Different types of sugars and diabetes

Krishna: The chemical makeup of cane sugar, or sucrose, and fruit sugar, or fructose, varies. Fruits naturally contain fructose, but sucrose—which is commonly made from sugar cane—is a mixture of glucose and fructose.

Image source: ACS

Fructose, or “fruit sugar”, is one of the three most common natural monosaccharides. (The other two are glucose and galactose.) As its name implies, fructose is found in almost all fruits; but it also exists in commercial quantities in sugarcane, sugarbeets, and corn. Fructose and glucose combine to form the disaccharide sucrose, which we know as common sugar (1).

The structure of fructose, like all simple sugars, can be expressed as a six-carbon linear chain with hydroxyl and carbonyl groups.

Fructose is the most water-soluble monosaccharide.

The sugars from whole fruits are digesting and absorbing into the bloodstream at a slower pace than added sugars. Whole fruits also contain valuable nutrients such as fiber, vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients that refined sugars do not.

No, sugars are sugars. So diabetic patients should not consume fruit sugars in large amounts.

Consumption of excessive quantities of foods that contain fructose and other sugars is a well-known cause of type 2 diabetes, elevated levels of LDL (“bad”) cholesterol and triglycerides, and of course, obesity. But fructose may be slightly safer than the others, especially for diabetics, because it has a lower glycemic index than sucrose and is considerably sweeter (1).

The answer to your Q whether diabetics can eat five types of fruit on empty stomach to reverse their condition is still ‘NO’.

Having said that I also want to add the information that not all fruits are equal. There are some fruits which contain high amounts of sugars like mangoes, grapes, bananas, and dates and there are certain fruits that contain low amounts of it like strawberries, oranges, pineapples, dragon fruit, and papaya. So you can eat more of low sugar containing fruits “but only in moderate amounts”.

You cannot eat five types of high sugar containing fruits on an empty stomach. Instead of reversing your condition, this will take your sugar levels to peaks!

Footnotes:

1. Fructose - American Chemical Society