Every so often I’ve heard someone say they were told to cut out fruit on their weight loss journey. Where this comes from is because fruit contains sugar and the belief that sugar is bad for you. Therefore the mindset is, to cut all sugar from the diet including fruit. Now could you lose weight when you stop eating fruit? Sure, if you are lowering the total amount of calories within your diet.
Would I recommend not eating fruit? No, I do not believe anyone should cut out sugar from their diet. Fruit is packed with nutrients, which are vitamins and minerals for good general health. Fruit is also a great source of fibre. Sure you could get enough fibre in your diet from vegetables, whole grains, pulses and starches. The more variety of ways we can get fibre, then the easier it is to get the recommended amount of fibre in your diet which is about 30g per day for adults.
What about certain higher sugar fruit?
There are also people concerned about specific fruit having a higher amount of sugar compared to others. So look to avoid fruit that is higher in sugar and opt for other fruit. Because of the belief that sugar causes people to be overweight and in poor health. But the amount of sugar in some fruit compared to others should be the least of our worries. Sugar is not the direct cause for people to gain weight or poor health.
All this thinking does is make people scared of fruit. So what I would recommend doing is keep eating fruit as part of your diet. Eat a wide variety of colours and types of fruit because you will get more variety of vitamins and minerals. You will help to prevent the boredom of eating the same things all the time. Which will make it easier to stick to dieting for weight loss.
Most of us probably do not eat enough fruit, and so could do with eating more. Look at the bigger picture with your diet. We can have a bad diet, but specific foods are not necessarily bad for you. Increasing your consumption over time is what causes people to put weight on, and not specifically eating sugary foods.
Fruit vs sugary junk foods
So we should not compare foods like jelly sweets, and cakes to fruit. Because these foods are low in nutrients and do not have fibre. Compare them to fruit which is rich in nutrients, low in calories and is more difficult to overeat because they are high in fibre. They also have the benefit of being sweet so they have a nice taste.
So in short eating fruit is a healthy part of our diet which can help us maintain good health. There is no reason to look at fruit as being bad for us. They are rich in nutrients and high in fibre, the latter will help in our health and fitness goals. As with any type of food, eat the kind of fruit you enjoy the taste of.
