Monk Fruit & Blood Sugar

A little well known secret is that Monk Fruit has no effect on blood glucose levels. Here at Buddha Fruit HQ we receive many messages from some very happy customers who are pre-diabetic or diagnosed as diabetic. Many tell us that after testing their blood sugar levels after a Monk Fruit sweetened drink they do not see a rise in blood sugar levels. Customer reviews are fab, but let’s delve a little deeper into the Science as to why this is….

Let’s go back to 2005 where a study investigated the effect of Monk Fruit extract and Sucrose on blood glucose levels. Five healthy men and 5 healthy women aged between 19-25 years took part. Following an overnight fast each drank a Monk Fruit water drink containing 200mg/kg of Monk Fruit. Blood glucose levels were measured at 0, 15, 30, 60 and 180 minutes after drinking. The same principle of test was carried out 3 days later, this time with a Sucrose water drinking containing 3,000mg/kg of dissolved sucrose. The sucrose drink caused a 70% rise in blood glucose levels within the first 15 minutes! Blood glucose levels reduced throughout the testing time. Whereas the Monk Fruit drink had no effect of blood glucose levels at all, very impressive (Xu et al, 2005).

But still why is this? Further research carried out by Chen et al., (2011) found the reason to be because MogrosideV’s effectiveness at regulating a protein molecule called Adenosine Monophosphate-activated protein kinase (a bit of a mouthful, so AMPK to me & you). Before I get carried away let me refresh your memory as to what is MogrosideV. MogrosideV are the elements extracted from Monk Fruit to provide us with that sweet, sweet taste.

Anyway, AMPK plays a particular important role in regulating glucose metabolism. MogrosideV have been found to activate the AMPK pathway which in turn inhibits gluconeogenesis expression (Lui et al, 2018). In essence this means that there will not be a rise in blood glucose levels which is why we do not see this rise when testing our sugar levels.

So there you have it, this is the simple Scientific explanation as to why we do not see a spike in blood glucose with Monk Fruit. If you’re a Science geek like us and would like to go into more detail then we’ve left the study papers below for you to enjoy….

Tags: Monk Fruit blood sugar

References

Xu F, Li DP, Huang ZC, Lu FL, Wang L, Huang YL, Wang RF, Liu GX, Shang MY and Cai SQ, (2015). Exploring in vitro, in vivo metabolism of mogroside V and distribution of its metabolites in rats by HPLC‐ESI‐IT‐TOF‐MS(n). Journal of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis, 115, 418–430.