prevention of heart disease and some cancers, as well as other diseases of aging. For diabetics and those at risk for diabetes, fruit sugars have the advantage. High fiber fruits like berries, for example, decrease the absorption of sugar in the bloodstream, contributing to glycemic control. Simply put, fruit sugars are perfectly healthy – they are no less beneficial than those in any vegetable or carb, and should not be singled out when it comes to health. They provide us with good energy that satisfies our stomachs, hydrates us, keeps us moving, and quiets the daily ravages of cellular inflammation our bodies experience. And, they do so in a low-calorie, delicious package.

At a time when we are encouraged to decrease our intake of empty calories in favor of nutrient-rich ones, fruit sugars are a gift from nature, wrapped in a velvet ribbon. The best part may be that they are available to us both fresh and in their nutritional equal, frozen. That’s right – fruit sugars literally grow on trees (and bushes).

Wild Blues Have A Sweet Advantage

Cutting calories without sacrificing nutrition is a wise weight-loss strategy, and seeking out fruits that deliver the best nutrition and taste is sound nutritional advice. While embracing a variety of fruits is good nutritional practice, some fruits get the nod when it comes to big benefits. Wild blueberries, like all whole fruit, are naturally low in fat, high in fiber, and have no added sugar, sodium, or refined starches. But with more total antioxidant capacity than 20 other common fruits, they lead the pack in antioxidant capacity, thanks to their high anthocyanin content. They are also rich in manganese, which is important for bone development. And, when it comes to low-calorie nutrition, wild blueberries excel. They have just 45 calories per 100 grams (71 calories in a cup), and deliver nutrients and antioxidants in every one. Watching your sugar intake? There’s no better way to moderate than to eat naturally-occurring fruit sugars via this powerful blue package of nutrients.

In addition to their intense nutrition, wild blueberries can help equip us to prevent diabetes. In fact, a number of researchers have reported on the anti-diabetic effects of blueberry-supplemented diets. Wild blueberries are also a low GI food (they score a low 53, and they have a low glycemic load to boot). Understanding the glycemic values of food, especially for people with diabetes, make it easier to plan meals and pay attention to weight loss and appetite control.

The Bottom Line 

Concerns about sugar consumption in our diets are warranted, but turning our back on whole fruit would be a nutritional calamity. Fruit packs an intense nutritional punch that provides us with valuable disease prevention properties, weight control benefits, and helps stabilize blood sugar and glucose levels. Naturally-occurring fruit sugars are nature’s way of delivering the goods in a perfect nutritional package.

In an effort to moderate our sugar intake, we should start with avoiding additives by reading juice labels and choosing fruits packed in water. We should shop for whole fruit in the produce section or in the frozen food section, and seek out labels with as few ingredients as possible – ideally, just one. Then, we should monitor sugar creep in cereal, sodas, processed foods and desserts. Finally, we should eat 3 cups of vegetables along with the recommended 2 cups of fruit, and choose them in a variety of deep, rich colors. Then, we’ll be saying hooray for fruit without reservations for all it does to support our health, our waistlines, and our taste buds the way no other food on earth can.

Learn more about eating sugar in moderation. SweetSurprise.com is a trusted source for accurate information on the subject of high fructose corn syrup and how to moderate your sugar intake.

Diabetes, Wild & “The Newsroom”

Why This Story Won’t Be On HBO’s New Series 

 

A scene from a recent episode of Aaron Sorkin’s HBO series The Newsroom takes place in May of 2011. In it, a reporter implores her producer to open the show with news of the debate in Congress about lifting the debt ceiling. It’s the most important story of the day, the week, and the month, she says, and it’s critical the public knows about it. But it’s a crusade with no traction: a provocative tabloid story is consuming the news, and that will lead instead.

The story about the effect of wild berries on a major health epidemic has some similarities to this recent The Newsroom storyline.  Here’s why.

Our Diets are Putting Us at Risk

Unlike some health stories, news about the diabetes epidemic has grabbed headlines. It was recently reported that 1 in 4 children, according to a study from Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, either have or are at risk of type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is being diagnosed in children and teenagers at a once-unthinkable rate, and its growth parallels America’s growing obesity statistics.

“If someone is obese, their risk of developing diabetes is twenty- to fortyfold higher,” Dan Nadeau, Medical Director of the Diabetes and Endocrinology Associates of Maine’s York Hospital told Wild About Health last month. Diabetes is not just a disease that exists in a vacuum: having diabetes means you are at increased risk of Alzheimer’s, cancer, heart and vascular disease, inflammation, accelerated aging many other complications, Nadeau said. A diagnosis of type 2 diabetes can be a death sentence or a wake-up call.

Type 2 is the most common form of diabetes in America today, and while millions of Americans have been diagnosed, many more are unaware they are at high risk. The New York Times recently reported that a dangerous form of type 2 diabetes also develops in people who aren’t overweight. One thing remains clear: diabetes is linked to our diets and it is a lifestyle disease that is, in most cases, entirely preventable.

But the lead is buried in the story. Understanding the impact of completely accessible, wild-grown foods and incorporating them into our diets can transform the lives of those diagnosed and those at risk. The fact is, help for these dire health issues is available—right now, growing in late summer in Maine and parts of Canada—and it’s being made available to us all year round. The effect of berries grown wild under circumstances that make them uniquely powerful against disease and the effect of those berries on the health of millions is front page news – today, this week, and this month.

At least, it should be.

Wild Foods: A Message of Health

We are fortunate to be able to take advantage of real food that is grown naturally in the wild. In areas that are challenged with availability, government, private, and local initiatives continue to make it more available and more affordable. But why differentiate between wild and non-wild foods when it comes to health and disease prevention? We must. While some of us are getting the message about wild-grown foods, others have yet to understand the implications.

First, it is important to know that wild foods occur naturally in their own indigenous environment. They are not planted or cultivated from seeds. Cultivated foods can be healthy, but they are created with human interference, and too often lack the natural nutrients and minerals that today we so desperately need returned to our diets. (Look no further than seedless grapes and iceberg lettuce for examples of human interference that drastically reduces nutrient content.)  With wild, these nutrients are provided, naturally, in their most intense, unadulterated form.

Another important characteristic of wild foods is that they are strong, having adapted to their environment. In fact, the harsher the environment, the more potent the protection they have. Wild blueberries, for example, are grown in rugged terrain in temperature extremes under intense sun exposure, and they have developed natural protection against those extremes. Phytochemicals found in their skins provide antioxidant protection against these stressors. Ready for another headline? When you eat these foods, you get the same antioxidant protection for yourself. And that’s the natural, wild benefit that is right under our nose. Just think what a story like that could become in the hands of Aaron Sorkin.

Find out more about why wild plants can protect you from cancer. 

A Catalyst for Dietary Change

While our diabetes risk can be prevented by our lifestyle choices, some diagnosed cases can even be reversed. Exercise is important, but what you eat has the biggest impact when it comes to weight loss and blood sugar levels. A recent study from the Harvard School of Public Health showed that consumption of anthocyanin-rich fruits can reduce diabetes risk. More than two servings per week has lowered risk compared with those who ate less than on serving per month. Wild blueberries top the list of berries that are high in anthocyanins. These high levels of anthocyanins are concentrated in the deep blue skin of berries like wild blues. They work to decrease the inflammation in the body that accompanies disease and provide us with protection.

Eating potent wild berries is not the only step in a program of prevention, but it is an important one – and it’s one that works. Nadeau cites wild blueberries as the catalyst for making major changes for his patients. This anthocyanin-rich, low GI-food doesn’t spike blood sugar and is packed with fiber. It can also be eaten in robust amounts in things like super-potent smoothies which provide a concrete, good-tasting recommendation that can prompt dietary change.

Researchers have also found that the bioactives in blueberries increase insulin sensitivity, a key factor in prevention. And while this news is exciting, it complements a long list of researchers that have reported on the anti-diabetic effects of blueberry-supplemented diets. Such broad but vigorous research can take time; the bottom line of knowledge can be cumulative. And, while evidence reinforcing the diabetes-wild berry connection continues to grow, there are things we don’t yet understand. The blueberry’s antioxidant effect, their synergy with other foods, and the specific compounds that act on our bodies to prevent disease are things scientists have yet to pinpoint.

Such a story – an accessible way to stop a major health issue – can be easily overshadowed by sexier, quicker, one-stop-shop health breakthroughs. But its impact is huge, and its message worth sending, no matter if it’s in the top block on Atlantis Cable News or buried somewhere on Page 9.

The Bottom Line

The wild blueberry is central in the discussion of how what we eat affects the most important health concerns of our time: cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and obesity. The research into berries and diabetes prevention is fascinating, but it can be hard to distill it into a single sound bite. The enigmatic details of this powerful connection is one reason it can only be found in nature—fresh, during the season, or frozen, preserving all the nutrition of fresh. As popular as they are, in some ways wild blueberries are still waiting for their close up.

Resources for Diabetes Prevention

Centers for Disease Control & Prevention – Topics, trends, and prevention program information.

American Diabetes Association – Advocacy, community, news, and research.

Mayo Clinic – Reliable source for symptoms, causes, and risk factors.

Warning Signs of Type 2 Diabetes – Identifying signs of a disease that is often hard to recognize.

Studies about Blueberries and Diabetes:

Berry Good News: Blueberries May Cut Diabetes Risk

Anthocyanin Intake Decreases Type 2 Diabetes Risk

Wild Blueberries-Diabetes Health Research

Learn more about GI and Diabetes

From Stress to Bliss

An Interview with The Slim, Calm, Sexy Diet Author Keri Glassman – & New Video!

Keri Glassman says she was born to do exactly what she is doing today. Even in seventh grade, the author and founder of Nutritious Life™ had nutrition on her mind. “My childhood friend tells me she remembers me being in science class and saying, ‘My body is craving vitamin E, I am going to eat almonds!’” recalls Glassman. “Barf! Was I that dorky?” It was a youthful dorkiness that turned into a life passion – not for dieting, but for being good to her body. And it led her down a path of helping others do the same.

Today, in her private practice in New York City, she works with five other Registered Dietitians to preach the Nutritious Life™ mantra, an approach to diet and wellness that considers the whole body. She is also a recognizable face on TV, a contributing editor for Women’s Health magazine, and the author of three books. The latest is The Slim Calm Sexy Diet (Rodale 2012) a whole body diet strategy with a three-prong focus – losing weight, feeling good, and conquering stress, a feat that in Glassman’s hands seems remarkably achievable.

A New Role for Weight Loss

One of the messages of The Slim Calm Sexy Diet is that weight loss doesn’t have to be a diet’s central focus. Instead, it is a “side effect” of other good choices such as reduced stress, balanced hormones, and increased activity. It’s a message Glassman says people are just beginning to receive. “Most people focus on diet, diet, and diet to lose unwanted pounds. And, sometimes, diet and exercise,” she says. “But, often they don’t put enough emphasis on the importance of sleep, managing stress, or simply being properly hydrated.”

For example, Glassman says the most common reason people are sluggish in the afternoon is due to dehydration, and she recommends starting each day with a drink of water with lemon. She is strong in her conviction that simple changes in things like water intake and sleep habits can make a significant difference in our health. “When you sleep well, your hormones are in a better place to help you lose weight,” she says. “The same goes for when you manage stress. By focusing on these other life factors, a person begins to feel a whole lot better and lose weight.”

Author Keri Glassman

“I Can Eat Blueberries!”

While fruits and veggies are crucial to living the slim, calm, sexy life, limitations are not. In a recent Nutritious Life newsletter, Glassman writes that her number one chill-out indulgence is a margarita with guacamole and chips. It may not sound like the musings of the author of a popular diet book, but it fits perfectly with Glassman’s philosophy of what she calls “eating empowered, not deprived”. She strives for stress-free living, including plenty of time for pampering (treats provide emotional and physical benefits) and for eating things she loves. Recipes like Raspberry Ricotta French Toast, which shows up in The Slim Calm Sexy Diet, sound indulgent, and they are. But as with all the recipes in the book, the ingredients are nutrient dense, so they are also flavorful, satisfying, and functional. The French Toast is made with multigrain bread, chopped pecans, honey, eggs, and cinnamon – all foods that provide body benefits.

An important principle of eating to be slim, calm, and sexy is changing our relationship with food: ending the on-and-off dieting and making eating a conscious, harmonious, enjoyable experience. Glassman knows first-hand about the starving/overeating roller coaster. Her struggle was with just 15 pounds, but it was enough to blow up into a war. “It made me mental,” she says. But gaining control of yo-yo dieting created a calm that in turn empowered her to remain in control of all her eating. Her own epiphany was a moment in which her negative mantra of “I can’t eat the cake,” turned into the more affirming, “I can eat blueberries!” and her quest to eat plenty of delicious, indulgent foods while maintaining health turned into a mission.

One of the ideas that threads through The Slim Calm Sexy Diet is that being hungry only contributes daily stress, which increases stress hormones responsible for weight gain, heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, among other health problems. The book includes healthy tips, weekly workout plans and easy-to-prepare recipes that use nutrient-dense foods that help steer the reader toward mind and body bliss and keep us calm, slim, and inspired to turn on the sexy. Calm foods include berries, for example, because they are rich in vitamin C and combat stress by lowering blood pressure levels and cortisol levels. Slim foods include those that deliver fiber for few calories, such as artichokes, or that increase “burn” like chilis, and sexy foods include those that increase fertility (peaches) and boost libido (watermelon).

Accessible Science 

Glassman, a certified nutritionist, has always supported her diet recommendations with solid scientific evidence. “When you understand the science behind why blueberries are good for your heart health, your mind, and your skin, you are more motivated to want to eat blueberries and guess what? Weight loss also follows,” she says. The O2 Diet, (Rodale Books 2010) her previous book, an antioxidant-based diet that turns research into something accessible and easy to implement.

The O2 program acknowledges the importance of antioxidants in health and disease prevention. Because antioxidants protect against free radicals, they are crucial in preventing forms of cancer, heart disease, and symptoms of aging. Glassman uses the ORAC (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity) scale for the basis of the program. ORAC is the measurement of antioxidant protection provided by foods, and it’s an important measurement to keep in mind when it comes to making healthy food decisions. It’s also one that can sometimes elude consumers as they shop for foods at the grocery store. Glassman says the easiest way to start increasing the ORAC scores of the foods in our diet is to start with some simple changes. First, she advises ramping up veggie and fruit intake, focusing on healthy fats, and switching to only whole grains. Next, she advises focusing on the darkest, most colorful veggies and fruits. With these small steps, she says, we’ll automatically be getting more antioxidants, and our ORAC quotient will climb.

Keri on Access Hollywood: Indulge in sweets to slim this summer!

Slim, Calm, Sexy Wild Blueberries

Wild blueberries not only serve as an excellent “calm” food due to their influence on the brain, they are an indispensible part of Glassman’s vision of the balanced life. (See the video of Keri Glassman discussing Slim Calm Sexy with a Fox News affiliate in Michigan.) Wild blueberries provide the high antioxidant content that is the key to health and disease prevention, and Glassman also likes them because they are loaded with fiber, which aids digestive health and keeps us full. “And of course, because they just taste so good!” she says. Her favorite combination is wild blueberries in a kale salad with pine nuts or mixed into a side dish of quinoa, which offers powerful flavor, satisfaction, and nutrition.

As part of a diet plan for achieving slim, calm, sexiness, wild blueberries figure prominently in Glassman’s recommended three meals and two snacks per day. For breakfast she recommends wild blueberries combined with protein-rich cottage cheese. She also recommends revisiting wild blues in the afternoon as a wonderful way to indulge mid-day. There’s no need to limit yourself to just a sprinkle – instead, she recommends eating blues by the spoonful, layered between yogurt in a parfait dish and topped with a bit of chocolate.

If being slimmer, calmer, and sexier sounds like a recipe for a great summer, Glassman offers the incentive of losing up to 20 pounds on her diet the first six weeks. But the promise of a new relationship with food extends to all seasons. After understanding how food can put your life in blissful balance, you may never find that twenty pounds again. Instead, you can look forward to a sexier, calmer, if smaller, you.

You can learn about Keri Glassman’s book, or find out more about her philosophy of healthy eating and living at NutritiousLife.com

Find out More about The Slim Calm Sexy Diet at Women’s Health Magazine.

Why Adversity Leads to Success

A Unique Nutritional Concept Can Improve Health – Will We Listen? 

It’s been the principle of sticktoitveness since Henry Ford created his first car (and his first flop): the difficult road to success – in business, in the arts, in athletics – ends in gold. The bigger the hardship, the more intense the success. In other words, in most walks of life, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Can something that applies to football players and CEOs alike also apply to the world of nutrition? The latest research says yes, and it brings to light an exciting new concept in health and disease prevention.

The more we study the nutritional components of food, the more we understand why certain foods are good for us. Some antioxidant-rich foods can preserve healthy organ functioning, prevent disease of aging, and even reverse age-related illness – powerful stuff for something readily available. Part of the reason relies on the principle of adversity – that their challenges have made them stronger and healthier. If we seek out foods that have endured struggles to survive in a difficult environment, we’re taking in powerful nutrition that in turn makes US stronger.

Stressed to Be The Be the Best

Member of The Bar Harbor Group Don Ingram, Ph.D. of the Nutritional Neuroscience and Aging Laboratory and the Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University, recently provided a case in point in an interview on the podcast To Your Good Health with Dr. David Friedman. Dr. Ingram explained why the huge nutritional capacity of certain foods like wild blueberries is the result of their tough nature.

Components in foods like wild blueberries act to protect the fruit against stressful events, said Ingram. Because the berries are grown naturally in demanding geographical areas in Maine and parts of Canada, they endure cold, harsh winters, temperature shifts and intense sun (for which they have developed their own UV protection in their deeply colored skin). They grow in rugged terrain and challenging soil, and they grow close to the ground where they are susceptible to insects, fungi and other pests. Wild blueberries are the product of a dangerous world, and they have evolved to thrive in the face of the harshest stressors. That’s exactly what makes them incredibly beneficial to us.

Why Some Foods are “Lazy” 

Because wild blueberries have grown to withstand these environmental stressors, they have naturally evolved to have powerful defenses. When we put these foods in our bodies, we are getting the benefits of those defenses. According to Dr. Ingram, foods that are grown mainly as cultivated fruits such as the cultivated blueberry, or oranges, for instance, while still good for us, could be argued to be a bit “lazy” Dr. Ingram explains. These fruits have lost their protective abilities because through cultivation they have not needed to be tough – instead, we provide them with protection. As a result, truly powerful compounds, he surmises, have dropped from their nutritional profile.

Wild blueberries act on inflammation in the body, and inflammation is at the root of aging and many challenging diseases. Diets with blueberries, studies consistently show, calm destructive oxidative stress and reduce the inflammation in the cells of the brain, the heart, and other organs. That’s why in lab tests, wild blueberries are found to be advantageous for health in important ways such as fighting cancer, diabetes, heart disease, memory loss and Alzheimer’s, and other aging-related illnesses.

Food Adversity Principle = Improved Health for Us 

The equation is groundbreaking. But why don’t we treat this phenomenon as the breakthrough it is? While the benefits of consuming foods high in nutrition is generally accepted, we’ve grown used to the evidence – both anecdotal and scientific –  in support of healthy food. The advice can ring hollow because it seems so similar to a grandmother urging us to eat our vegetables and clear our plate. According to Dr. Ingram, food just doesn’t prompt the same level of excitement that cure-all medications and new scientific breakthroughs do. But it should.

The Whole Food Research Challenge

“This is a whole area of research that we need to be involved in,” Dr. Ingram told David Friedman of whole food research. “Funding agencies are remiss in funding this kind of research because it just doesn’t seem that sexy.” As a result, he said, we have yet to confirm many of the promising animal studies that would enable us to say definitively that wild blueberries, for example, can provide major benefits for the most pressing health hurdles for our culture.

The results of those studies could affect how we treat diseases related to oxidative stress as well as important areas such as insulin resistance, cognitive deficits, and overweight kids. Said Ingram, “Support for research that shows in a well-controlled trial that these types of foods like berries, particularly blueberries, can have these types of effects would go a long way to convincing the public that they should be eating these types of foods.”

Until we can figure out how to put the sexy into nutritional research, knowing that common Clark Kent foods can be the Supermen of health should be reason enough to make eating them every day a priority. Start applying the principle that what doesn’t kill you can make you stronger when it comes to the foods on your own plate. The street smarts inherent in your food has an excellent chance of translating into your good health.

Listen to the interview with Dr. Don Ingram on the To Your Good Health with Dr. David Friedman podcast.