Sugarcane also exists and you can chew it.
They just tended to 1) come with fiber, 2) not be as easy to acquire or eat in large quantities 3) not available all year, or all at once
100g of mango has 14g of sugar
100g of watermelon has 6.2g of sugar
100g of navel orange has 12g of sugar
100g of sugar has 100g of sugar, 1 can of Dr Pepper has 40g of sugar
It's both pure sugar AND more sugar. You have to eat more than half a pound of mango to get to the same sugar as a Dr Pepper.
100 g of Dr. Pepper has 11g of sugar
People drink 10 cans of Dr. Pepper.
Point being that sugary drinks/foods didn’t suddenly come to existence.
There are sugary products everywhere because we want them - or you might say we were made to want them. We made it central to our culture in many ways, and accepted terrible dietary habits as the norm. The wide availability of something like Dr Pepper is as much a cause as a reflection of that.
You don't want your blood sugar level to spike, because then your body will create insulin. The insulin's job is to move the sugar out of the blood. It does this by sending the sugar, which is fuel, to the muscles that need it. If there are no muscles needing fuel, it goes to fat cells for storage.
Then after that, sugar levels drop below normal levels. And then you get cravings for a quick snack or sugary drink, and the cycle starts over again.
If you eat your sugar with fibers, like in fruit, you don't get a sugar spike, and you don't get an insuline spike, and a sugar drop.
Also fruit contains a lot more healthy things aside from the sugar. Vitamins, minerals, anti-oxidants.
So yeah, it really is a world of difference whether you drink a cola or eat an apple.