Is Fruit Bad For Me Though?

Ah fruit.

Another victim to the tyranny of food demonisation.

Fruit will make you fat. Fruit is full of sugar. Fruit is bad for you.

This notion is particularly loud in the advice given to women struggling with weight loss and/or suffering with their hormones. I was also taken in by this convincing lie when I was diagnosed with PCOS.

So here’s the deal.

Fruit has always been and will always be a nutritious and delicious healthy snack.

But the sugar? But the carbs? But the GI?!

Yes, fruit contains carbohydrates in the form of sugars. ALL carbohydrates are broken down in to sugars in the body (this is a good thing, that’s how we use it as energy). The sugars that carbohydrates are broken down in to, isn’t the same as the table sugar you’re thinking of. Table sugar (the granulated white stuff) also has to be broken down in to sugars. Confusing right?

We break down carbohydrates in to various ‘sugars’ – glucose, fructose and galactose (plus others). It’s these that the body uses in different ways to create energy and fuel ourselves. It would be super helpful if we called it something other than ‘sugars’ in the body, but alas, whoever made these decisions wasn’t a fan of clarity.

The sugars found in fruit aren’t broken down in to what we think of as ‘table sugar’, so in that respect to describe fruit as ‘full of sugar’ is misleading.

Additionally fruit contains a WHOLE bunch of fibre. We LIKE fibre. It slows down the rate of digestion; keeping us full, it feeds our lil gut microbes (the good ones), slows down the release of said sugars in to the blood stream giving us a nice steady stream of energy AND promotes gut health which supports detoxification and elimination.

So that’s all pretty darn good.

Doesn’t end there – we also get all those vitamins and minerals from the fruit friends. Different colours = different nutrients so eating a rainbow of fruit and veg is ideal. We need these vitamins and minerals to; create hormones, for energy production, skin & hair integrity, brain function – without them, all this stuff suffers.

If we regularly consumed LOADS of fruit, this wouldn’t be the most ideal thing ever. Just like if we regularly consumed LOADS of pizza. Or LOADS of anything. The same rules apply.

To sum up:

Fruit provides vitamins and minerals essential for many bodily including hormone production and balance.

Fruit contains fibre which is necessary for digestion & elimination – if this in inefficient, our hormone balance can go completely out of whack.

If you want a sweet taste, fruit can likely keep you fuller longer than a ‘low cal diet nonsense’ snack. It’s also likely to be much cheaper.

Literally EVERYTHING just needs be consumed in moderation. Fruit included.

I try not to share my personal food choices too much – but I enjoy fruit every single day.

Seems to be working so far.