Also open to the possibility that it truly is poison. But gut says this food, available for millennia and so attractive in both taste, color and smell to mammals, is unlikely to be poisonous except in chronic large doses or distorted, processed form.
Discussion
"available for millennia and so attractive in both taste, color and smell"
Except modern fruit are the result of domestication and wild fruit would not have been available regardless of season
Having a tiny amount of berries twice a year doesn't at all establish that you can eat half a pound of much sweeter modern fruit every day
For the ~2M years we came into form, glacial periods lasted longer than interglacial, so fructose was pretty rare. Modern people who visit the jungle think that fruit is everywhere, it isn’t. The fruit that is there is usually from a human who more recently cultivated it there. 100k+ years ago, no fruit tree farms, certainly not in Eurasia until very very recently.
I think the berries they’d stuff their faces with maybe once a year probably did do some damage to their livers, but 1. The liver is extremely resilient and regenerative and 2. Minor liver damage would basically never be a cause of death and wouldn’t play even a marginal role in evolutionary fitness.
If you’re otherwise metabolically healthy, exercise ideally daily, and have good body composition, you’re probably fine with say *tens* of grams of fructose a day. But I don’t see any scenario where *hundreds* of grams daily doesn’t cause meaningful damage, no matter the source or additional fruit molecules.
Relevant
I have seen all that and also the argument that we don’t feel bad from spiking blood sugar because we evolved in an environment where that wasn’t a thing. And yet I am still skeptical that my liver is being poisoned despite zero symptoms of such. Smacks of “cholesterol, the silent killer!” Or you could spread covid and kill grandma even if you have no symptoms.
How much do you want to go with “science says” and how much with “my body feels?” The latter is a MUCH better heuristic IMO.
Finally the body adapts. If you eat eggs, you get cholesterol, if you don’t the body will make it. If you don’t eat sugar you will make more cortisol. My blood sugar was higher after a month of zero carb.
I really feel similarly about sugar myself. I enjoy it sparingly, usually alongside a lot of fat, like a bagel with tons of cream cheese, or full fat organic ice cream. Or maybe a little simple chocolate syrup in whole milk. The sugar crash if I have, say, a donut for breakfast, is miserable for me.
So I agree that heuristic is useful
If you’re disciplined and in excellent shape, it’s fine, as per meme. Most people are fatty-boom-batty sugar addicts with no self control or ability to reason for themselves. So from a messaging standpoint, when they hear “some sugar is okay” they take that as they now have carte blanche to stuff their face hole with garbage, all day every day.
🤝🤝🤝
Yes 100%. If you are not 100% happy with your weight or body composition, sugar is probably the #1 thing after seed oils and alcohol that you should avoid like hell.
You might be right, but I despise “messaging”. Just say what’s true and if idiots misuse it, they misuse it. I don’t want doctors and nutritionists bullshitting me for “messaging” purposes. It’s the reason why you have to trust your own reactions to foods — you feel like shit if you eat a whole pack of Haribo, feel fine, refreshed even, eating a large wedge of watermelon.
Eat a whole head of raw broccoli — feel like shit. Eat a 16-ounce steak when you’re hungry, feel great.
The entire “health” industry is just a bunch of messaging for the lowest common denominator.
Good points. Also, while there are certainly common themes for all humans, there’s plenty of variability across individuals that can confuse the matter of what one *should* and *shouldn’t* eat