If you're on a diet, the thing you're told to avoid most is sugar. This unfortunately includes fruit, but if you're trying to lose weight, cutting out fruit because of its high sugar content isn't going to give you nearly the same benefits as cutting out soft drink, and this video by Fig. 1 from the University of California explains why. Apples, though a very sweet treat, contain a whole lot more than just sugar.
As the video explains, the fact that apples and other fruits are also chock-full of fibre, vitamins, minerals, and other important compounds for the body means they offer so much more than a simple sugar hit. Soft drink, on the other hand - and even fruit juice - is mostly just sugar and water. So even if you eat a lot of fruit, it's not going to have the same health effects as eating too many biscuits, or a glass of juice or soft drink.
As Kimber Stanhope, who studies molecular bioscience at the University of California, Davis, says in the video above, there are a number of studies showing that those who eat the most fruit are generally the healthiest, with lowered risks in central obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.
In fact, a study from 2013 that surveyed almost 190,000 Brits over 24 years found that eating fruit lowers the risk of diabetes by up to 28 percent, whereas drinking fruit juice three times a week increases it by 8 percent.
The other thing about fruit is how much you would have to eat to get the same amount of sugar as drinking just one or two cans of soft drink. One apple contains about 15 grams of sugar, but a can of coke has 39 grams. And you're much more likely to fill up on apples than soft drink anyway.
This is because of the large amount of fibre in fruit and vegetables. Fibre is very important for healthy digestion, and can slow the absorption rate of the fruit sugar. Fruit fibre has also been shown to prevent diabetes and weight gain.
So if you have to choose between a piece of fruit and a soft drink to get your 4pm sugar fix, go with the fruit. But be careful - there's a natural food product in high doses that could be even worse than soft drink for sugar consumption, and we're gonna let the Fig. 1 video above explain what.