Health Benefits & Drawbacks of Fruit Consumption

| Modified on Apr 09, 2024
Fruit Q&A
Posted by RB (Somewhere in Europe) on 03/31/2024 84 posts
★★★★★

I am asking this question A) because I love high-fructose fruits, and B) because I have been limiting my intake of fruits ever since the day, about 4 years ago, I came across an article on www.mercola.com, where Dr.Mercola stated that 1) Fructose is unhealthy, 2) Limit your overall fructose intake to 25 grams/day, and 3) this 25 gram limit should include no more than 15 grams/day of natural fructose (NF).

Then yesterday I came across a scientific article from 2017, see Nutrients 9(8):872. doi: 10.3390/nu9080872, or https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/9/8/872, where a Bahadoran and their co-workers say they did not observe any significant association between NF and the development of CVD events, or changes of cardiometabolic risk factors.

Then I also came across ANOTHER scientific article from 2021, see Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, November, 2021, or view https://doi.org/10.1080/10408398.2021.2000361, where a Kazemi and their co-workers say the relationship between fruit intake and all-cause mortality was assessed by 28 cohort studies with 108,402ball-cause mortality events among 1,626,395 participants... and the pooled analysis indicated that the highest compared to the lowest category of fruit intake was associated with an 11% lower risk of all-cause mortality.

Now, based on these 3 scientific articles, I wonder who is right.

(A) Dr.Mercola who wants us to minimize our fruit intake; so that we eat very little or no high-fructose fruits.

Or

(B) Bahadoran and their co-workers who seem to imply that we can eat as much (or as little) fruit as we want, as fruits will not make any real difference in our health.

Or

(C) Kazemi and their co-workers who in effect tell us to eat as much fruit as we want, and the more fruit the better, because fruit intake is associated with an 11% lower risk of all-cause mortality.

Fruit Q&A
Posted by Jo (Europe) on 04/01/2024

Hey, great post. It's wonderful to know there are people thinking about this. And...as always there are always conflicting studies, reports, research, etc, that mess up our direction.

But, I think, that with my research and actual physical testing on my wife and I, I think that excessive fruits is still excessive sugar. I know its not typical sugar, but it still is sugar. Yes the brain uses Glucose as its primary source of fuel, but excessive glucose is still excessive sugar in the body. The body will react and if needed, store it. Which aids in fat storage and overworks the pancreas and insulin response/sensitivity. I tend to err on the side of anything in excess is probably not good regardless of what it is. Fruit in moderation would be ok. We personally have cut it to a bare minimum. We get regular testing done of our blood that does intensive screening in terms of vitamins, minerals, enzymes...the whole works. We are doing well. Since you are in Europe like us, you know how good priced this kind of blood/urine/fecal testing is. It is well worth it.

Any questions, feel free to ask. I have mountains of research docs.


Fruit Q&A
Posted by RB (Somewhere in Europe) on 04/08/2024 84 posts

Hi Jo, How are you doing? Thank you for your response. And thank you for being positive. I agree with you on just about everything. For example, 1) Yes, excessive glucose is excessive sugar in the body; 2) Yes, the body will store it as fat; 3) Yes, the excessive fruit intake will overwork the pancreas; 4) Yes, eventually a lack of insulin response will be an issue; and 5) Yes, anything in excess is probably not good, regardless of what it is. Further, Jo, when you said you had mountains of research documents, I began wondering if you had any research papers on combining easy to digest carbs and fats. Examples of healthy fats would be (raw) egg yolks and (raw) fatty fish. Of fruits there are 500 different species of fruits. Combining carbs and fats would make a lot of sense, because then and only then the insulin response would be attenuated (weakened, reduced), which most likely would also minimize the response of the pancreas. In this field, so far my research has been limited to the research of a Wai, a woman from the Netherlands, who in the last 10+ years has very generously shared her high-quality research on www.waisays.com.