to think fruit can't be all that bad.

[manicinsomniac]

I feel like we're in danger of branding fruit as the next 'evil-food-that-must-be-avoided'!

I see and hear so many comments (not just on here) on the lines of:
'fruit should be an occasional treat'
'sugar is sugar'
'a zero sugar diet is best'
'your body can't tell the difference between an apple and haribo.'
'limit fruit and eat as much veg as you can'
'low carbing is the best kind of diet to follow and fruits are really high in carbs'

etc.

Is fruit the new bread? (another low fat, previously thought of as healthy food that has been a British staple for centuries).

I'm already scared of most foods, I feel like I don't have the time or the energy to obsess over fruit as well (apart from bananas and avocados).

I know it has very little protein and it doesn't keep you full for long but it's healthy ... right? There's not need to limit it ... is there?

Another difference is between having a piece of fruit, and something like a smoothie. For a smoothie, the fibre is broken down (can effectively be discounted) and instead of say, eating a banana and feeling full, you drink a banana and the juice of three apples and a handful of raspberries etc., without the same feeling of fullness as it's liquid. It means you're eating/drinking more calories than you normally would.

Oh my word.

The anti sugar/low carbers are so extreme.

I've heard people telling one another to avoid lemon juice 'too carby'. To avoid peas 'too carby'.

I mean really? Is this a way to live your life?

Eat food. Proper food. Including fruit. Not too much. And all will be well.

I completely agree absy this whole sugars are evil thing has gone a bit mad and people are acting like anything with any sort of sugar in it is therefore the work of the devil. This is not the case, nothing is ever that simple. Just as all calories are not equal, all sugars are not equal.

I say this as someone who has recently given up all added sugars and sugar substitutes so can be said to be firmly in the sugar is bad camp.

You know what? I am with wordfactory. Just eat a balanced variety of food. Make sure you know what it is - so mostly unprocessed where possible.

Look at what you have over a week. Is there a mix of grains? A mix of vegetables? A mix of fruit? A mix of proteins? Have you eaten a "rainbow" of food? Are you including wholemeal choices over the week? Have you remembered oily fish, legumes, dairy (or alternatives)? Have you drunk enough water? Have you limited your alcohol to a reasonable amount?

If it looks OK over a week, it probably is.

Wordfactory, when people very first low carb they generally go very low for a couple of weeks (under 20g a day) to try and break the sugar dependency. After that they slowly ease off and slowly add more of the good, natural carbs (veggies, fruits etc)

If you have no issues with sugar and don't have a high sugar diet, fruit is fine. The problem is that lots of people now do have issues (whether diagnosed or not!) with insulin and processing sugar and once those issues exist, fruit is still sugar and can cause problems.

I'm a low carber - I eat any veg (well, and that I like!), and berries. I plan to add in more fruits as I get further in to it. But my body has issues with sugar and eating lots of fruit doesn't work for me - it makes me madly crave other sugary foods which.

Fruit is good, fruit juice isn't.

What wordfactory said.

And 5 fruit and veg still seems sensible to me.

How many pieces of fruit are you eating per day?
There is a limit as some of said. I would say that 4 pieces of fruit a day should be ample.

But again, what wordfactory said.

[I remember a thread of yours from ages ago, so I sort of realise why you are asking].

What wordfactory said!

Sorry, I realised I didn't answer your actual question which was "There's not need to limit it ... is there?"

The answer is, it depends on how much you are eating and in what form! It should make up part of your diet, but so should many other things. It is best in its original form.

Just ignore it. I eat a lot of fruit and have no intention of stopping.

Fruit is fine but we seem to have massively stretched the definition of what is "fruit".

Innocent smoothies, fruit flakes, super concentrated fruit "puree" used as sweetener in "healthy" foods - just because they were vaguely in the form of an apple once doesn't mean they are healthy or the sugar doesn't count.

statistically yes I understand that.

And I do think many people with weight problems need to reduce their sugar/carbs.

But ultimately, what people should be aiming for is a balanced diet. And yes that can and should include chocolate cake and grapes!

And I'm not convinced eschewing lemon juice whilst putting butter in your coffee, will result in anyone getting to a healthy place with food.

Certainly, the MN low carb threads are packed with return visitors who have not kept off the weight they lost. Just like wright watchers and all those other diets.

Turning one type of food, any type, into the enemy is the opposite of a healthy celebratory relationship with food.

That said for proper addicts, I can understand that they may never be able to have said relationship. But that shouldn't be recommended to most people as the best way to live and eat.

It went like this with fat though didn't it, butter and animal fats were evil. Now they say butter is better for you than marge Personally I just try to feed my lot food that is as unprocessed as possible

I eat fruit. Maybe more than 5 servings some days, I'm happy about it.

Am not too wild about bread but that's just because people can seriously OD on the stuff. The current low carb craze strikes me as a bit silly (but it's only a craze on MN and maybe in the health freak place where I work, RL is still full of carb-bingers ime).

Someone at work brought in brownies the other day, 3pm announcement; I never knew so many people worked down my corridor, this flood of health freaks towards free chocolate.

Exactly what wordfactory said.

No butter in my coffee here (mind you I don't drink coffee!), and I do use lemon juice too!

I suspect that I will always need a "low carb" approach. But by that I mean "lower than the norm" not "i live on butter"

At the moment I'm losing weight, 6 days a week carbs come from veg, berries, nuts etc. One day a week I have...whatever...which does often include some cake. But my tolerance for it has changed so much that now it is just a single cupcake, or one small slice or whatever. Whereas before I would eat it til the bloody cows came home.

Course that might get me shot over on the low carb threads! ;)

The problem is that sugar and very processed foods have been creeping in to the average diet over the years and it's reckoned that a lot of people do now have issues with sugar, although most don't know it. These are people who will probably go on to develop T2 diabetes unless they get it under control.

Starting with someone with no previous issues then yes, I personally think a healthy diet should include some fruit, some carbs etc and my daughter eats fruit (she's 3). But I think that the balance advocated by the NHS (look at their food pyramid/healthy plate type stuff) is probably too carb heavy and too loaded in favour of low fat products which are often sugary. Once you've got a problem though then that changes

My ds1 was a big fruit eater until he needed a filling, the dentist advised us to cut down his intake of fruit (he doesn't have sweets etc so fruit was the only sugary thing he had) and limit it to mealtimes only. No problems since we've been doing this. DS2 had no such problems not being a lover of fruit or veg but that's another story :/

See, I am not super keen on bread / pasta for the same reasons of balance. I like to see a range of grains - rye, oats, rice, corn.... and if you are not conscious of eating a range of grains, then you could have toast for breakfast, sarnie for lunch, pasta for dinner - and to me that is too much of one thing.

Today my kids have had wheat, rice and oats. I have had those, plus rye. I think that is good. Tomorrow we're having tortillas and I have bought corn tortillas. They do have wheat too, but at least some variety is being added.

I think 'food' is good food that is grown or farmed and hasn't come via a factory. If we ate a balance diet instead of 'loads of' anything we wouldn't have a problem. I remember seeing somewhere that a 1950s type diet was very healthy.

Thanks for all the insights and info - good to see some naysayers to the lowe carbing as well as people explaining why it's important for some.

Caterpillar and Honey I eat somewhere between 4 and 6 portions of fruit a day probably.

My normal diet looks like this:
Breakfast - blueberries and 0% Fage yogurt.
Snack - orange or apple
Lunch - chicken wrap and mixed salad
Snack - strawberries, raspberries or cherries
Dinner - Chicken breast or tuna/salmon steak, carrot and vegetable stirfry, mango or strawberries or pineapple or frozen yogurt (sometimes more than one of those)
Drinks - low cal hot chocolate and diet coke

It is still hard to say without knowing how big your salad is and how many veggies in the stir fry! But provided those are fairly generous servings, then it doesn't sound too bad to me... (I am not a nutritionist though).

You could change the snacks for more vegetable based ones if you were worried. Slices of carrot, cucumber, red pepper, etc, are all nice.

Personally I would focus on the low-cal hot chocolate and the diet coke before I worried about the fruit. At least you know where the fruit grew! Would a couple of squares of dark chocolate and a herbal tea satisfy the same urge?

Your diet looks exactly the same as mine, albeit with a bit of honey with the fruit and yogurt at breakfast. I am losing weight very slowly, but seeing as it took a long time to put on, am happy with this as it's a lifestyle change rather than some daft crash diet. I do drink a few nights a week as well though...

Personally I think these ideas are put around by the Food Industry, when they make equivalents between something totally artificial that they sell and something natural like fruit or fruit juice.

I would just avoid things with too many chemicals in them and eat a well-rounded diet of everything in moderation.

I think fruit is healthy.

You do have to make sure you brush your teeth regularly though as from that pov sugar definitely is sugar!

Whenever anyone puts their diet up on MN or when you read someone's diet in a magazine they always have less carbs (of the bread, pasta, rice variety) than me. I always think I would faint if I ate that.

But I've always been around size 10 (except when pregnant) so I can't think I am doing anything so bad.