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In one week, I can eat more than 20 kg of raw fruits (currently peaches, apricots, tomatoes; in other seasons: clementines, persimmons, ..), and another 5-6 kg of steamed vegetables (leafy onions, carrots, round eggplant, peppers). Sometimes, I add some full-grain rice or fish or honey.

The result is a lot of energy (except sometimes 1-2 hrs of digestion), no cold or other common illness, and a low BMI (body-mass index) indeed (I'm around 18), because it's not only low-calorie, but the fibers give a feeling of satiety for a long time

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This may be your subjective experience, but you have a single data point (you) and no control so you can't make assertions about your diet's effectiveness like you have.

The things I would challenge are: - Lots of Energy (compared to what? Measured how?) - No cold or other common illness (a huge claim that requires substantial evidence to support it).

At about 20-40 you reach peak immune system. Colds and illness does happen, but your immune system has already seen most of them and so can fight them off before you get sick. Combined with modern vaccines normal people feel like they don't get sick often.

Which is to say I believe his claim without evidence because it is probably true. However it isn't his diet.

and a low BMI (body-mass index) indeed (I'm around 18)

A BMI that low is not a good thing. It is evidence against your diet being optimal. Mortality rates are actually higher when BMI is below 20 (https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2156 https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/353/bmj.i2156/F3.large.jpg -- although causality is not established). And from a common sense or aesthetic perspective, such a low BMI almost certainly means you lack ideal muscle mass.

Thanks for the warning, I'm around 60kg, 1.82m high. I do a lot of bike, and I'm sort of thin, for example I can join my thumb and any other finger around my wrist. You could consider someone like Hicham El Guerrouj (58/1.762 == 18.7), that 18.5 limit is not really one for some morphologies

Super-star athletes aren't really good examples to learn from. They often have to do unhealthy and extreme things to their body in order to achieve absolute peak performance at one specific task. NFL linemen and sumo wrestlers are unhealthily overweight. Boxers and wrestlers have unhealthy levels of body fat and hydration in order to squeeze into the lowest possible weight class. And long distance runners avoid developing any upper body muscle, because every pound of additional weight costs seconds on their time. That's not something a normal person should do.

60kg at 1.82m strikes me as really fricking thin. I'm your height, and have considered myself a lean, athletic guy, but at 13% bodyfat I weigh 80kg.

Yes, but I'm a developer, why would I need more upper body muscles?

My daily activity doesn't require some more particular strength (although I wouldn't consider myself weak either), it's more about endurance. I've enough core strength to not have any back problem too (I avoid sitting on a chair though, but rather lie down/stretch out in front of my laptop)

> Mortality rates are actually higher when BMI is below 20

When you see the typical Japanese centenarian, who have a BMI around 19 (mean: 19.3±0.4, median: 18.9 (11.9, 30.2), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5107392/), it contradicts this statement. I'm not Asian, and I'm taller (BMI is usually lower for taller ppl)

in conclusion, people have very different morphologies, so BMI isn't so significant

Yes that is excess sugar consumption which the article talks about.

Part of me thinks it surprising that nutrition is still based on things like total sugar content. It's pretty obvious that the mechanism of delivery must be quite important. This is even the case in simple science experiments, consider for example the fact that flour can be explosive under certain conditions.

I seems obvious that eating an apple vs eating a mars bar is quite different, though the total sugar is more or less the same.

An apple has around 9,3g of sugar, a mars bar around 30g. I wouldn't call that 'more or less the same'

A quick google gave me 19g and 20g respectively. I'm not particularly attached to those figures. I don't think it actually makes much difference to my general point. The sugars in an apple must be tougher for your body to extract than those in a mars bar.

The USDA[1] gives 23g sugar for a large apple. And 34 grams of total carbohydrates minus 5g fiber yields 29g net carbs, which are nutritionally not all that different from sugar.

So they're not identical, but I'd say that "more or less the same" is sufficiently accurate. (The apple, however, does have fiber and some other vitamins and minerals, so it's definitely a better choice. It's just best not to devote too much of your diet to it.)

[1] https://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/fruits-and-fruit-juices...

The link you provide gives 13g of sugar per serving (125g). A typical apple weighs between 70g and 100g. A regular Marsbar is 51g, of which 60% is sugar. I'm really sorry, but I can not accept a 300% difference as 'more or less the same'.

Ok, but would you agree that if you eat an equivalent quantity of sugar in the form of apples or mars bars, the health effects will be more or less the same?

Not an expert. I do notice that the glycemic load per g of marsbars is 6x higher than that of apples, so I would be extremely surprised if it is 'the same'.

So I will risk verging into the pedantic here, but the point I was trying to make is to argue against the parent comment in this thread, which argues that the sugar in an apple is somehow different than the sugar in a mars bar.

I think we sometimes place too much importance on the origin of things, and convince ourselves that "apple sugar" is more healthy than "candy sugar". The thing which makes an apple more healthy is that the sugar is suspended in a lot more fiber, so it takes longer to reach your blood stream. The sugar itself is more or less the same as far as your metabolism is concerned.

If you refined the sugar out of apples and put it in a mars bar in a green wrapper which said it was made from "all natural ingredients", it would not be healthier than any other mars bar.

say 3 apples if you prefer. The important there is how they differ, by the nutrients (other than sugar), and the fiber that acts like a sponge to release them slowly

I haven't seen any proof that this is the case. Can you link me some papers?

I'm sure it must have been studied but I was more postulating than asserting that is is true.

The apple might seem a lot healthier, but once it gets into your blood stream sugar is sugar (ok that happens a little bit slower with fruit because it's high in fiber).

In fact, modern fruit is so sweet it's been deemed unsafe for zoo animals:

https://qz.com/1408469/humans-have-bred-fruits-to-be-so-high...

I'm not disagreeing with you, and there's probably a lot more to learn about sugars and their effects, but it's worth noting that all sugars are not equal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHEJE6I-Yl4

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