I think a more precise way to say this is:
Due to the water and fiber in fruit, they tend to be more satiating than eating something like a chocolate bar on a calorie normalized basis.
But in the case of fruit w.r.t. gout, the missing variable here is that while fructose increases the production of uric acid, potassium promotes the excretion of uric acid [1], and fruits are generally an excellent source of potassium while soft drinks contain little to none. The net effect of fruit on gout risk seems to be inconclusive [2] but it's clear that fruits are much less concerning than foods with added fructose. Since a significant fraction of Westerners do not consume enough potassium [3], and potassium is key to preventing hypertension and stroke [4,5], it is bad advice to suggest reducing fruit consumption for most people, unless you're already eating like Steve Jobs.
1: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S008525381...
2: https://academic.oup.com/rheumatology/article-abstract/58/7/...
3: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02709...
4: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%252Fs11906-011-019...
5: https://www.thieme-connect.com/products/ejournals/abstract/1...
If you eat apples, you hit limit soon. Apples also do not work all that much if you actually need quick energy when doing something straining. It does not have that "immediately feel better" effect (which motivates you eat more and more).
Specifically glucose, fructose, sucrose, are worth treating differently for the purposes of diet management.
>> That’s a very simplistic way of looking at things which isn’t supported by medical science.
I agree with you on this one but from what I've heard, it is likely that fruit juices and smoothies are not fruits either. If that is correct, the message can get very muddied.
>> Specifically glucose, fructose, sucrose, are worth treating differently for the purposes of diet management.
Now we need to not only treat different sugars differently, we also need to treat the delivery methods differently as well. At some point, the message just becomes too complicated.
Not really. The original comment in this chain talked about processed foods vs unprocessed. Fruit juices are fairly obviously processed so this rule works for them too.
When people talk about sugar like this they are talking about fructose. Bringing glucose into it confuses people since it is scientifically sugar, but not what people mean when they talk about eating sugar, which is just eating sweets, soda, juice, etc.
I believe people are actually usually talking about sucrose, which breaks down into equal parts fructose and glucose v early in digestion.
Glucose is also a monosaccharide.
"sugar" (table sugar, maple syrup, etc) are mainly sucrose, which is one part fructose and one part glucose (joined together, into a disaccharide)
I agree that fructose is the troublesome part of this pair. But when people say "sugar", they aren't referring to fructose, they're referring to sucrose.