Are bananas bad for your blood sugar? For most people, no
A banana is mostly sugar and starch, but it comes with fibre and potassium, and large cohort studies link whole fruit — bananas included — to slightly lower type 2 diabetes risk, not higher.
Is the sugar in fruit bad for you? What the diabetes data show
Whole fruit and fruit juice behave oppositely for type 2 diabetes risk, and a trial that told newly diagnosed patients to eat less fruit found no benefit at all.
Whole fruit, fruit juice and sugary drinks: not the same for diabetes
Whole fruit is linked to lower type 2 diabetes risk, sugary drinks to clearly higher risk, and fruit juice sits closer to the drinks than to the fruit it comes from.
How much added sugar is too much? What the guidance and cohorts say
Health authorities converge on a ceiling — under 10% of daily calories, and lower is better still. Large cohorts single out sugary drinks as the form most clearly tied to dying earlier.
Sugar does not make children hyperactive. The trials settled this in the 1990s.
A meta-analysis of 23 blinded studies found no effect on any of 14 behavioural and cognitive measures. A separate trial fed children extreme doses and found nothing. The belief survives anyway.
Fructose harms the liver mainly when it adds calories, the trials suggest — not by itself
Feeding studies find that when fructose replaces other carbohydrate at equal calories, liver fat barely moves. The liver damage tracks the extra energy, not the sugar's molecular identity.