How Not to Die says eating berries can blunt the insulin spike from [other] high-glycemic foods (referencing: [pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23365108/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23365108/)), hence my question: In order for food to be healthy, must the fiber and micronutrients come structurally intact with the same whole food that offers the calories, or could one get away with mixing them in extracted forms? For example, if you hypothetically extracted the sugar from an apple, would eating both the extracted sugar and the remaining sugar-less apple (simultaneously) be roughly as healthy as eating the structurally intact apple prior to the extraction, or would the latter be significantly healthier because its sugars are structurally bound to the fiber or micronutrients in some significant manner? And if the latter, how exactly does the structural integrity prevent the harmful effects of refined sugars/calories?
The practical implications of this question have to do with the safety of adding refined sugars to very high-fiber foods to increase their palatability. I understand that date sugar is the healthiest sweetener (followed by blackstrap molasses and probably jam), whole food is always better than refined food, it’s fine to add a little sweetener if it helps you eat a healthy food you otherwise wouldn’t, yada yada. I also realize this question is a very complex way of saying I have a sweet tooth >_>, but nonetheless I think it’s very important even just as an academic question.
Many thanks.
Dining and Cooking