Is Fruit The Health Food You Think It Is?

Most people who come to me for nutrition coaching make the same common mistakes when it comes to sugar: they eat fruit and grains for breakfast and they go on juice cleanses when they want to drop a few pounds. Now many of you reading this might find it odd that I put those mistakes under the bracket of sugar. Isn't sugar the stuff in candy, cookies and soda? Freshly-squeezed juice and organic fruits can't possibly be bad for you, right? Wrong. 

We've been conditioned to believe that fruit is beneficial for our overall wellness. It's continually praised as a health food, rich in antioxidants and essential vitamins and minerals. Yet experts in the field of obesity and cognitive performance have found that our bodies can't necessarily tell the difference between the sugar found in fruit and the sugar found in a can of soda. When you eat sugar, regardless of if it comes from a mango or Twizzlers, it stimulates insulin secretion and consequently, fat storage. I'm not suggesting that fruit isn't better for you than candy, but if your goal is blood sugar regulation (which in turn leads to a smaller waist and a bigger brain*), you should only sparingly incorporate fruit into your diet plan.

If you're going to eat fruit, I highly suggest you eat it whole instead of juicing it. While the water and fiber in eating a whole piece of fruit dilutes its effect on your blood sugar, according to neurologist and author of Grain Brain David Perlmutter, "If you juice several apples and concentrate the liquid down to a 12-ounce beverage (thereby losing the fiber), lo and behold you get a blast of 85 sugar calories that could just as well have come from a soda. When that fructose hits the liver, most of it gets converted to fat and sent to our fat cells." And as Gary Taubes says in his book Why We Get Fat, "Even though fructose has no immediate effect on blood sugar and insulin, over time --maybe a few years--it is a likely cause of insulin resistance and thus the increased storage of calories as fat."

Even if you don't struggle with your weight, there is an undeniable link between sugar consumption and decreased cognitive performance. Surges in blood sugar levels lead to an inflammatory response that negatively impacts your neurotransmitters. According to Perlmutter, "Neurotransmitters are your main mood and brain regulators, and when your blood sugar increases, there's an immediate depletion of the neurotransmitters serotonin, norepinephrine, GABA, and dopamine." So what's the result? Brain fog, depression, fatigue, mood swing, anxiety and over time, the shrinking of critical brain tissue. Need more evidence for the link between sugar and the brain, becoming a diabetic doubles your risk for Alzheimer's disease). 

Still Want Fruit? Some Tips:
-Only eat organic fruits
-Eat whole fruits instead of juicing them
-Stick to low-glycemic fruits such as berries and apples (if you peel the apples they will contain even less sugar)
-Always eat fruit in combination with proteins and/or a high quality fat to mitigate the blood sugar response.

*Interested? Check out Grain Brain. It's one of the most persuasive reads for the link between neurological diseases and sugar.