#FruityFriday part 1
Every friday (well almost every) for the last few years I have worn a fruit themed outfit for #FruitFriday. It’s a bit of fun, and it means I can use Fridays to talk about fruit! So lets dive into what is a fruit and are they actually good for you?
Pic of some lovely fruit from Trang Doan on Pexels
What even is a fruit? It’s easy to think about fruit just as crops that produce food for us, but fruit is actually part of plant reproduction - that’s why some fruits are bright coloured and tasty to attract us (or other birds and animals) to eat them and help spread the seed. So, the technical definition is the matured ovary and seeds of a flowering plant - which really bases the definition in the botanical anatomy. This definition is important in distinguishing fruits - a very specific part of some plants that we eat, from other edible parts of plants like roots, stems and leaves or as we call them, vegetables.
But when we talk about fruit and vegetables in a dietary or culinary sense we often blur the lines and group plant foods instead on their taste, nutrition profiles and their uses so we end up with things that are botanically fruits in the vegetables section, or even the protein alternative section with the meats in the case of things like legumes of recipes and tools like the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating. Basically, if you would put it in a fruit salad, it lands in the fruits wedge, these usually fruits that are sweet, or tangy, as opposed to ones like tomatoes and cucumber that have a lower level of sugars and more bitterness.
Is fruit good for you? It always shocks me how controversial fruit can be with diet zealots, especially when plant based diets are on trend. Yes, its higher in sugars than vegetables, but those natural sugars are part of the food matrix bound up with goodness like essential nutrients, phytochemicals (the good bioactive compounds in plants) and fibre, which helps smooth sugar peaks.
And lets be honest if you scare people off fruit, most aren’t choosing a vegetable instead, so it’s a silly comparison. Most big studies aren’t even on the health benefits of fruit vs. vegetables, but instead look at fruit AND veg together to show health benefits (because grouping them together saves all the messing around with deciding which definitions to use).
Now you might say - but I’ve got diabetes and there are some fruits on the don’t eat list! To that I firstly say that this isn’t personal dietary advice, I’m not instructing you personally to eat fruit or any fruit that you don’t like or are allergic to or whatever. But I am saying if you think you can’t eat fruit for whatever reason, go and get some personalised dietary advice from a profession dietitian (in Australia look for an accredited practicing dietitian) because unless you have a rare genetic condition like hereditary fructose intolerance, you shouldn’t need to cut out fruit - those sheets they give you with yes and no foods at the GP are lazy, simple and generic “rules” that they think are easy for people to follow (and are probably great for some) but a good diet is about the whole thing, in context, not just making yes and no decision on individual foods.
So what’s the best fruit? There’s no best, there is no hierarchy (despite what the media might tell you), just eat the ones you like, that you can afford, that are safe for you (ie. they aren’t rotten, you aren’t allergic to them, and they don’t pose a choking hazard).
Even better than trying to find that one perfect fruit for health is eating different fruits, because like veg, different colours are linked to different nutrient profiles. So, eat the rainbow!
More fruit facts next friday!
