It's interesting the degree to which people will defend their fruit juice drinking in this thread. I wonder if it's a mild form of addiction.
I used to drink a lot of OJ when I was still under the illusion it was healthy to do so. Simply stopping that I lost about 15 pounds without changing anything else. It was tough at first, I really craved it and it was a daily habit. It's turned out to be the biggest health improvement I've made in recent years.
It’s not “just sugar.” It’s mostly fructose, the worst sugar, known to stress the liver like alcohol. And unlike most other calories it does a poor job of triggering satiation.
The fruits we buy in the supermarket (or hipster organic farmers market) bare little resemblance to the less sweet and less palatable fruits that humans would have eaten prior to cultivation. Through an ongoing process (over multiple millennia) of artificially selecting for higher sugar content, we have turned nature’s fruits into the equivalent of candy bars.
Awareness that fruit is not a pure health food is good. "Equivalent of candy bars" may be overstating the case. Raw fruit at least delivers its sugars in a matrix of fibers which change the absorption profile, induce satiety, and even provides a natural limit on how much you can consume, among other benefits.
There are sometimes better choices than an apple, but an apple is definitely better than a candy bar (or most breakfast cereals, granola bars, etc).
I admit "Equivalent of candy bars" is definitely overstating the case, but it's hard to accurately state the case in a world where meme-grade sound bytes have the most impact. Absent sufficient nuance, the "fruit is healthy" message is borderline dangerous advice.
I hope people don't take this kind of simplistic advice on such a complex topic. Actual fruit, although it tastes sweet, is impossible to eat in quantities that are as harmful as junk food. They also provide tons of fiber, vitamins, anti oxidants and other beneficial nutrients. Some fruits are sweeter than others (pineapple, for example), but for the most part the vast majority of people would be better off if they ate more fruit.
If you're talking about certain fruits in certain contexts, I agree with you in principle—if you are educated about the nutritional reality of fruits, you can certainly include them in a healthy diet. But I still maintain that absent sufficient nuance, the "fruit is healthy" message is borderline dangerous advice.
Without nuance and education, "fruit is healthy" translates to "fruit juice is healthy."
Without nuance and education, "two serves of fruit per day" translates to "I'll eat a fruit salad and a glass of orange juice for lunch at my sedentary desk job."
Protip: chop up a large broccoli and sauté in a wok with olive oil, salt, pine nuts and chili flakes for a few minutes. Finish by squeezing half a lemon on top. Serve alongside a modest serving of protein. That shit is a meal, and damn tasty.
I love how people jumped from "fat is evil" to "fruit is evil". As if Americans, and yes it is always Americana, were invested in making everything extreme always.
I guarantee you that you can eat tons of apples, oranges and other fruits every day and not get fat.
Also, you can't live off vegetables only. They just don't have enough calories to keep you going whole day. And you do need some amount of calories to perform and survive.
There's so much wrong with that post that it's hurting my brain.
I don't know how you got from "fruit is bad" to "you can only eat vegetables" but that must have been a sweet trip. You do know there's other foods, right? Like plant oils, meat, dairy, and chocolate cake.
And if that wasn't hurting my brain enough, you think vegetables don't have calories? So you've never heard of the potato, have you? Or carrots, sweet potato, beetroot...
"If you want nutrients, eat vegetables." meanwhile fruits are bad. Are you supposing me to assume that he meant "vegetables and bacon, but keep off fruits"? That would essentially make keto only not-bad diet.
You cant sustain on carrots and beetroot. You just cant, caloric density is too low. You would have to eat too much volume of it. But, go ahead and try that. Eat only them and no nuts, no oil, etc. Observe how much active and performing you are after few days. Vegetarians don't live off vegetables only either.
Vegetables are very low on calories. That is literally why they are recommended for diet - but eat a lot of vegetables advice is not nearly the same as as "everything else is bad, eat vegetables".
Probably about the same but at least the spoonfuls of pure table sugar (sucrose) don’t come with pretensions of healthfulness.
And without the huge quantities of citric acid, the table sugar is less hyper-palatable. The associated acids make fruit juices almost perfectly engineered to maximize consumption. (The recipe is so perfect that Coca-cola uses surprisingly similar ratios.)
Not surprising. I gave up a number of bevreges that I enjoyed after reading of a very interesting study.
They were testing the effects of calories as liquid or solid. The subjects could eat whatever they wanted in the study, the calories of which were carefully recorded. Then they added 1750 calories/day of either liquid as soda or juice, or solid, as jellybeans. They then measured how much the subjects adjusted their other calorie intake (the groups all rotated through solid, liquid, control).
When each group was on added solids reduced their intake of other foods by an average 1500 calories/day, negating all but 250 kcal/day of the extra intake (still a non-trivial addition, but...).
When each group was on liquids, their change in intake of other foods was negligible -- essentially all 1750 extra calories per day was added to their 'bottom line'.
The milkshakes & juices are missed a bit at the beginning, but it's definitely much easier to maintain weight than it used to be, and I've seen friends get even more spectacular results by merely cutting caloric beverages (one who used to have a case of Gatorade in his truck all the time lost so much so fast his wife thought something must be wrong and made him go to the doctor to get checked).
I thought it was quite interesting, and hope some others do too...
After I hadn't had routine bloodwork for a long time, my HbA1c check shown 6.8 which is diabetic, I hard stopped juices, potatoes, white rice, while flour, sugar and decreased my portions. I discovered an entire universe of various flours and I am still totally unsure which sweetener or not-sugar-sweet-plant is safe to eat but I figure tiny amounts is OK. Dropped to 5.2 in four months so I figure I am on the right track. I still crave desserts hard but you can get desserts sweetened by something other than processed sugars and you can cut them really small and eat just a tiny bite which I found is enough to sate that craving. I am surprised how little all the diabetic advice doesn't emphasize the smaller portions trick both for meals and for desserts.
It’s crazy the number of really smart people who are steadfast in their belief that fruit is good. It’s non-stop propangda starting at birth, direct from the mothers mouth.
I wonder where this meme started and why? I cant imagine ‘big fruit’ is that big or sinister.
> I cant imagine ‘big fruit’ is that big or sinister.
Are you familiar with the phrase “banana republic” and it's origin?
Big fruit is, historically, not any less sinister than big oil, and, while less influential, powerful enough to be a major international force, and drive wars and major power policy.
> It’s crazy the number of really smart people who are steadfast in their belief that fruit is good
Is probably because we, humans, had seen before what scurvy can do to the body when you stop eating oranges, fruits and vegetables for just one or two months.
People in general are not making conscious choices to seek out foods that give them vitamin C. Why would they? They don't have to seek out vitamin C and they still won't get scurvy with even a 7/11 or burger king diet.
Significant amounts of vitamin C are in potatoes. People in general don't even know that, so I don't buy the idea that people are generally seeking out foods for their vitamin C value to prevent scurvy.
The drive to eat a special kind of food sometimes is common to many mammals. Not much different to being thirsty when you are dehydrated. Everybody experience sometimes a "thirst" for salt (in hot areas), sugar, or (in very cold areas) fat. Is a survival mechanism wired in our brain and not uncommon at all.
I bet that we would intuitively seek for foods rich in vitamin C if getting short of it.
I'm not talking about an innate drive to eat fruit. Many/most western people have been convinced, through things like the food guide pyramid, that fruit is "good for you" and a "healthy choice".
This isn't a case where your body is craving a vitamin, and urging you to eat an orange. Your mind is saying "this is the right thing to do!", when in actuality, it's spiking your glucose.
Probably because nearly every study points to fruit being very healthy for you. Probably because it's high in nutrients, fibre, and flavonoids, and very low in anti-nutrients (when ripe). It's crazier the number of people who think sugar is bad for you no matter the context or package it comes in.
I used to drink a lot of OJ when I was still under the illusion it was healthy to do so. Simply stopping that I lost about 15 pounds without changing anything else. It was tough at first, I really craved it and it was a daily habit. It's turned out to be the biggest health improvement I've made in recent years.