I am posting this topic here, hopefully so that people with knowledge of biology/chemistry can help me out. I also want to use this as a starting basis for fruit having a possible side effect to obesity. I am currently in a marketing class, and we have to come up with a marketing project. I was thinking of finding ways to cater to the obese population about healthier choices. I was thinking "more vegetables and fruits", but maybe fruit is actually a contributing factor?

I was listening to a podcast by Loren Cordain and he mentioned that our bodies use fruits as fat storage?

In a nutshell, he said that glucose is converted to glycogen in the liver/muscles. Excess glucose is stored as fat in the body, and the extra fat can't be converted back to glucose. He also mentioned that our bodies are wired to store glucose as fat, because in the cavemen days, fruits were hard to come by. They didn't have them all year round, and we fought with other people to eat the berries. His argument was that our bodies are not designed to live off glucose and we will get fat eating 4-5 servings of fruit a day.
He said that our body is able to use Table sugar better then glucose. So in reality a candy bar might actually be less fattening then 6 pears a day? That doesn't seem right...

I was wondering if there is science behind what he says about the glucose? I googled it and some body building websites seem to come up saying "no fruit!" but they don't seem to have much science logic behind it.

It seems that fruit is marketed as the "health food" and people these days are eating tons of it. I wonder if this is contributing to the obesity of society.

Please give me your scientific thoughts on this. I don't really need personal opinions about what you learned in school about fruit being healthy etc. I've heard all that stuff too, and this podcast gave me a bit of different insight.


What do you guys think?

I also read an article by a researcher at Stanford, where he ate like 3 pears a day. He kept his calorie count the same, but he seemed to gain more weight once the fruits were thrown in. I have to ask my BF about that ,because he has the article. I can't recall who it was off the top of my head.

Glucose or fructose.... Now I am a bit confused myself.

In a nutshell, he said that glucose is converted to glycogen in the liver/muscles. Excess glucose is stored as fat in the body, and the extra fat can't be converted back to glucose. He also mentioned that our bodies are wired to store glucose as fat, because in the cavemen days, fruits were hard to come by. They didn't have them all year round, and we fought with other people to eat the berries. His argument was that our bodies are not designed to live off glucose and we will get fat eating 4-5 servings of fruit a day.
He said that our body is able to use Table sugar better then glucose. So in reality a candy bar might actually be less fattening then 6 pears a day? That doesn't seem right..

It isn't.

Our bodies are designed to use glucose as fuel. True. Table sugar...sucrose...is a disaccharide composed of glucose and fructose (fruit sugar). Sugar is sugar. Our bodies eventually convert it all to glucose.

Our bodies break down carbohydrates, fats, and proteins, into glucose. In order to spare protein, there is a "fail safe" glucose storage system. Excess glucose is converted to glycogen and stored in the liver and well as the muscles. The muscles "hoard" the glycogen for it's own use, and don't give it up when glucose levels are low. The muscles hang onto it in case the muscles (which use a tremendous amount of glucose when working hard)have to sprint, jump, run...flight or fight. The glycogen in the liver can be converted back to glucose, if needed.

Excess protein is broken down into it's component hydro-carbons and some of these may be stored as glycogen, as well. The glycogen can be converted back into glucose, but the nitrogen molecules are excreted in the urine, and the stored molecules can not be re-constructed into protein.

When the glycogen stores are "full", the rest of the glucose is converted to body fat. This can, and is, broken down into glucose but only when the needs are not met by diet. This is how reducing caloric intake and exercise works to accomplish weight loss.

Although it may be true that a single candy bar may have more calories than 6 pears, you really can't compare them nutritionally. A candy bar does not contain nutrients beyond carbohydrates and fat. Pears, on the other hand are a good source of fiber (5 gr each), vitamin C (10% of daily requirement), vitamin A, and a number of trace elements.

It is silly to eliminate a nutritionally dense group of foods like fruits.

I like your concept of marketing nutritionally dense food, like fruit in place of pure crap. Don't get distracted by crack pot nutritional philosophers. There are far too many people who could benefit from healthy choices, and would do so if they were convenient.

Good luck with your project.

Keep On Dancing*

I think that podcast was way off. Of course the body will store ANY excess calories it can get as fat. That includes excess sugar from fruit. And some fruits have more sugar and calories than others.

However, in general, you get a LOT of bulk and sweetness for a very FEW calories with fructose, in fruit. An apple is only about 50 calories. Some sugars are sweeter than others. Lactose (milk sugar) is barely sweet at all and fructose is the sweetest. Plus, it takes longer for the body to process fructose and dump it bit by bit into your bloodstream; so it can keep you feeling satisfied for some time, rather than giving you a quick sugar high and then leaving you hungry, earlier. You would have to eat a LOT of apples, or even pears, to get fat on them. Yes, I am guessing that a candy bar has fewer calories than 6 pears. However, a bag of 6 pears can keep your tummy from growling all day, while the candy bar.....?

However, if the podcast was about high-fructose corn syrup, that's different. That's a processed sugar used in candy bars, etc., and is a different subject entirely.

^ ^I need to come up with a "fruit" product that can replace unhealthy snacks in kids.

I don't know very much of cooking in general, so I have no idea where to start my idea.

Is there any way to mash up fruit in order to make the equivalent of Fruit Roll Ups? They seem to be super popular in the 5-12 age range here, and I think I want to focus my project on marketing healthier for the 5-12 age range.


I was listening to more podcasts, and he brought up the idea that different TYPES of calories effect fat loss/gain. He said 200 calories of meat will store as fat different then 200 calories of table sugar. He was going into how much each thing spikes the insulin and that has something to do with HOW it gets stored as fat. I actually have the Paleo Solution book and it works great personally for me, because I actually have problems with my insulin in general. I can't eat fruits in general because it spiked my insulin and it makes me have major crashes.

I am not planning on pushing MY diet groups unto "regular healthy people" which is why I wanted your guys opinion on marketing to the average consumer.

How about just marketing fruit differently? As soon as you start processing fresh fruit to give it a longer shelf life, you have to start including ingredients to preserve it, including refined sugar and preserving chemicals. Fruit roll ups may have the equivalent of one whole apple in them, but they are missing lots of the nutrients that come in that one whole apple and have loads of added other nasties to make them last longer on the shelf in your supermarket or pantry.

Why not just come up with a way to make fresh fruit appeal to children? Look at how junk food advertising works and figure out if you can advertise fresh bananas, apples and pears to kids.

Erin.
::righteous babe::

^ I think fresh fruit is being marketed already? I need to come up with a new innovative way to market healthier foods in general.
I already have the idea of making vegetable chips in the oven to replace potato chips.

I am just kind of stuck on fruit, since I personally don't consume very much fruit.

How about making fruit pops that are 100% natural and sweetened with honey? What do you guys thinks of that?

Also do you think that marketing to the obese group is easier then marketing to the 5-12 age group in order to PREVENT obesity? I have a lot of brainstorm ideas, but I need to find a "group" to cater my innovations.

Ok, trying to remember back to biochem, so I hope I get this right.

Ok, so your body doesn't directly use glucose. Glucose is broken down during glycolysis, and the resulting compounds are used in the Citric Acid cycle to make energy. It can also be converted for storage. Fatty acids are not converted back to glucose, but are broken down in to acetyl Co-A, which is also used in the Citric acid cycle, but enters in a different spot. Fructose is also metabolized in to pyruvate and can be made in to fats for storage or used directly for energy.

So, really, you can't say one sugar is bad and another is good. Fruit is tricky, because, yes it has sugar, but it also had vitamins, fibre, and antioxidants that are good for you. You can't substitute, say, cookies made with table sugar for fruit and expect to not gain weight. Do most obese people eat an unusually large amount of fruit?

jazz_lover wrote:

^ ^I need to come up with a "fruit" product that can replace unhealthy snacks in kids.

I don't know very much of cooking in general, so I have no idea where to start my idea.

Is there any way to mash up fruit in order to make the equivalent of Fruit Roll Ups? They seem to be super popular in the 5-12 age range here, and I think I want to focus my project on marketing healthier for the 5-12 age range.

Dehydrated fruit purees. My grandma used to have a dehydrator and made us "fruit leathers" all the time. The sell pure fruit leathers in most grocery stores too. It is just marketing. Fruit roll ups have fun commercials and colourful boxes.

^ I'm not sure if obese people eat a lot of fruit. If they do, maybe the sugars in fruit is the weight gain. If not , maybe they should be eating MORE fruit to replace to junk food.

It seems to me that since the whole "fruit is healthy" things has been going around , a lot of people have been having Jamba Juice in the morning in the efforts of losing weight.
Jamba Juice is FILLED with so many things besides fruit, so I am not sure if it is an accurate, and the point might be moot.

I feel that people use "fruits are healthy" as a marketing tool for things that may no be as healthy? ( such as jamba juice)


Sorry if I am rambling. I am still in my brainstorm stage, so I have a lot of ideas being thrown out.

You know, "obese people" aren't all one homogenous group. We don't ALL do the same thing.

Why don't you do a little market research?

Erin.
::righteous babe::

^ I will do some research once I actually get a topic in mind. Right now I am just trying to brainstorm a bunch of ideas.
I think the the majority of obese people make some unhealthy choices when it comes to food. Of course not ALL obese people do the same thing, but I was just thinking of obesity as a segment of a group of people.

Maybe I can just change my project to marketing healthier foods in a attractive way to all body types? Although that seems like it would be too simple of a project. This professor made a huge point of how the obesity epidemic is influenced by the way companies market food groups. They make candy, sugar breakfast foods seem "healthy". " Made with all natural products" as an example of a slogan. He used to be in the medical industry so he stressed the important of true advertising and how it plays a roll in society.

He seemed to favor any project ideas dealing with diabetes prevention, obesity, generic drug brands, and data mining. Out of those projects, I think I am the most familiar with diets.

If anyone has any other good ideas, I would love to hear them.

In a nutshell here is what we are supposed to do.

*Come up with a product that has not been patented. Make sure it deals with problems that todays society deals with. It can be cultural, health or environment based. Make sure to do a SWOT analysis for the product. Use your marketing skills to market this product to a certain segment group.*


Maybe the 5-12 age group will be easier to do a project on. Hmmmm

On morning tv show they were talking about sugar in fruit and saying that instead of drinking fresh fruit juice that to swap it for vegetable juice as you still get the nutrients but with a lot less of the natural sugar that is in fruit. An idea maybe??

x

^ I think V8 has a vegetable juice that tastes like fruit right?

I wonder if there is a way to somehow sneak vegetables in a fruit? I wish I had the science knowledge to genetically take vegetable cells and put them into an apple or something lol

Reading this whole thing just blows my mind. Has our health as a nation decreased so intensely that we have to "cleverly market" food? Juices and freezie pops and dried fruit leathers...for what? What's wrong with handing a child a bag of apple slices and saying "eat this"? Why not take an apple and market it by saying "altering this apple depletes the nutrients. Eat it as it is."

I know it's not your fault, you're just doing an assignment, but jeez...the fact that this problem exists is sad. I'm so, so, SO glad my mother ignored my requests for fruit rollups and gave me real fruit instead.

I have no idea as I do not really drink vegetable juice. Where I work at the minute do a mix of veg juices and fruit juices and some of the vegetable juice mixes are very well liked. I cannot remember the mixes of them. But apple juice would work well I think with vegetable juices.

x

^Your question reminds me of Jerry Seinfeld's wife's cookbook where she hides vegetables in 'regular' food to make them more nutritious:

www.amazon.com . . .

Glucose is fine. High fructose is what gets you because it bypasses the glucose metabolism regulation mechanisms and gets converted to acetyl-CoA without any limitation; acetyl-CoA are building blocks of fatty acids.

That said, fruit is still fine. I'd stay away from high fructose corn syrup though.

I believe in everything in moderation. Even though fructose in fruit isn't as condensed as corn syrup, I wouldn't eat excess amounts of fruit just because fructose conversion to fat isn't well-regulated at all.

Kekoa, I think it is kind of sad too.

The problem is that money talks big, and kids want the fruit rolls up vs apple slices. I know it is mostly the parents fault for buying the unhealthy stuff, but some kids play a huge influence on shopping. I was shocked that a kid wanted the frozen toaster poptart thing and the mother bought it because the child asked for it.

I really love that commercial for the Kids apple juice. It has less sugar and more vitamins or something like that. Do you guys know what I am talking about?

How about individually packaged "take anywhere fruit bowls" which are portion controlled similar to the apple slices at Burger King and McDonalds, but contain grapes, a couple of cherries,pineapple, blueberries, apple slices, and maybe a side package (similar to the bacon bits they give you with some stuff) of crunchy dried banana chips to sprinkle on top, or eat along with. For 75 or 80 calories, you could have a substantial snack.

I think you might be better off marketing it as "the way mother nature intended", or whole food, or fruit...just fruit, instead of targeting obese people exclusively. Too broad, and might actually be murky water with diabetics and fruit.

Do you remember the pictures in The Little Engine That Could? Maybe you could do a play on words in the bible verse and do a train with the box cars loaded with all kinds of produce. "Train them up in the ways of mother nature, and when they are older they will not depart from them". I think you might have more success with your idea of 5-12 year olds establishing healthy eating patterns for life.

You might want to subtly infer the weight connection by doing a kind of time line with a kind of chubby 5 year old munching on the fruit bowl snack, then 6, 7, 8, all the way up to 12, or whatever, with the drawings looking progressively more athletic, fit, and lean as the kids get older, as if eating the fruit through the years leads to healthy young adults. There isn't anything false or misleading about that premise. Don't forget, the idea is to sell!

The other idea is fruit smoothies, but you really don't need honey if you balance in a relatively sweet fruit like bananas. What about a smoothie base you can buy in the grocery store freezer, where you just add water, and blend in your own blender at home? I don't think there is product like that on the market.

Keep On Dancing*

Haili what do you personally think the "recommendation" for fruit is ok for preventing obesity?

1 pear a day, 3 pears a day, 6 pears a day?

^YES!!!! I have seen it! And approve. Better for kiddo teeth!

EDIT:

And I am on a big-time anti- childhood obesity kick right now. I feel like I have ranted several times in the last few weeks about childhood obesity.

communities.washingtontimes.com . . .

I don't have access at the moment to read the article that is being described, but there is a link in response.

I would absolutely focus on obesity prevention jazz_lover!

UberGoober wrote:

^YES!!!! I have seen it! And approve. Better for kiddo teeth!

I'm glad Uber brought this up. This is the problem with fruit leathers and other commercial gummy fruit snacks. The sugar is very concentrated and they stick to the teeth. They cause cavities and they are also bad if the kids already have fillings in their teeth.

Keep On Dancing*

smoothies we make at work our half a small tub of low fat yoghurt, skim milk and then fruit - mango, banana or passionfruit then quick quiz in the blender. We put honey around the edge of the glass and a little in the mix but I have sometimes missed putting it in the blender and its still tasted fine.

x

Do you guys think that the fruit packets should be something the actual shop makes? I can't imagine making it in a factory and it lasting for transportation to the store in bags.

What can be used to prevent it from spoiling? Any natural preservatives? I heard lemon can prevent apples from browning too quickly.