Nick Norwitz explains why a banana affects lean and obese bodies differently. In lean people, banana sugar goes straight to muscles for energy. In insulin-resistant bodies, sugar lingers in the blood while the liver makes fat instead, creating what he calls a metabolic milkshake. He suggests wild blueberries as a lower-sugar alternative.
What happens when a fat person and a lean person each eat a banana? Well, in the lean person, the sugars from the banana move quickly into the blood and then into muscle to be used as energy. No problem there. But in a person with obesity and insulin resistance, something very different happens. Muscles are insulin resistant, so they don't efficiently take up sugar, meaning it lingers in the bloodstream. And in the liver, things are worse. Insulin resistance means the liver doesn't get the memo to stop making its own sugar, So it spills more sugar into the blood. By contrast, the fat generation pathway in the liver, it gets overstimulated. Like the body is biologically yelling, make more fat, to the liver. And the ultimate result is that sugar lingers in the blood while the liver is dumping more sugar and more fat, like it's trying to make a milkshake in your bloodstream. Now, there are solutions, like choosing wild blueberries instead of bananas, which are lower in sugar. And I provide more free resources below, but does this mean that someone with obesity shouldn't eat a banana? Well.
