…You Just Couldn’t Make It Up!
I was sat reading, the often contradictory, ‘HEALTH’ section of the Daily Mail on Tuesday when I read something which made me choke on my juice. The headline:
How Too Much Fruit Can Make You Fat!
It wasn’t the headline that shocked me, as every three or four months you read some headline grabber such as ‘Fruit is Evil’ or the like. This is usually in the Daily Mail and usually in the ‘Health’ section on a Tuesday. Every now and then it even makes it onto TV, well something like GMTV, which I feel stands for (Get Me The Valium!). However, it was the first time I had read anywhere, by anyone, that you should only eat one portion of fruit a day if you have a heart condition.No you haven’t misread.
What is even more startling is that it wasn’t some random member of the public giving their uninformed view, no, it was a Doctor. The last doctor to make such a damming statement about the ‘evils’ of fruit was of course the infamous Dr Robert Atkins. I feel he was one the of the first to pursue people to remove their common sense and say that things like eggs and bacon swimming around in cooked oil was better for your health than an apple. So powerful was his message that people went for it. Not one or two people, but millions. Many started to change their view when Dr Atkins died suddenly due to a problem with the heart. However, it appears there are still a few people out there who think fruit is evil and the cause of many ills.
“We tell patients with high cholesterol to be careful with fruit”
Dr Le Roux, consultant in metabolic medicine at Imperial Collage London.
This was the sentence that made me choke on my juice. Fruit, one of the single most cleansing, life-giving, healing nutrient rich foods on earth, is being condemned as a cause of high cholesterol by a doctor. Yes it is official (in case things like the government spending £75 Million of tax payers money on a campaign to tell us to eat better and take more move hasn’t already convinced you) the world has gone bonkers. Dr Le Roux also added,
“People who are obese or have heart conditions should limit their fruit to one portion a day…”
He did add that you should have one portion of fruit but four portions of veg. Four portions of veg and one of fruit isn’t bad advice. After all it meets the ‘five a day’ thing. What makes it bad advice in my opinion is what he said before it: “people who are obese or with heart conditions should limit their fruit to one portion a day” Because of course, there is an enormous amount of evidence to show that the vast majority of people who are obese and dying of heart attacks are doing so because they have eaten too many grapes in their life!
It appears that yet another ‘study’ has caused the removal of common sense once again. I must say, I HATE MOST STUDIES. You can ‘prove’ or disprove pretty much what you like if you have enough time and money on your hands. This ‘fruit is evil’ outcry appears to have come on the back of a recent study at Colorado University. Scientists looked at 4,500 people with no history of high blood pressure and discovered those who ate more than 74g of fructose a day increased the condition by up to 87 per cent. This all sounds very scary, OMG 87% chance of having high blood pressure if I eat some fruit. This isn’t what the study is in fact saying, but its what the headline says. What they of course fail to tell you is that 74g of fructose is equivalent to 30 oranges, which would be pretty difficult to get through in a day.
But Jason Fruit Can Be Bad
I can already hear some of you reading this agreeing with some sentiments of Dr Le Roux. I know many believe that FRUIT IS HIGH GI, or that FRUIT FEEDS CANCER or FRUIT IS BAD FOR CANDIDA. Fruit has had some bad press over the years, but no one on earth will ever convince me that a fresh locally grown organic apple is in any way shape of form bad for you. Fresh organic fruit is NOT the same as refined SUGAR. I have just got back from the Hippocrates Institute in Florida where they believe fruit is exactly the same as refined sugar and highly addictive. They also believe carrots are bad for you too.
There will always be a different opinion on most things in life and debate is good. However, some times some things are beyond science and simply rely on intuition. I agree you need to be careful where you buy your fruit (local and organic where possible) but please Dr Le Roux, wouldn’t your time be better spent as a doctor warning people of the dangers of refined sugars and fats and not making them scared of fruit?
One of my concerns is that if you are a sugar head and you have just been told that having a piece of fruit is the equivalent of having a Mars Bar, then the majority of people are going to think sod it and opt for the Mars Bar. You may feel your comments don’t matter doctor, but before you come out with things like ‘limit your intake of fruit to just one if you are obese etc’ THINK FIRST to the potential damage you may be doing. You are a doctor and people listen to doctors. An apple a day may keep the doctor away, but two apples a day and you just may have Dr Le Roux on your case!
Please feel free to post your thoughts below….
