Active Low-Carber Forums - View Single Post - Is Fruit Much Higher In Sugar Than It Used to Be?

I still need to go read the article (so I don't know if they mentioned this), but consider that the analysis of fruit nutrients was done before the advent of genetically modified foods. Hybridization and genetic modifications have given us lots of "super sweet" varieties of fruits these days, so I really wouldn't be surprised if there's a higher sugar content than there was when I was a kid - because what else would make it taste super sweet aside from a higher sugar content?

Fruit sure tastes sweeter to me these days though - I can't stand to even take a bite of cantaloupe - it tastes sickeningly sweet to me. I don't know how much of that is due to different varieties being developed, and how much of it is from being off sugar for so many years that anything sugary tastes exceptionally sweet to me.

It's probably time for the USDA to analyze the newer hybrids and GMO fruits, and compare them with the analysis done on old varieties from way back when the analysis was originally done.

I had trouble finding information about when the first food composition analyses were performed, but here's a small quote from a book on Food Composition data first published in 1992:

Quote:

Early food composition studies were carried out to identify and determine the chemical nature of the principles in foods that affect human health. These studies were also concerned with the mechanisms whereby chemical constituents exert their influence and provided the basis for the early development of the science of nutrition (McCollum, 1957), and they continue to be central to the development of the nutritional sciences. Current knowledge of nutrition is still incomplete, and studies are still required, often at an ever-increasing level of sophistication, into the composition of foods and the role of these components and their interactions in health and disease.

Somogyi (1974) reproduced a page of the earliest known food composition table, dated 1818. Ever since, it has been customary to record food composition data in printed tables for use by both specialists and non-specialists. While printed tables will continue to be produced, computerized data systems have replaced them in some settings because of the ease with which data can be stored, and the facility with which the large amounts of data can be accessed and processed.

It went on to explain how information has been updated over the years:

Quote:

Direct method

The advantage of the direct method, in which all of the values are the results of analyses carried out specifically for the database being compiled, is that close control of the sampling, analysis and quality control procedures yields highly reliable data. Early UK food composition workers analysed different purchases of the same food separately, but without duplicate determinations, with the intention of gaining some limited information on nutrient variation in each food (McCance and Shipp, 1933). In subsequent versions of the UK tables, however, the various purchases of the food were combined, reducing costs and increasing the number of foods that could be analysed in a given period of time (McCance, Widdowson and Shackleton, 1936). Even with this procedure, the direct method remains costly and time-consuming, and imposes pressure on the analytical resources available in many parts of the world.

Indirect method

The indirect method uses data taken from published literature or unpublished laboratory reports. There is consequently less control over the quality of the data, which may be uneven. Great care must therefore be taken in their appraisal for inclusion in the database. In some cases, values are imputed, calculated (see below), or taken from other tables or databases, and it may be impossible to refer back to the original source; these values carry a lower degree of confidence. The indirect method is most commonly employed when analytical resources are limited, or the food supply is largely drawn from food imported from other countries where compositional data are available. Although the indirect method is clearly less demanding of analytical resources than the direct method, the level of scrutiny required often makes it time-consuming and costly.

Combination method

Most food composition databases nowadays are prepared by a combination of the direct and indirect methods, containing original analytical values together with values taken from the literature and from other databases as well as imputed and calculated values. This combination method is the most cost-effective and is particularly successful when staple foods are analysed directly, and data for less important foods are taken from the literature (including that from other countries, if necessary). However, minimization of the amount of imputed and calculated values in principle increases the reliability and representativeness of the database.

In other words, the data can be based on data gathered from as long ago as the 1818 data referred to above, or as recently as the most recent direct method. The individual checking the USDA database to know how much sugar is in that apple will have absolutely no idea which study the information is based on, so there's no way to determine just how accurate it is.

In addition to that I have yet to see anything in the USDA database that compares the sugar content of a very tart Granny Smith apple to the super sweet Honey Crisp apple, but I can't imagine that the sugar content of the two is the same.