"Eat more fruits and vegetables."
If I had a dime for every time I heard that recommendation, I'd be a rich man today.
Everyone knows that fruits are healthy... they are the default "health foods."
They come from plants... they're real, whole foods and humans have been eating them for a long time.
Most of them are also very convenient... some people call them "nature's fast food" because they are so easily portable and easy to prepare.
On the surface, they seem like the perfect food.
However... many people have challenged the belief about the health effects of fruit in the past few years.
The main reason is that fruit is relatively high in sugar compared to other whole foods.
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This includes table sugar (sucrose) and high fructose corn syrup, which are both about half glucose, half fructose.
The main reason they are harmful, is because of the negative metabolic effects of fructose when consumed in large amounts.
I'm not going to get into the details, but you can read more about the harmful effects of added sugars here.
Many people now believe that because added sugars are bad, the same must apply to fruits, which also contain fructose.
However... this is completely wrong, because fructose is only harmful in large amounts and it is almost impossible to overeat fructose by eating fruit.