Question: Can I still eat fruits and drink fruit juices?
Answer: Fruit certainly does contain a sugar; it's called 'fructose.' Fruit is something that's a very important part of anyone's nutritional plan, especially people with diabetes. It doesn't mean that you want to eat unending amounts of fruit; it means you need to count those carbohydrates, or consider those carbohydrates, in your meal plan. But they are a great way to spend those carbohydrates that are a part of your individualized nutrition plan. They have a lot of vitamins and minerals in them, and so even though they do contain a form of sugar, they are certainly -- have a lot of nutritional benefit to them and would be an important part of a healthy diet.
Fruit juice is a possibility, but one that we would not recommend, certainly, as highly as you would recommend having fruit to eat. The better choice is certainly to eat the whole piece of fruit. You get the fiber, you get a lot more bang for your buck when you eat the whole piece of fruit than when you drink the juice. It's important to remember too that it takes several pieces of fruit to make that glass of fruit juice, so you are going to be getting a pretty big punch of carbohydrate when you drink a big glass of juice. so it's important to pay attention to how much carbohydrate is in that glass of juice, how big the glass is. And when you can, pick that whole piece of fruit -- it's just a better value, better choice than drinking a lot of fruit juice.
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