I do limit sweet fruit juices, though, which I think of as being like crushed ice, or mashed potatoes — the food has been ground up so fine, and has so much surface area, that digestion just takes place too quickly. There are vegetarians with Type 2 diabetes, and fruit juice is the suspected cause.

Using it, we find that 1 tsp. sucrose is 16 calories (energy, kcal), and 4.2g total sugars (and in this case, they don’t break it down, but we know it’s basically 50/50 fructose/glucose).

Whereas, 1 medium raw banana is 105 calories, and 14.43g total sugars (5.72g fructose, 5.88g glucose, and 2.82g sucrose, which ends up also being about 50/50 fructose/glucose).

So, the banana has about 3.5 teaspoons of sugar, accounting for (14.43g sugar x 4 cal/g sugar) = about 58 of the banana’s 105 calories. You wouldn’t want to eat only bananas, that’s for sure.

On the other hand, McDonald’s web site says their 16 oz. Chocolate Shake (their second-smallest size) has 84g of sugar, call it 20 tsp. of sugar, and about 336 of its 580 calories are from sugar. That seems much worse.

Bananas are healthier than milkshakes. Q.E.D.