Fruit Is Too Sweet(theatlantic.com) |
Fruit Is Too Sweet(theatlantic.com) |
Is the sweetness causing health issues? Do sweet varieties have less other nutrition?
I think what's interesting about this article is that one common bit of advice about limiting dietary sugar is that there's a big difference in the rate of absorption of simple sugar between fruit juice and raw fruit because the fiber content of raw fruit offers a natural means of limiting the rate of simple sugar absorption. But, if we are breeding extremely sweet fruit, it's a reasonable hypothesis that if such a "natural balance" of fiber and fructose exists, perhaps it has been undermined.
Sweetango and Pink Lady are probably what I would consider balanced sweet and tart.
This doesn't appear to be even slightly tenable. The amount of sugar one consumes in a normal serving of fruit if not added to the massive amount we actually consume wouldn't be even slightly unhealthy.
It is very hard, by contrast, to say a person can eat "too much veggies", unless they are doing something crazy like eating extreme amounts of the same greens high in oxalates or something.
Basically, enjoy a fruit or two a day, if you like them. Or don't. But you aren't "eating healthy" just because you eat a lot of fruit, nor are you eating unhealthily if you eat zero fruit.
It is without meaning to compare incoherent dietary ideas like 100% veggies or 100% fruits.
In both cases, you probably need to be rebalancing and not adding things, but, for the same reason, it is sensible to err on the side of much more veggies than fruits. However, because fruit tastes like candy (and perhaps because you don't have to cook them, generally), people reach for adding more fruit to their diets, and this is likely sub-optimal. You should almost certainly be eating much more vegetables than you should be eating fruit. I.e. I'd say healthy is more like 80% veggie, 20% fruit, if you are putting them in the same category.
Maybe 50/50 is perfectly good too, but it seems pretty clear 100% fruit and 0% veggie is the worst possible choice, but 100% veggie and 0% fruit is perfectly fine. This should bring into question the appropriateness of the label "healthy" for fruit.