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Soda contains primarily fructose as a sugar, either because they put the fructose in when they made it or because the sucrose is broken down into fructose + glucose by the acid in the soda. It is not the type of sugar that makes fruit healthier than soda. Rather, it’s the other stuff in fruit. When it comes to glycemic index (how quickly the food raises your blood sugar) fiber is the hero, because it slows the absorption of the sugar by your gut, which means fruit doesn’t spike your blood sugar nearly as quickly as sugared soda. Fruit juice (which is basically fruit minus fiber) has a shockingly similar glycemic index to Coca-Cola.

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Skullgrid@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
you did a great job explaining and helping get my point across.

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TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
There’s a difference between the fructose in fruit and stuff like high fructose corn syrup. Fructose is healthy in certain doses, like when eating fruit. When eating more than the amount found naturally in fruit it becomes unhealthy.

When you make fruit juice, you don’t juice one piece of fruit but a number of them. This way the sugar concentration becomes higher, which can be of the level of coca cola of you use enough fruit.

But in soda usually HFCS is used and sometimes sucrose. But HFCS is also a mixture of fructose and sucrose.

There’s a difference between eating 4 apples and drinking juice/soda with sugar content similar to 20 apples, but refined sugars instead.

Also the sugar molecules found in fruit are not the same as the ones in corn or pure refined fructose. One is better than the other.

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- ebolapie@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  What is the difference between fructose in fructose in an orange and the fructose in HFCS? Like if I presented you with two molecules of fructose, how would you tell which came from an orange and which came from coke? It seems to me like you are repeating my point back to me, which is that it is the vehicle through which the fructose is introduced to the body that makes a difference, rather than one sugar being fundamentally different from the other.
  
  Why would the concentration increase if I juice two apples instead of one? The quantity of juice produced would surely increase, but why would the concentration without further processing?
  
  Sucrose is unstable in the environment of a soda can. It breaks down into fructose and glucose. Depending on the amount of time the soda has been canned it might contain zero sucrose.
  
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  - TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Back in school in chemistry they covered sugars. The fructose in fruit and HFCS are different molecules. HFCS is a mixture of refined fructose (different from natural fructose in fruit molecular wise) and sucrose. Just because they’re both called fructose doesn’t mean the molecules are the same. Just like alcohol. There are many different types of alcohol, like ethanol and spiritus. Both of which can’t be consumed safely and are different to the alcohol we do consume.
    
    Here’s a Wikipedia page on fructose. As you can see there isn’t just one type of molecule.
    
    Here’s a page on HFCS
    
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