The sweet truth about fruit

Fruit
Fruit may not be the perfect snack many people think it is, says a leading nutritionist Credit: Stringer/ REUTERS

Look around any office in early January and you'll spot the same sight: men and women, determined to become healthier, sitting with fruit on their desk, popping blueberries, blackberries, or tangerine slices into their mouths.  

The logic is clear: we’re constantly being hectored to eat our five-a-day, in accordance with official guidance. But, because it's easier to eat on the go (not to mention sweeter), snacking on fruit - rather than vegetables - has become the modus operandi.

We pack our supermarket shop with snack-sized tangerines, strawberries, and apples, and we sit at our desks munching on blueberries and blackberries. The fruit juicer, meanwhile, has become the staple of every middle-class kitchen, with some juice junkies squeezing themselves two or three glasses each day.

Indeed, sales figures released by Asda last week  suggested that consumers are replacing vegetables with fruit in their shopping baskets, with sales of blueberries soaring by 53 percent last year, overtaking potatoes and broccoli. It’s the perfect cheat, we think: it’s healthy, it counts in your five-a-day, and - miraculously -  it’s tasty. Wins all round!

Or so you’d think. Some nutritionists are becoming wary of what they see as our growing over-reliance on various fruits, many of which contain surprisingly high levels of sugar.  Dr Trudi Deakin, a dietitian and author of Eat Fat, a Step by Step Guide to Low Carb Living, "eliminated all sugar” from her diet five years ago. She thinks many people have deluded themselves into thinking the sugar found in fruit is somehow healthier than the sugar you might add to a cup of tea. As far as your health is concerned, she says, it’s the same, and you should avoid consuming too much of either.

“The sugar in fruit is a mixture of glucose and fructose, just like table sugar, and the body doesn’t know whether that fructose and glucose has come from a natural source like fruit or whether it’s come from table sugar,” she says.

Fruit juice smoothies are particularly deceptive, says Dr Deakin
Fruit juice smoothies are particularly deceptive, says Dr Deakin Credit:  Thomas_EyeDesign

She is also worried that producers are cultivating fruit to be bigger than before; walk down a supermarket fruit aisle in 2019, she says, and the bananas on display are probably much bigger than they were 20 or 30 years ago.

“A lot of our thoughts about fruit have changed over the years because fruit is cultivated very differently now. It’s bigger, it’s prettier, more uniform, it’s being cultivated to be sweeter, and also to contain fewer seeds. If you saw a banana a decade ago, it was quite holey with lots of seeds in it, whereas now the banana is much denser.” Many of the phytonutrients found in fruit are being edited out due to their bitter taste, she says, eliminating the crucial chemicals that help to protect the body from infection.

So is it time we abandoned decades of health advice and chuck out our stawberries, bananas and apples? Of course not, she says; the vitamins and fibre found in the sweet stuff is immensely good for our health. But she takes issue with our culture of constant, repetitive snacking on fruit. Like all foods, she says, it should only be eaten in moderation. It sounds obvious, but she thinks many people fail to realise this common sense rule applies to fruit, too. Some fruit junkies believe they have found the perfect ‘healthy snack’ they can chomp as much as their heart desires.

Indeed, our fruit addiction shows no sign of abating; in a new government health strategy last year, health secretary Matt Hancock urged all employers to offer free fruit to their workers. As a “general rule of thumb” Dr Deakin recommends eating more vegetable or salad ingredients in the day, pointing to two portions of fruit and three portions of vegetables as a healthy balance.

Dr Deakin's advice is controversial, and by no means is it accepted universally. Jeannette Hyde, a nutritional therapist and author, believes the recent demonisation of sugary fruits by some dieticians has become “completely and utterly ridiculous”.

“I think we’re beginning to lose our way,” she says. “I hear people who are scared to eat a banana now, because [they think] ‘Oh the sugar content is so high’. I see some people come into my clinical practice and they’re going round the supermarket looking at what the sugar content is of every little teeny little item, including healthy things like honey. Then they go out and drink six pints on a Saturday night - how much sugar is in that?”

She says it is important to remember that many fruits contain high levels of fibre as well as “absolutely magical” plant chemicals which feed “good bacteria” in the gut. “That has a really great impact on your weight, your mood, and your immune system. It also keeps your digestive system in really good health, so you’re not going to get constipation, loose stools, and bloating”.

She does agree with Dr Deakin on one point, however: she thinks fruit juice from a traditional press-and-squeeze juicer is best avoided because it removes all the good nutrients from the orange while leaving the sugar in place. “We’re hunter gatherers, how many people who were running around in the Stone Age had a juicer where they could have 10 oranges in one go? It would have been impossible.” She instead recommends Nutribullets for anybody who fancies a fruit smoothie with their breakfast, because it keeps all the good stuff - ie, the pulp - within the juice.

 

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