Fructose – Happy Guide

Rhona asks…

“I keep hearing lately that fructose is harmful and should be avoided. Does that mean that fruit is bad for you!!?”

There’s no need to worry about fruit at all.

The problem is fructose in unnatural form, such as in coke. A 16 fl oz bottle of coke has roughly the same amount of fructose (29 g) as all my meals and snacks with a lot of fruit and veg.

The problem is that overweight people tend to have full glycogen stores and the liver’s primary way of disposing of fructose is to convert it to glycogen. So when fructose is ingested from coke (for example), you have a quadruple whammy — no primary disposal path, no fiber to slow down digestion, unnatural amounts in one go and no natural packaging that provides other vitamins/minerals. Continue reading “Is fructose bad for you?” →

Louise asks…

“In Happy Guide, you suggest a piece of fruit before lunch and dinner. Is it important to have it before, rather than after? Personally I would prefer it after but I won’t if there’s a reason. Many thanks!”

Well, fruit eaten on its own will exit the stomach in about 30 minutes or so, so that’s how long it would naturally be there. When you eat fruit after a meal, it’s held back because meat for example, may be in the stomach for hours.

Eating fruit after a meal will definitely produce a less dramatic insulin response and some people argue this is good.

I don’t hold this view though… insulin gets sugar out of the blood and into cells, it’s a perfectly natural process. What is problematic is metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance, and over-production of insulin as a result…

This is something I want to do in-depth study of in future, but I may not get much further, because there’s just no science on it. There’s only one study of “food combining” and that was just about whether it improved weight loss. Continue reading “Is it better to eat fruit before or after a meal?” →