Are Fruits Magical?
No, even if the multibillion-dollar food industries and the flawed science says so. Here’s why.
The conundrum of fruit
How can something be so good at making us happier but also rotting us from within? Maybe that’s a bit of an overstatement but not without merit. Fruits can be awesome treats, mental health enhancers, and they just look nice. Unfortunately, their nutrient composition doesn’t compare well with vegetables or other non-sweet plants, for that matter. I invite you to find out what and if they should have a place in your diet during these bizarre times.
Don’t believe the hype
The statement fruits would benefit most people is vastly different from fruits are good. Merely because some recently discovered exotic berry is healthier than 90 percent of the standard American diet (SAD), does not mean that it is without flaws. If the idea is that people would benefit from replacing their ultra-processed, hyper-palatable, crappy modern foods with fancy overpriced fruits, then sure. On the other hand, if the plan is to package them into a supplement and sell it to the most gullible, then I’m not okay with that.
We’re in the midst of a despair and obesity epidemic all across the world. It started way before COVID, and frankly, it’s here to stay. The crumbling of many healthcare systems combined with unsuspected and desperate consumers sets out a terribly dangerous precedent. The fact that the invisible virus has made it so that even more people are living paycheck to paycheck does not, sadly, make it any less profitable for the faceless corporations to sell false hope.
When times are rough, focusing on your mental and physical health is key. Whether that’s reigniting relationships with family members or fixing your diet, all of it has to be well thought out. If you’ve clicked on this article to find out where and if fruits fit in this formula, you’re in luck! I’m here to rank them, dissect them, and figure out whether they’re the right fit for you.
Long story short, proper mental health is vital, and hence, if an apple or a pizza helps you get there, go for the apple. Otherwise, avoid both.
Fruits vs. vegetables
Before I begin comparing nature’s candy with its partner in crime, let’s firstly define our terms. Google describes a fruit as “the sweet and fleshy product of a tree or other plant that contains seed and can be eaten as food”, and a vegetable as “a plant or part of a plant used as food, such as a cabbage, potato, turnip, or bean”. While Google is probably not the most respected dictionary, by being the biggest search engine out there, it reflects and shapes the way people perceive these two options.
Although botanical and culinary definitions vary, it’s standard to refer to fruits based on their anatomy and to vegetables according to their culinary usage (1). Anyway, most people consider both healthy and equally necessary in an optimal diet. Words such as fiber, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, polyphenols are often mentioned when discussing the benefits of either food group. Albeit our understanding about the usefulness of these compounds is constantly changing, the shiny apple is nothing compared to the boring cucumber.
Where do you want to begin? Vitamins and fruit, name a more iconic duo, right? Not so fast. Even though fruits and vegetables are both great sources of vitamins, there is a huge catch. The high sugar content in fruits reduces the absorption of key vitamins that come with it (2, 3). Vitamin C is quite common in fruits, evidently, less of gets into our cells when we eat kiwis than broccoli, for instance. The same goes for vitamin D, which gets degraded and can’t be synthesized adequately if high amounts of fructose are present in the diet. Nearly all vitamins are essential, but only the ones coming from non-sweet sources can be absorbed sufficiently.
What about minerals? Bananas are full of potassium, aren’t they? Although some fruits are high in certain minerals, plants that grow underground are much more likely to be nutrient-dense. Potatoes, whilst often cooked incorrectly, have a lot more potassium than bananas. 100 grams of fruit such as figs and kiwis have 68 and 17 mg of magnesium respectively, whereas spinach has 87 and whole grains have 78 mg. In short, no micronutrient is more readily available in fruits than vegetables.
The discussions around fiber have slowly diminished, but not because fruits don’t appear to be the best source of it. Whether fiber is as essential as once thought is unclear, but the fact that vegetables have more of it is undeniable (4). Green leafy vegetables, broccoli, carrots, and hundreds of other plants have a much higher fiber content. Just because it makes fruits healthier by preventing diabetic-level glucose spikes, doesn’t mean that it makes them bulletproof.
When it comes to antioxidants, it may be smarter to avoid oxidation in the first place rather than fight it afterward. The data on the benefits of exogenous antioxidants is mixed, but the research on sugar isn’t (5). It’s clear that the latter can cause oxidative stress and thus chronic inflammation (6). With that in mind, if you’re still convinced that antioxidants have a positive effect on the human body, then I suggest drinking black coffee, which has 5 times more of these defense mechanisms than fruits (7). Pretty cool, right?
I hope that I was able to show you that, as much as they are delicious, fruits do not surpass vegetables in practically any benchmark. What I didn’t tell you is that when it comes to nutrient density, healthy meats and fish outperform all plants.
Fruits vs. fruits
Do you know what eggplants and bananas have in common besides sex references? That’s right, they’re both fruits. The same goes for cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, zucchinis, berries, and other spy-fruits. Just because something is a fruit, does not imply that it also has to have diabetic levels of sugar. It does make me curious: what would these alternatives taste like if they were also bred and processed to pack as much sucrose as possible.
The reality is that fruits were the first processed foods and that these days, they’re nothing but confectionary with pretty names. Having pineapples available at grocery stores all year round is convenient but also extremely unnatural. The only saving grace, fiber, has to be removed, the sugar content has to be increased, all in order to improve shelf life and transportability. We are hence left with a ghost of something that was never meant to nourish us in the first place.
Nevertheless, if you are picking between two fruits, then seasonality must be front and center. If you are able to buy them from a local grocer, and they don’t taste like doughnuts with seeds, then go ahead.
Fruits vs. juices
I now realize that I could’ve only talked about the sugar content, but I feel like people are finally aware of most of its risks. It probably doesn’t even surprise you when I say that orange juice has more than 20 grams of sugar per cup. But wait, if I buy without added sugars, or better, I’m squeezing the fruits myself, isn’t that different?
The idea behind juicing is to get a more concentrated dose of all minerals, vitamins, and everything else that’s healthy. The problem is that you also get much more sugar than if you ate whole foods. What’s even worse is that the dominant type of sugar in fruits is often fructose, which is linked to weight gain, type 2 diabetes, and a whole host of other issues (8, 9). The claim that you’d be better off drinking a can of coke together with a multivitamin sounds ludicrous at first glance. However, that’s not far off, and no one, except maybe the commander in chief, thinks that Coca-Cola is healthy.
The only redeeming feature of fruits is their fiber content. As it turns out, all of it gets removed when making juices or smoothies, even if the end color is green. Although fiber is probably not an immune-boosting, bowel health-enhancing elixir of immortality, it does serve a purpose. The only way to somewhat mitigate the dangerous blood sugar spikes after eating fruits is to make sure that they hold enough fiber in them. Don’t get me wrong, your glucose levels will still rise and fall, but at a much slower rate that is.
You could technically re-add fiber to juices, but that is as backward and ineffective as 50 percent of the Western medicine (unless you’re a fan of the placebo).
If you want to drink juice, fine. Just don’t fool yourself into believing that they’re magical or that their sugars are holier-than-thou.
Takeaway
Be happy! If that means eating a few oranges, so be it. There are certainly better options, such as vegetables, whole grains, and other non-sweet counterparts, but there are also way worse foods.
If you only focus on the fact that you’re trying to better yourself mentally and physically, you’re 50 percent there in my book.
Before we successfully fight the disease outside our windows, we first need to win the battles in our minds.
