Top 10 Fruits You Should Be EATING If You Are Diabetic

Hello Health Champions. Today we're going to talk about the best fruit to eat if you're a diabetic. Did you know that over 37 million people in the United States are diabetics today? And that represents 11% of the population. Worldwide, there's over half a billion people with diabetes today. And even though 11% is the highest percentage of any country, the greatest increases are now seen in India and China. And they're very quickly catching up with that percentage. In addition to that, there are 290 million people who have some degree of insulin resistance. That's the vast majority, or 88% of the population. So even if you don't have diabetes, it's a very good chance that this still concerns you. Very often, we hear fruits and vegetables mentioned in the same sentence. As in, you should eat more fruits and vegetables as if they were the same thing. And we need to understand how they are different. And the absolute best fruits to eat would be called avocado. Now most people think of that as a vegetable because it doesn't taste sweet, but technically it is a fruit. And it has a very low glycemic index. And we'll talk more about that, but that just means how quickly something that you eat raises your blood sugar. It also has a very, very low amount of net carbs. So net carbs are the amount of carbs that you can absorb to become blood sugar. The next best would be olives. And again, people don't really think of that as a fruit, but it happens to be. Same glycemic index and three grams of net carbs. And the next fruit is called tomato, also 15 and three. So these three would be the absolute best fruits to eat, but they don't really fit the criteria for fruit in most people's mind because when people think of fruit, they're looking for that sweet taste. They're talking about nature's candy. They're looking for a sweet treat, but they don't want to eat something artificial or laden with added sugar. So we're going to talk about some of those sweet fruits also, but first we need to understand a few things and dispel a few myths because otherwise it doesn't make sense to talk about them. Most of the time we hear about something called glycemic index in terms of carbohydrates and fruit. And when they measure that, they give people a certain amount of food enough to contain 50 grams of net carbs. So 50 grams of carbohydrates that can be absorbed into the bloodstream. So fiber is subtracted because fiber does not get into the bloodstream. And then they compare that food to glucose, which is given the number 100 as a reference or index. And then they create a scale where low glycemic index is anything less than 55 compared to glucose at 100. Medium would be 55 to 70 and high glycemic index would be anything over 70. But there's a few problems that we need to understand. The first problem is if we look at something like bread, it has 50% of the weight being net carbs. So if you eat 100 grams of bread, which is basically two large slices of toast, you're going to get 50 grams of carbs. That's pretty typical. Some would could do that in a sitting. And bread being basically pure starch has a very high glycemic index of 75. But if we compare that to something like avocado, avocado has two grams of net carbs. So how do you eat 50 grams of net carbs from avocado? You basically have to eat 2,500 grams or five pounds of avocado to do that, which is way over a dozen ofocados. So I don't know exactly how they come about with the number 15, which often is the sign. I don't think that they feed people 5 pounds of avocado. So they probably have some other measurement, which means that they're not really consistent in measuring this. But what it also means is that virtually all the foods that you ever see on a list of glycemic indices are going to be starch and sweet fruits. And then they tell you to select foods with a low glycemic index. And now you think that you're limited to the foods that are on the list of glycemic index, but all the good foods don't really make it on there. But let's talk about a food that often makes it onto the list. And that's dates. And even though this is pure sugar, medical news today says that according to various research, the typical glycemic index turns up at 42, which classifies it as low glycemic index food and therefore safe and suitable for diabetics. So if you watch some of my videos and you understand what sugar is, that's totally absurd notion. And that has a lot to do with problem number two. So when we look at these numbers, these ranges of low under 55 high over 70, that is all relative to something. What are they comparing it to? And it's all based on the belief that we should eat three to four hundred grams of carbohydrates per day, mostly from starches because that's the primary way that you can get up to those numbers. So the ranges, the numbers of glycemic index are going to be based on foods that are basically pure starch. And some of these numbers might work for people if you are relatively young, if you're very metabolically healthy or insulin sensitive and you're quite active. But we just realized that 88% of the population has some degree of metabolic impairment, some degree of insulin resistance. And then these numbers don't apply at all. So instead, if you have some metabolic impairment, if you have some weight to lose, if you have some blood sugars that you like to drop, I would suggest the following ranges that low would be things under 20. And medium would be 20 to 40, and high would be over 40. So I'm not claiming that these are any exact numbers. I just want to get you into the idea that if you're trying to change something about your metabolic health, then you want to adopt a completely different range than the ones they usually tell you. So in that note, we need to realize that metabolic health and insulin resistance is a continuum. It's not black or white. It's not like you have diabetes or you don't. On the red end, that's the 10% that have type 2 diabetes. On the green end of the spectrum, that's another 10 percent roughly that are very metabolically healthy. And then in between, we have about 80% of the population who are relatively insulin resistant. So if you're very insulin sensitive, then you can be less strict with these ranges and with the amount of carbs. But if you are closer to the type 2 diabetes, then you need to be much more strict. And if you want to figure out more about where you are on the spectrum, I've developed a blood work course where you learn everything that you need to know about understanding your metabolic health and then some. So I'll put some information down below if you're interested. But a lot of people realize that the glycemic index method has some limitations. So a lot of people now are talking about a glycemic load, which is just another way of looking at it. Because now they take into account how much you eat of that food. So they take the glycemic index of the food times the amount of carbs in grams and they divide by 100. So now for each meal, for each snack, they recommend that a low should be less than 10 units of glycemic load. Medium should be 10 to 20 and high is over 20. And based on that idea, now medical news today says that therefore two dry dates, which weigh 48 grams, contain 36 grams of carbs, which again is virtually pure sugar. And then you multiply that by the glycemic index and you end up with 17. So that would put it in the medium range. But remember, these are supposed to be meals. And two dates hardly constitutes a meal. And yet you're kind of in the high end of medium. And still they call that a good idea for diabetics. But remember, these ranges are based on the idea that we should eat three to four hundred grams of carbs per day. And also that people typically can't reverse insulin resistance. They're not talking about reversing a condition. They're just talking about maintaining it with medication and not having it get worse. So we need to put that in perspective and compare it to a few things. So if we take rice, for example, we eat a hundred grams of rice that's 31 grams of carbohydrates of net carbs that has a glycemic index of 98. So we multiply that divide by 100. So we get a glycemic load of 100. So that would be a meal that puts us in the high range. But then if we compare that now to dates, we eat 48 grams, which I think is very [BLANK_AUDIO] questionable if that would be a meal. And we have certain amount of carbs and glycemic index wind up with 17. So now people say, oh, dates are great because they're better than rice. But why would we compare it to the worst food? Just because something is a little bit better doesn't make it good. So let's compare it to a good food, which would be avocado. So now we eat 100 grams of avocado. We get two grams of net carbs multiplied by 15, divided by 100. And now we have a glycemic load of 0.3. So now we see that even though dates are slightly better than the rice, it's not really a good food. Compared to avocado, the glycemic load is astronomical. But when it comes to fruit, there is a third problem that we really need to address. And that's the question of what is a carbohydrate? 'Cause they're not all the same, even though a lot of people treat them the same way. So virtually all the carbohydrates we eat are gonna come from glucose and fructose. And if we eat something like bread, that's gonna be 100% glucose and no fructose. And these glucose molecules, they're strung together like pearls on a string and there's hundreds or thousands of them, and that's called starch. But as soon as we start chewing, we have something called salivary amylase that starts chopping these off. The glucose gets in the bloodstream very quickly and that's why bread has a high glycemic index of 75. But bread has no fructose. But almost everyone today recognizes that sugar is different than bread, even if they don't understand exactly why. And the reason is that sugar is different. It's 50% glucose and 50% fructose. So when we eat table sugar, we have these two molecules linked together side by side in a die-saccharide, meaning two different molecules. And now we're getting the glucose that can raise blood sugar, but we're also getting fructose that can only be processed by the liver. So it's kind of like alcohol in that if we have a significant amount, then it can only be processed by the liver and it very quickly overwhelms the liver. It turns into fat and it starts infiltrating the liver. So it used to be only alcoholics got a fatty liver, but now the vast majority of fatty liver is due to fructose. But here's the next huge disconnect that all these people who say that sugar is bad and bread is good, they're still gonna promote fruit because they say it's natural, it's completely different than the added sugar. And yet fruit has 50% glucose and 50% fructose just like the table sugar does. And in many cases, it's gonna fluctuate a little bit and it's usually gonna be in the direction of having more fructose, it'll be even more devastating for the liver. So here's what really matters. The first thing to understand is that the total amount of carb relates to the total amount of insulin. And this is why virtually all type one diabetes doctors will tell you that you just count the carbs and you take a corresponding amount of insulin to handle those carbs. I don't agree with that statement because I still think that you need to limit the carbs so that you don't have to take so much insulin, but that relationship still holds. The second most important factor is the amount of fructose. Like we said, fructose acts sorta like alcohol. It is the strongest factor in developing fatty liver and insulin resistance. And then the third factor is the glycemic index. So if you have a high glycemic index that creates more blood sugar swing, larger blood sugar swing. So that's just kinda adding insult to injury. It's not the primary thing, but it's worth keeping in mind. And a fourth factor that's often mentioned is fiber because fiber is not absorbed and it will tend to slow down the digestion and absorption. So let's do a little example here. If we take a normal blood sugar range and let's say that that's here and let's call the middle of that 90. And then we eat something and we bring the blood sugar up to about 150. What does that actually mean in terms of how much blood sugar we have? So 90 milligrams per desk leader, if we multiply that out by how much blood is in the average person, that means that you have about three grams, about half a teaspoon. It's like that much blood sugar in your blood stream at any given time. And if you eat something and it gets up to 150, then that represents five grams of blood sugar. So now let's say that you eat 100 grams. You have a meal of 100 grams of carbohydrate. That's equivalent to 400 calories. And your blood sugar is gonna go like this 'cause your body controls it and it brings it down with insulin every time it rises. So it always goes fluctuating between three and five grams. And yet you just ate 100 grams of carbohydrate. It's in your digestive tract. It has to be absorbed into the blood stream in the next hour or two and then get out of the blood stream very quickly so it doesn't get above 150. So at any given time, we don't have more than five grams of sugar. So that means most of this 100 grams, is gonna go very, very quickly through the blood stream. And it requires a certain amount of insulin to do that. And this is why the most important factor is the total amount of carbs because that's gonna determine the total amount of insulin required. And as a diabetic, your insulin is too high. So you can't keep eating foods that have 100 grams of carbohydrate or significant amounts of carbohydrate because that's gonna trigger large amounts of insulin and perpetuate and aggravate your insulin resistance. We need to go way, way down on the carbohydrates to allow that insulin to drop so that we can become more insulin sensitive. So why does glycemic index matter? Well, it matters a tiny little bit because in the next hour, you're gonna be using approximately. We'll just pick some nice round numbers about 100 calories per hour. And we never burn pure glucose. We burn some glucose and some fats. So let's just keep it simple and keep it 50/50. That means you're gonna burn in the next hour, you're gonna burn 50 calories from carbohydrate, but you just ate 400. And that means this insulin has now stored 350 of those calories. So basically the higher the glycemic index, the quicker the blood sugar swings, the greater the stress, the greater the shock on the system 'cause it has to produce way more insulin quicker. But in the end of the day, it's not gonna matter all that much if you need to store 340 maybe or 360. It's a little bit better if they're slower, but it's not a huge difference. It's the key factor is gonna be the total amount of carbohydrates 'cause that's gonna affect your insulin levels short term in the next few hours. And the second most important factor is the fructose 'cause that's gonna determine your metabolic health long term based on the liver. And then the glycemic index and the fiber are the little nuances that just make it a little worse or a little better. So what we need to understand is that carbohydrates are more of a metabolic challenge to the body than fat or protein because with fat and protein, the body has several hours. It doesn't affect blood sugar, it's never an emergency. But with carbohydrates, we need to get 100 grams through the bloodstream, but we can't have more than five grams at any given time. So we need to process that through very, very quickly. And that's why it's kind of an emergency. That's why it's a metabolic challenge. Now this doesn't affect everyone the same. So if you're an athlete, if you're metabolically healthy, then this is not gonna be a problem, not for many, many years at least, but you also wanna understand how this works so that you never move in that direction. So let's clear up some more very widespread misinformation. And this is an example from a video with five million views that promoted a bunch of fruits that no diabetic should eat a bunch of. And one example was apples. They say apples are great for diabetics because even though they may have 12.4 grams of sugar, which incidentally is mostly fructose as much as 75%. They say that it has a lot of fiber, and the fiber will slow down the release. Now it turns out honey crisp apples, which I'm gonna show you some numbers, has 1.7 grams of fiber per 100 grams of apple, which is not a whole lot actually. And then they go on to say that because of this, apples actually help diabetics regulate blood glucose. And I saw this in print in many, many different places. But again, they're falling into the trap. Apples don't help diabetics regulate. Apples are less dysregulating than jelly beans, or white toast and jam, or sugary breakfast cereal with skim milk. But it doesn't help regulate anything. So let's illustrate with a few examples here. Honey crisp apples has about 15 grams of total carbs, per 100 grams of apple. But almost all of that is sugar. And most of that is fructose. The vast majority of that is fructose. So it tastes very sweet. It has a slightly lower glycemic index because of the fructose, because fructose isn't warm slowly. But again, it is very stressful for the liver. And then the rest of the carbohydrates are made up of fiber, which is not absorbed, and then other carbohydrates. But now let's compare that to raspberries. And if we just look at the total carbs, it doesn't seem that different. But if we look at the sugar, we see that there's a huge difference. There's like five times more sugar in apples than in raspberries. And that's because there is so much fiber. Most of the carbs in the raspberry is actually fiber. So if you compare the small amount of fiber in apples to the large amount in raspberries, then apples don't seem so impressive anymore. And then to really get some contrast here, let's also look at avocado, which on the surface seem to have a large amount of carbs, total carbs. But the sugar is that tiny little sliver down at the bottom there. And almost all the carbs in the avocado is fiber. So the net carbs is just this little white thing, but it's not sugar. So again, it's absorbed very, very slowly. So we can't just look at the total carbs because it's the net carbs that determine the insulin and it's the fructose that determines the stress on the liver. So now that we understand all those mechanisms, let's look at the top sweet fruits. And remember that the sugar in these are 50% fructose, 50% glucose, more or less. So that's why we still want to keep the numbers quite low. And the first example is cherries. We're going to look at sugar fiber, glycemic index, and glycemic load. Like we said, the sugar, the carbs, is the most important factor. And cherries have 13% sugar, 2 grams of fiber, a low glycemic index. So the glycemic load is three. And again, compare that to rice, which was 30, or dates, which were 17. So now we're getting into low single digits. And that's where you want to keep it. Even so, as a diabetic, you probably want to limit cherries quite a bit because of the sugar content. There'll be some better ones here soon. Blueberries have a little bit less sugar, a little bit more fiber, a much higher glycemic index. So the glycemic load is a little bit higher. But again, we said that the sugar is more important. It's a heavier factor. Next one is apricot. And we have 9 grams of sugar, little fiber, low glycemic index. So it's about the same in terms of glycemic load as cherries. But I would recommend apricot, because the total carbs or less the sugar is less. Grapefruit comes in next at 7, 2 grams of fiber, low glycemic index, and a quite low glycemic load. And remember, though, that this is per 100 grams. So if you'd get a huge grapefruit and you eat the whole thing, then you probably need to triple these numbers. And now we're getting into the really good stuff that even a diabetic can eat frequently, even if not in unlimited amounts. But you could have handfuls of these on a regular basis. If you're on a ketogenic diet, these are low enough that you can have a handful here and there and stay in ketosis for most people. So raspberries are going to have 4 grams of sugar, 7 grams of fiber. Again, that fiber is more than the sugar, so it's going to really slow this down, which is why we have a low glycemic index. And now we're getting in under 2 on the glycemic load. Blackberries, very similar numbers, even a little bit lower on the glycemic index and the glycemic load. And just for comparisons, you understand that you can use lemon freely, even if it's not something that you use for a sweet treat. But you could use in cooking, you can use it in water, you can use it very freely. And lemon and lime are very similar, so they're pretty interchangeable. You have very, very low numbers. And the glycemic load would be a 1.2. But that's per 100 grams of edible lemon. So you're obviously not going to eat that much on a regular basis. You're going to have a fraction of that. And if you're at your ideal weight, if you're insulin sensitive, then you could have these pretty freely, and you could even have some fruits, maybe, with higher numbers than this. But if you are a diabetic, which this video is about, then you want to stick primarily to the ones in green here and use the other ones occasionally and sparingly. If you enjoy this video, you're going to love that one. And if you truly want to master health by understanding how the body really works, make sure you subscribe, hit that bell, and turn on all the notifications, so you never miss a life-saving video.