Myths About Fruit

By Monica D. Siembor

News flash: Forget about the “low-carb” craze. This ridiculous diet trend is utter nonsense. It’s time to use your head, embrace your natural instinct, and eat all of the fresh sweet fruit you desire. Carbohydrates from fruit are essential for providing nutrients and energy for our bodies. You can’t survive on vegetables alone. They don’t contain enough calories or nutrients to sustain you. You’d wither away to nothing in no time flat. So, for those of you who think that a raw food diet is all about eating salads, listen up! If you want to be skinny and healthy, you need to eat fruit and lots of it. Fruit is your primary source of calories. You need adequate calories to survive—don’t be afraid of them. Remember, you want to be skinny, not scrawny.

Yes, fruit is a carbohydrate. But, not all carbohydrates are bad. People often think the carbohydrates in fruit are harmful as they confuse them with the dangerous, disease-causing carbohydrates in grains and refined sugar. It’s essential that you learn which carbohydrates promote optimal health and which ones lead to obesity and disease. For our purposes we will discuss carbohydrates in terms of good carbohydrates and bad carbohydrates.

Bad carbohydrates include refined sugar, such as that found in candy, pop, ice cream, and pastries. They also include grains and grain products, such as rice, wheat, oats, cereals, flour, pasta, bread, cakes, and cookies. Most of these carbohydrates enter your bloodstream at warp speed, causing “sugar highs” and “sugar lows.” This addictive rollercoaster effect causes you to eat more as you are always trying to maintain that “high.” These carbohydrates are also cooked and highly processed, so you’ll gain enormous amounts of weight if you eat them. Plus, they are about as nutritionally beneficial as cardboard. No wonder some people are chronic overeaters—their bodies yearn for vitamins and minerals, and they keep feeding it empty calories and foods that are nutritionally deficient. Because of this, people continue to eat more as their bodies hope that, with the next bite, they will finally find nourishment. This effort is to no avail—you’ll never find adequate nourishment in bad carbohydrates.

You will, however, find abundant nutrients in good carbohydrates, such as those found in fresh sweet fruit. Carbohydrates from fresh fruit are replete with vitamins and minerals, the very nutrients that keep you attractive and healthy. Fruit is, by far, our most perfect food. 80% or more of your calories should come from fresh sweet fruit. Eating fruit supplies you with maximum energy as it digests quickly, requiring almost no effort or energy from your body. It heals and cleanses your body, aiding in detoxification and elimination. It will not make you fat, so get this myth out of your head right now. Fresh fruit is rich in water, nutrients, and fiber. It enters your bloodstream slowly, so you will not experience the “sugar highs” and “sugar lows” associated with bad carbohydrates as long as you eat a low-fat diet.

“As long as you eat a low-fat diet.” Did you catch those important words? This brings us to our next myth about fruit. Many people think that eating too much fruit causes diabetes. Let’s get this straight right now. Sugar does not cause diabetes—fat is the culprit! Fruit digests very quickly, in 30 minutes or less. Fat digests very slowly. So when people eat a high fat diet and they eat fruit, or any sugar for that matter, the fat blocks the sugar from passing through the body. If sugar stays in the body longer than necessary, it overburdens the pancreas until it fails. The pancreas produces insulin which transports sugar to the bloodstream and to your cells for fuel. Too much fat interferes with this process and keeps the sugar inside of the body, elevating blood sugar, leading to diabetes over time. So remember, limit your consumption of nuts, seeds, and avocados. Only 10% or less of your total calories should come from fat.

It’s irritating to see how resistant people are to eating fruit. The “low-carb” craze is partly to blame for this resistance. People have been misled for too long. The “low-carb” proponents have turned people into “carb-phobics.” Until you suspend your disbelief about the benefits of eating a high fruit diet and change your accustomed view about cooked and processed foods, your health will continue on a fast track to nowhere.

As you can see from my no-nonsense, tough-love tone, I’m passionate about nutrition and dedicated to empowering you to become as healthy as you can be. I can’t impress upon you enough the importance of making fruit the most dominant food in your diet. So, right now, go to your local market, purchase a great big melon, bring it home, cut yourself an enormous piece, and enjoy every yummy bite. Then . . . go have yourself another super-sized serving.