It might sound a bit absurd, totally contrary to everything you’ve ever been taught about proper nutrition. But, fruit may be a bad apple, at least in relatively large amounts.
Heresy, you say? Hardly.
The key word here is excess. Nutritional guidelines state that we all need several servings of fresh produce each day. But as with anything in life, there really can be too much of a good thing.
And in this case, the good or bad thing (depending on how you want to look at it) is fructose, the natural sugar that makes fruit sweet. Increasingly, scientific evidence shows that too much of it, whether consumed in large amounts of fruit or added to foods as a sweetener, can make us fat.
For example, this is the same sugar found in high-fructose corn syrup, a sweetener used in many processed foods and increasingly fingered as a major culprit in our national obesity problem.
Now you would be hard-pressed to find anyone who would tell you to give up grapefruit or stop eating strawberries. Some fruit is an important part of our diet, helping to protect against stroke, diabetes, cancer and heart disease. Fruits provide nutrients that are vital to our wellbeing.
Along with vegetables, fruits have long made up a major part of the federal food pyramid, a dietary guidance system. Health experts have long advised to eat “5 a day” of your favorite fruits and vegetables, but have recently begun recommending even more servings. “Fruits & Veggies – More Matters” is the new slogan.
Many Americans, however, don’t have a problem consuming enough fruit, gulping down a big glass of orange juice in the morning, slicing up a banana over their raisin bran, snacking on grapes or oranges in the afternoon, and having some watermelon with their evening barbecue. Oh, and don’t forget the mid-afternoon mango smoothie.
In fact, if you look at how small a recommended serving really is, you may realize you’re already getting enough fruit in your diet. One serving of fruit is defined as 1/4 cup of dried fruit, 6 ounces of fruit juice, 1/2 cup of fruit or 1 medium piece of fruit. How big is a medium fruit? The size of a tennis ball. And 1/2 cup of fruit? It’s about half the size of a baseball. That personal-sized bottle of apple juice you bought in the cafeteria? It is likely two full servings.
Indeed, in one telephone survey of adults in Washington state, only 26 percent at first said they were eating five servings of fruits and vegetables a day. But when informed of just how small a serving size really is, fully 50 percent said they actually were meeting the recommendations.
If you’re looking to lose weight, filling up primarily on grapes, peaches and apples might not do your body good. Nor will reaching for cereals or baked goods sweetened with fruit juice be very helpful. Not only might an abundance of fruit leave you feeling less than full, but the fructose in it can very quickly be converted into fat in your body, as determined by researchers at the UT Southwestern Medical Center in Texas. Fructose appears to bypass some important energy controls in the body, allowing for its relatively rapid conversion to fat.
Eliminating fruits from your diet altogether is not a good idea, either. But if you are watching your weight or blood sugar, two important factors in preventing many of the conditions that Navigenics covers in its genetic health service, you might do well to consider the greener side of the produce aisle.
The bottom line: If you’re already consuming plenty of fruits and fruit drinks, you might be wise thinking along the lines of “A vegetable a day,” rather than “An apple a day.” You’ll get many of the vitamins and nutrients you are seeking from fruit, without the fruit sugar.
stroitbet Nov 9, 2008
I know that everything has its limits for utility but I doubt that less fruits - less fat. Were there any scientific observations?