The Fruit Debate: How Much Is Too Much?

Last day I talked with fitness expert, Scott Colby, about the one thing you can do to your nutrition that will make it not only easier to follow your diet, but help tone and firm your body everywhere. If you missed it, then head back to part 2.

Today I want to talk with you about one of the biggest misconceptions out there when it comes to sugar and fruit. Can you enjoy fruit while still losing weight?  Let’s find out….

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Scott Colby: I used to get a lot of questions about fruit, like should you be eating fruit if you want to lose weight. People were worried about the SUGAR in the fruit.

On my Facebook fan page what I do, is a nutrition challenge of the week each week. So, this week’s nutrition challenge of the week is eating five servings of fruit each day. I got a few comments from people.

One person said, “Is this too much sugar?” Somebody else said, “I thought you weren’t supposed to eat fruit if you were trying to lose weight.” Then a third person said, “Wow, that’s a lot of fructose. I try to limit myself to two or three servings, because of the natural sugars.” Fruit has so many VITAL minerals and nutrients for your body, and I’ve never heard of anybody becoming overweight for eating too much fruit….

So, what’s your philosophy on fruit?

Craig Ballantyne: I’m probably close to almost TEN servings per day of fruit.

In my morning blender drink alone I have one banana, a serving of raspberries or strawberries, and a serving of blueberries, so I’m at three serving’s right there. Then I have an apple probably an hour later. I’ll probably have a little bit more fruit in the afternoon usually an orange and half a grapefruit. At night I’ll have another banana.So, I guess maybe not ten, but I’m definitely over five, and again I’m over five servings before 10:00 AM.

Really, there’s just so much fiber in fruit that it SLOWS down the absorption of the fruit sugars into your diet.

Again, it’s that high volume of food for low calories.  Just imagine trying to eat 10 apples in a day, you just simply couldn’t and that would be 1,000 calories at most. You’d be FULL all day long. You probably wouldn’t be able to do more than six or seven apples in a day, you’d probably just wouldn’t be able to add more calories.

So, really five servings of fruit when you compare the amount of fructose in five servings of fruit it’s still well below what you’re going to get from eating JUNK FOOD like a large soda. It’s really not something to be concerned about.  Just Google fruit sugar or fructose from fruit to see the amounts and see what science has talked about.

Whenever they talk about the dangers of high fructose corn syrup, not always but in many articles they also say that you’re not going to ever have to worry about that with consuming it from fruit.

Really it’s a non-issue.

Exactly what you said, there’s NOBODY out there that I know is having any sort of issue with body fat because they eat too much fruit. By that I mean is overweight because they eat fruit. So, that’s very important to understand.You don’t have to eat five servings a day, three servings is pretty good.

You definitely want to make sure that you’re getting over five servings of fruits and vegetables combined. I think that’s really low recommendation, you should probably be looking at double digits.

Again, a serving of fruit is really just a MEDIUM sized apple. If you eat a large apple it’s probably one and a half servings of fruit. Your fruit servings will add up pretty quickly. Also, it will help you maintain a very satisfied feeling over the course of the day. You’re not going to be hungry all the time if you’re having fruit as your snacks.

Fruits and raw nuts, there has been so much information out there that you shouldn’t eat nuts because of the fat content and you shouldn’t eat fruit because of the sugar content. But, I’ve covered research studies in my podcast that I do showing that all the research studies that have taken a look at adding nuts and fruit to your diet showing no weight gain and most of them are associated WITH weight loss.

So, you simply can’t go wrong by adding fruit to your program and your diet.

Scott Colby: Craig, when I was reading your Simple Nutrition for Fat Loss that came with the DVDs you had quoted a study from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The researchers there had put subjects into two low fat diet groups, but one group ate more fruits and vegetables than the other group…

…the group that ate more fruits and vegetables after the one year was up ended up losing more weight than the other group.

Craig Ballantyne: Yes. Just to add to that, Scott, they mentioned that THE REASON WAS because they were just satisfied from the fruits and vegetables, so they ended up eating fewer calories than the people who were on the low fat diet that didn’t eat more fruits and vegetables.

Scott Colby: Very cool. Well, that’s a good answer and I hope this clears up any confusion for the listeners about whether or not it’s okay to eat a lot of fruit.