When asked if a strawberry or a lemon is sweeter most people without a doubt would probably say the strawberry without hesitation.
Lemons are well-known for their sour taste which normally isn’t considered very enjoyable by itself while strawberries while at times tart are often considered tasty enough to eat without alone any special preparations. Both strawberries and lemons have a fairly low sugar content however, and it may shock you to know that despite the often-sweeter taste of the strawberry in contrast to the tangy sour lemon, lemons actually tend to have a higher sugar content than strawberries. Of course, this would depend on the type of lemon and strawberry, but on average it is commonly accepted that lemons have more sugar.
If you compare 100g of lemon to 100g of strawberries lemons contain 8g of carbohydrates and strawberries contain 7g of carbohydrates (“Lemons Are Sweeter Than Strawberries”, 2017). If you compare the glycemic load of 120g of strawberry to 120g of lemon from lowest to highest the strawberry is considered a 1 and the lemon a 3 on the glycemic load scale (Hansen, Fawne 2017). It is citric acid which is abundant in lemon which conceals the taste of sugar and prevents chemoreceptors located on our tongue from perceiving the sweet taste in lemon.
The reason strawberries taste sweeter than lemons despite actually containing less sugar on average is because strawberries are lower in citric acid. The citric acid is what overwhelms the sugar content of the lemon by giving it the sour taste so the sugar so it is not notable while the lower acidity of strawberry allows the sweetness of the sugar to come through (“Lemons are Sweeter than Strawberry”, 2013). That is pretty cool and this can teach us some important lessons about life.
People can be deceptively sweet (or sour) as well. Sometimes a person we think is not as good as someone else may actually have a sweeter heart than a person we assume is better because we can’t detect the true sweetness of the person beneath the critic acid of our own preconceived ideas and assumptions. Sometimes the person who seems to have a sweet personality is actually less sweet than we think but we favor them just because we can’t what is lacking in his or her life. Only God can see the real sugar content of the heart so while we should treat all kindly we should be slow to judge based on our feelings and assume our perceptions can be trusted to be 100% accurate at all times and rush to judge others. “But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.’” 1 Samuel 16:7
References:
Author Known, 2017 “Lemons Are Sweeter Than Strawberries” Enjoy Magazine received from
http://www.theenjoymag.com/2017/04/lemons-are-sweeter-than-strawberries/
Author Known, 2013 “Lemons are Sweeter than Strawberry” The Tribune received from
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2013/20130623/spectrum/fruit.htm
Hansen, Fawne, 2017 “Which Fruits Have the Lowest Glycemic Load?” Adrenal Fatigue Solution received from https://adrenalfatiguesolution.com/fruits-lowest-glycemic-load/
Picture originally found here
