Can you eat too much fruit?

Can you eat too much fruit?

This is a question that a lot of people ask. Fruit and vegetables – something we are all recommended to take in every day.

5 a day we are told! I think it’s fair to say we know the benefits of fruit and vegetables, well generally anyway. They are naturally occurring foods, full of vitamins, nutrients and all the good stuff that helps the body get in what it needs to function properly.

So why even bother with the question in the first place?!

In recent years, sugar has really had the light of truth shone on it as a major underlying cause of obesity and all the disesases associated with it and as such a major battle has ensued.

This battle is taking place on two fronts:

1. Education: educating people on how to control their intake of sugar. Something we pride ourselves on doing very well is educatiing our clients, not only in our physical Gym location in Ennis, County Clare but also online with our social media fans
2. Trying to get the massive corporate/government machine to do what’s right (which some are) and reduce their sugar content of processed foods, stifle their marketing to kids and tax those at don’t.

We love educating the community because our mission is to help people be the best they can be, whatever that looks like to them.

But Sugar in fruit is good for you…..isn’t it?

Yes…

And no!

Clear as mud, right? To understand the effects of sugar we have to bring it back a little bit.

If your goal is to lose fat, calories is a massive part of it. The average piece of fruit contains approximately 100 calories. That means at 4 pieces of fruit per day gives you over 400 calories. Now if you are on a fat loss plan of say 1300kcal that’s nearly a third of your requirements just snacking on some fruit.

So the first thing you have to be conscious of when asking is too much fruit a bad thing is look at your total calories for the day and see is it totting up.

In this video I go into more detail about tracking your calories and the effects of sugar on the body even those contained in fruit. It was originally recorded live on our facebook page

But let’s come back to sugar for a minute…

The total recommended daily intake of sugar is about 90g and that’s why the numbers at the front of some food items look like they have a really low sugar content because they take it as a percentage of the 90g and not the recommended daily intake of ADDED sugar, which is just 20g. I will go into more about sugar and understanding it on food labels in another post.

Added sugar is really the enemy here and you find it in that junk food, processed foods and so on.

The real issue with sugar is it’s effect on the bloodstream regardless of the source. If the blood sugar levels spike it initiates an insulin response which triggers the fat cells to store excess sugar (i.e excess energy) as fat and this why people start putting on fat and ultimately leads to diabetes.

Why fruit is still a good sugar to take in is because naturally occurring sugars from fruit are met with other substances like fiber from the fruit itself and fiber helps to slow down that insulin spike so while some people say sugar is sugar, the effects of added sugar from a bar of chocolate versus those from a fiber rich piece of fruit are massively different.

Fruits like apples and oranges are considered to have a low GI ranking (or glycemic index, which is how quickly a piece of fruit will spike blood sugars) whereas a banana is considered a medium rank. Again more on glycemic index and glycemic load on another post. White Rice as an example has a high ranking on this scale so foods like this should be avoided.

Ultimately you CAN eat too much fruit because you are consuming too many calories and you will store excess calories as fat. If you eat a lof of fruit in one sitting it can have that sugar spike you want to avoid but by having 3 pieces over the day and particularly those lower on the GI scale it will lead to better fat loss.

Moderation is the key!

 

Parting Tip: be careful when making smoothies. By mixing a lot of fruit together it raises the risk of spiking the blood sugars so make sure you include a protein source such as peanut butter as protein will help control the insulin response as well

 

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