The Fruit Effect

Hey y'all, it's finals week, and I just can't get enough of this whole "avoiding studying" thing. So what did I do instead? I deep cleaned my bathroom, reorganized my book shelves in a way that made more sense to me (classic books on one bookshelf, non-classic books on another bookshelf), went through all of my school stuff and decided what I didn't need, and took an inventory of the food I currently have in my makeshift pantry (which is actually just an outdoor bar that I've brought inside and filled with a bazillion cans of black beans, peanut butter, and salad dressing).

So....yeah. I've avoided this whole studying thing pretty well, and I'm going to continue to do so as I write a blog post about fruit. 

What makes fruit so great is that 99.9999% of people love

fruit of some kind. It's a lot easier to talk about yummy fruit than it is to talk about yummy vegetables. Why? Because fruit is sweet, and humans have a evolutionary predisposition to love sweet food. Experts believe this is due to one simple fact: sweet food is typically not poisonous, while bitter food typically is. In other words, natural selection at its finest.

Anyways, the sweetness inside of fruit comes from a sugar called fructose, which is two times sweeter than table sugar. This is what makes fruit lower calorie than a typical sweet food--it can be just as sweet with half of the sugar concentration.

I know what y'all are thinking: if the body treats it the same way, then why do experts claim that fruit is so much healthier than a candy bar? Well, simply...because it is healthier than a candy bar. Though the sugar is pretty much the same between fruit and desserts, fruit has something that desserts lack: vitamins and minerals. 

I know I am beating a dead horse here, but vitamins and minerals are extremely important! Our bodies can't make them, so we MUST get them from our diet. Thankfully, fruit typically tastes much better than vegetables in its raw state, so we at least have that going for us. 

Currently, health professionals recommend that someone eat 4 servings of fruit everyday. Similar to vegetables, a serving of fruit is 1/2 cup or a piece the size of your fist. Most fruits will have at least one serving in them (an apple usually has around 1.5 depending on the kind you buy). But in reality, 2 cups of fruit every day is not that much and can easily be eaten. 

Before I wrap this post up I want to dispel a myth about the sugar in fruit: the body treats it just the same as any other kind of sugar. Though "natural" sugars do exist, they aren't any healthier than other sugars. The body breaks them down the same way, in the same processes, and in the same order. I want to make it clear that fruit is not healthier than a candy bar because the sugar is healthier, but because of the other nutrients that fruit has. Sugar is sugar. And the body will always treat it as such. Sugar can range in sweetness and addictiveness, but the body will always break it down the same way.

So don't believe the lies out there! Fruit is so good for you, yes, but not because of its sugar. Nutrition always seems to come back to two simple words: vitamins and minerals.