Matured sugars in flowers are collected by bees and made into honey. Fruit sugars are, in truth, export products produced by plants.
All the sugar the body requires may be obtained from fresh ripe fruits. This is especially so during the summer months. During the winter months when fresh fruits are not so abundant, dried (but unsulphured) fruits are excellent sources of sugar. These should not be cooked. Owing to the absence of water, dried fruits are more concentrated foods then fresh fruits and should not be eaten in the same bulk.
Just as fruits are savored with their matured sugars, so vegetable foods are savored with the immature juices (saps) of the plants. In the plants, as in the fruits, the sugars are combined with vitamins, mineral salts, fiber and other elements of foods.
It is essential to emphasize that sugars constitute but one of the ingredients of plant life and are never put up in their pure state. In fruits and plants they are always combined with and balanced by other ingredients, particularly with salts, vitamins and water. Man, not nature, produces concentrated sugars. Man, not nature, separates the minerals from sugar. Sugars should be eaten as nature provides them.
Commercial syrups and molasses are concentrated saps. Besides being concentrated, usually by the use of heat in evaporating the water, they are commonly deprived of their minerals and vitamins, often have preservatives, artificial colors and flavors added and are often bleached with sulphur dioxide, with which they become saturated.
Commercial sugars–maple, cane, beet, milk–are crystallized saps. They too, are unbalanced, commonly bleached, and thoroughly unfitted for use. So concentrated are these syrups and sugars, so denatured and so prone to speedy fermentation in the digestive tract, that it is best not to employ them at all. If they are used they should be used very sparingly. The same rule should apply to honey. This food of the bee contains all the other nutritive elements in very minute quantities, being largely water and sugar with flavors from the flowers. If it is eaten, it should be taken sparingly.
Excerpt from Classic Health Book
The Hygiene System
