Fruits have a lot of sugar. They contain natural sugar, but still, they are high in sweetness, which can lead to some health issues if eaten in excess.
If you can believe it, when I was a young girl, I wasn’t into chocolate or ice cream. My idea of a great dessert was a bowl of fruit with whipped cream on top of it. Every time I asked my mom for fruit for dessert she would always say to me, “I can’t believe you don’t like chocolate you crazy kid!” But maybe she didn’t realize how much sugar is actually in a bowl of fruit. I was more likely eating more sugar in that one bowl than a single piece of chocolate cake!
The American Heart Association says that adult men should consume no more than 36 grams of added sugar per day. For women the number is a bit lower at 25 grams of added sugar per day. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, kids under the age of 2 should not be given any added sugar. Toddlers over the age of 2 should consume less than 25 grams of added sugar each day.
Not all fruit is created equally. Some fruits are packed with more sugar than you should be allotted for the entire day. A honey crisp apple for example contains 19 grams of sugar! That one apple is more than half of your sugar goal for the day. Crazy when you think about it, right? Because we’ve always been told, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away,” but does it?
I’ve decided to take some of my favorite fruits and ranks them by the amount of sugar they contain. The more we know about the food that we consume, the healthier we can be. And the better examples we will set for our children.