Research: Dietary Sugar from Fruit Enhances Mineral Balance

An interesting study (abstract Iinked) that compares the effect of dietary starch and fructose on mineral balance in humans.

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/49/6/1290.abstract

I will quote the words of Josh Lamaro, Paleo Osteo  from a Facebook post of his on this this study:

“Did you know the ingestion of fructose can help the body retain magnesium, copper, calcium and other minerals? Glucose alone did not have this effect.
This is one of many reasons why carbohydrates that contain fructose (sugars, fruits, juice, honey, fruit vegetables) are superior to carbohydrates that contain only glucose (starchy grains.)
The war on sugar needs careful contextualisation.”

Definitely some food for thought 🙂

And lends weight to the idea of eating a diet similar to that of our hunter gatherer ancestors – from whom we inherited the bodies in which we habitate. Sugars from fruits are safer than those from starchy grains. Makes sense…

Whilst fructose, is also in table sugar, agave syrup, molasses, fruit juice and honey, stepping back 40,000 years or so, most of these were not available, so we can use this study to compare the sugar we were ‘built’ to eat from fruit, to that we a majority of now from starch. As such, from the evolutionary perspective, it is no surprise that fructose sugars enhance mineral balances whereas sugars from starch (gains etc.) do not.