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Comment by JackMorgan | Hacker News Reader

I think fruit is seriously overrated from a health perspective. The main benefit of fruit comes when comparing it to candy, white bread, and desserts. Fruit usually has a bit more fiber. Many modern fruits still have a ton of sugar, and it's absolutely possible to give yourself diabetes just eating too much fruit.

Vegetables are packed with nutrients and fiber, without all the sugars that fruit brings.

I tend to think sugar and flour belongs at the top of a pyramid, fruit in the middle, and veggies is the base. However cutting out fruit altogether probably won't hurt at all.

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Can you point to a single person who has given themselves diabetes from eating too much fruit?

I doubt you could give yourself diabetes from fruit without really trying. The chewing just gets old real quick.

But I also don't think you miss much by cutting fruit out entirely. It's a bunch of sugar, a lot of fiber, and a few vitamins that you can easily get from other places like green, leafy vegetables.

Really nothing unique about fruit unless you just really like fruit.

But I also don't think you miss much by cutting music out entirely. It's a bunch of sounds, a lot of noise, and a few repetitions that you can easily get from other places like your natural environment.

Really nothing unique about music unless you just really like music.

...

But I also don't think you miss much by cutting art out entirely. It's a bunch of brush strokes, a lot of colors, and a few layers that you can easily get from other places like the world around you.

Really nothing unique about art unless you just really like art.

But I also don't think you miss much by cutting vision out entirely. It's a bunch of wavelengths, a lot of rod and cones, and a few optic nerve stimuli that you can easily get from other places like your brain itself.

Really nothing unique about vision unless you just really like vision.

...

But I also don't think you miss much by cutting walking out entirely. It's a bunch of muscle stimuli, a lot of breathing, and a few images that you can easily get from other places like moving in place.

Really nothing unique about walking unless you just really like walking.

Yes. And?

I can't reply to the child comment, but my main point its ridiculous to reduce down human enjoyment into "nothing is strictly necessary and there is no point to human existence or experience" and "you can get all the component pieces of a thing, so what is the benefit of the combined thing" as an argument for cutting things out. But yes, I don't disagree with "you don't need to eat anything complex really if you don't enjoy it and just care about basic sustenance".

It is ridiculous to get mad at someone who doesn't eat fruit for not eating fruit.

You like fruit? Great, eat fruit. Enjoy!

If OP was anorexic or undernourished or deprived of some essential nutrient there would be a point in pointing that out. But fruit?

I'm not mad at anyone here, no worries. Mainly just posted originally + here because I think some of the arguments being made are fairly ridiculous as stated, and primarily because I think the claim that you can get diabetes from eating too much fruit is just untrue in practice.

I mean maybe if you wanted to you could ;)

But not in practice, I agree. I was actually fruitarian for a few weeks and man it's HARD to chew enough food to even get your calories in, lol. Plus it's all cold so it's extra annoying cause you never get the thermal heat of cooked food!

Eat fruit then. The OP chooses not to, they're not telling you not to.

Important note that the vast, vast majority of fruits that humans consume are as natural as a chihuahua. Apples, bananas, oranges, etc are unnaturally sweet products of generations upon generations of selective breeding.

Blackberries, blueberries, and certain other fruits that are naturally sweet in the wild are an exception. The quantity of sugar in an apple is something that was rarely, if ever, found in nature before.

Still. So much fiber, so much chewing.

I'm not saying diabetics should go out and make banana smoothies. But I tried going fruitarian for 30 days in my 20s and I simply couldn't. I couldn't eat enough food to meet energy balance.

Maybe if you made banana puree all day but it gets real disgusting real quick.

I find fruit pretty self-limiting.

> vast majority of fruits

And vegetables. Everything gets selective breeding once it is a crop.

Or pigs. Basically inedible after they bred the fat out of them in the 80s/90s :(

Can genetic engineering rapidly bring to market fruit with all the flavor but 1/3 the sugar?

I have a selection of studies saved for every time the anti-fruit line gets brought up.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28182058

>it's absolutely possible to give yourself diabetes just eating too much fruit.

[citation needed]

I don't have a study, but I seem to recall that fruit juice and smoothies may be problematic.

Fruit juice is generally not healthy because it excludes most or all of the edible fruit pulp, which includes all of the fruit's fiber and much of the fruit's antioxidant content. Whole fruits, on the other hand, have been shown time and time again to be a healthy food choice for most people.

> Our findings suggest that there is significant heterogeneity in the associations between individual fruits and risk of type 2 diabetes. Greater consumption of specific whole fruits, particularly blueberries, grapes, and apples, was significantly associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes, whereas greater fruit juice consumption was associated with a higher risk. The differences in the associations between individual fruits were not accounted for by variation in the glycemic index/glycemic load values of individual fruits. Overall, these results support recommendations on increasing consumption of a variety of whole fruits, especially blueberries, grapes, and apples, as a measure for diabetes prevention.

https://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f5001

People who look at only the macronutrient ratios (fat, carbohydrates, and protein) while disregarding everything else tend to underestimate the health benefits of fruits. Nutrition is more than just macronutrients.

My understanding is the fiber of the whole fruit is important: it slows absorption of the sugar and adds bulk to aid digestion in general. Typically some or all of it is removed in juices and smoothies. I think of removing fiber as similar to adding sugar.

fwiw, I eat a low-carb diet (up to ~90g of net carbs, so not strict keto). I often eat some fresh or from-frozen fruit: blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, orange (half a navel or a whole mandarin), or a few apple slices. I never drink juice. I don't feel fruit gives me any nutrition I can't get elsewhere. I can get vitamin C for example from various vegetables including red peppers, cabbage, and dark leafy greens. I also take a multivitamin because it's hard to get enough of some nutrients (notably vitamin D) that fruit doesn't help with anyway.

> [citation needed]

I don't have a citation either, but google search reveals the following points:

1) One serving, or one medium apple, provides about 95 calories, 0 gram fat, 1 gram protein, 25 grams carbohydrate, 19 grams sugar (naturally occurring), and 3 grams fiber. 2) Recommended amount of consumed sugar for an adult is 30 grams per day. 3) You can also find a lot of citations how increased sugar consumption increases chances of diabetes.

So two apples already gets you above the recommended amount. An apple is basically 80% sugar in terms of calories: 19 * 4 / 95 = ~80%

Your comment is misleading. About point no. 2, that’s the recommended amount of added sugar, not counting fruits.

There are no studies to my knowledge that show increasing fruit intake increases chances of diabetes. But there are studies that show that the risk of diabetes goes down by increasing fruit intake.

To my understanding, that included fruit sugar, not only added sugar:

https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/food-types/how-does-su...

> The government recommends that free sugars – sugars added to food or drinks, and sugars found naturally in honey, syrups, and unsweetened fruit and vegetable juices, smoothies and purées – should not make up more than 5% of the energy (calories) you get from food and drink each day.

But even if the recommendation is added sugar -- what is the real difference between added and "natural" occurring sugar? Does this distinction invalidate my comment above? The point being that it's quite possible and even easy to consume several times, or even order above the reasonable amount of sugar by eating fruits. The apple is not even the sweetest one.

> and unsweetened fruit and vegetable juices

This does not count sugar in fruits or vegetables, but their juices.

It is a very ridiculous claim. There’s a study (don’t have the link to it as I’m writing from my phone). It says that increasing fruit juice intake leads to an increased risk of diabetes. Whereas increasing fruit intake leads to a decreased risk of diabetes. I hope someone else can find it.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2453647/

Citation needed, aye?

Fearing diabetes is kinda missing the forest for the trees; the laser for the shark; the BED for the banana - it's deranged priority.

But thou asked.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Defence_Against_Fresh_F...

2. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MlroOdP8p2Y

The glycemic load of fruit varies tremendously. You can find undomesticated fruit in the wild that is high-sugar / high-GI, and domesticated fruit (engineered over 1000s of years) that isn't. Fiber, micronutrient and phytonutrient content also varies, but in the main, they all provide health benefits.

> it's absolutely possible to give yourself diabetes just eating too much fruit.

It isn't, because that's not how it works. You get diabetes from obesity / high-calorie intake, not sugar. Sugar has deleterious effects but it will not in itself make you diabetic. https://www.health.harvard.edu/topics/diabetes#diabetes4 , https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/library/features/diabetes-cause...

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