Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Says You! Fruit Isn’t as Healthy as People Claim

Episode Date: November 11, 2022

Some people claim eating fruit is a problem because modern fruit is very different from the fruit humans were eating thousands of years ago. Not only is modern fruit larger and more sugary, they say, but now we’re eating a much larger quantity and variety of fruit than we ever did. This is contributing to obesity and other diseases. Is there any truth to these claims? Is modern fruit that different from ancient fruit? Does it matter? Find out in this podcast. I’ve written and recorded a lot of evidence-based content over the years on just about everything you can imagine related to building muscle, losing fat, and getting healthy. I’ve also worked with thousands of men and women of all ages and circumstances and helped them get into the best shape of their lives. That doesn’t mean you should blindly swallow everything I say, though, because let’s face it—nobody is always right about everything. And especially in fields like diet and exercise, which are constantly evolving thanks to the efforts of honest and hardworking researchers and thought leaders. This is why I’m always happy to hear from people who disagree with me, especially when they have good arguments and evidence to back up their assertions. Sometimes I can’t get on board with their positions, but sometimes I end up learning something, and either way, I always appreciate the discussion. That gave me the idea for this series of podcast episodes: publicly addressing things people disagree with me on and sharing my perspective. Think of it like a spicier version of a Q&A. So, here’s what I’m doing: Every couple of weeks, I’m asking my Instagram followers what they disagree with me on, and then picking the more common or interesting contentions to address here on the podcast. And in this episode, I’ll be tackling the following . . . - Modern fruit is a problem because it’s very different from the fruit humans were eating thousands of years ago. Modern fruit is contributing to obesity and other types of disease. Timestamps: (0:00) - Check out my new probiotic, Biome! https://buylegion.com/biome (2:35) - Is fruit bad for you? (4:06) - Is there too much sugar in modern fruits? Mentioned on the Show: My new probiotic, Biome, is here! Check it out: https://buylegion.com/biome Biome is the only 100% natural probiotic supplement with clinically effective doses of 4 scientifically proven ingredients for improving the health and function of your digestive system, including your gut barrier, and promoting a leaner body composition. Grab a bottle here: https://buylegion.com/biome

Hello, hello, and welcome to Muscle for Life. I am Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today for another installment in my Says You series of episodes, where I address something that someone disagrees with me on. So what I do is every couple of months over on Instagram, at Muscle for Life Fitness, if you want to follow me, I will make a post asking for people to share things that they think I'm wrong about in the comments. And then I go through all of the comments and pick a handful of them that I haven't already spoken or written about ad nauseum and bring them over here on the podcast and talk about them. And so in today's episode, I'm going to talk about eating fruit. And the claim that I am addressing specifically

is that modern fruit is a problem, that modern fruit is very different from the fruit that we were eating thousands of years ago. Modern fruit is larger, more sugary. And now we're also eating a lot of different types of fruit that we weren't eating previously, and that ultimately all of this fruit eating is contributing to obesity and other types of disease. Before we get to it, if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, please do check out my sports nutrition company, Legion, which just released a new product. nutrition company Legion, which just released a new product. It is called Biome, B-I-O-M-E, and it is a probiotic that is unlike any other on the market because it has a unique combination of four ingredients, four patented ingredients that we chose very carefully. We wanted those specific patented ingredients because they have solid scientific evidence of efficacy in people with

and without gut issues, as opposed to only in people with gut problems, which is often the case with probiotic supplements. If you have a healthy gut, if you don't have any digestive issues, you are probably not going to benefit from many probiotic supplements on the market. Biome is different though, and the list of proven benefits is rather remarkable. It includes less abdominal pain, cramping, bloating, and flatulence, more healthy intestinal bacteria, lower levels of intestinal and whole body inflammation,

improved cholesterol levels, and even better body composition. No kidding. And if you want to find out how that works, head over to buylegion.com, B-U-I-L-E-G-I-O-N.com slash biome, B-I-O-M-E, and check it out. Okay, so let me start this discussion by saying that I'm a little bit surprised that there are quite a few credentialed experts out there working very hard to convince people that they are fat and unhealthy because they eat too much fruit. I mean, we humans have been

eating fruit for thousands of years. Obesity is a modern epidemic. I think that the sugar in apples is not the problem. But anyway, here we are. And many people believe that they should not eat bananas if they want to lose weight, but instead they should put gobs of butter in their coffee every morning and add MCT oil to every meal. And so I am going to try to set the record straight here, at least on the fruit eating. We could talk about bulletproof coffee or MCT oil later. So as I mentioned, we humans have been eating fruit for thousands of years, and we have been selectively breeding fruit for at least hundreds, if not thousands of years to increase yield, to improve the taste, to improve the appearance, to make the crops more resistant to pests and so forth.

And so, yes, the fruit that you find in grocery stores is not the same fruit that grew on trees in the distant past. But of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that modern fruit is worse for us than ancient fruit. Now, there is a specific claim that's made about modern fruit, though, and that is the amount of sugar. Many people believe that our meddling in fruit has drastically increased the amount of sugar in the fruit and the size of the fruit, so much so that modern fruit is now unhealthy. For example, Dr. Ken Berry said in 2018 that modern fruit has been bred to contain 100 times more sugar than ancient varieties, and therefore modern fruit is not a healthy snack. Now, he didn't provide any evidence for this claim, but he's a doctor, so he must know what he's talking about, right? Well, in reality, there is very little

evidence that modern fruit contains a lot more sugar than ancient fruit. But unfortunately, there's also little evidence that it is not the case. And so that makes it hard to debunk because then the self-styled expert or thought leader or guru can say that they are ahead of the science, so to speak, that they are in the trenches, they are working with patients, they are seeing things that will eventually make their way into the scientific literature. into the scientific literature. And while that can be true, because it certainly does happen, I mean, science does begin with observations, theories, conclusions, and the cogs of academic science move slowly, so to speak. There can be a long period of time between the initial observations, theories, conclusions, and the publication of scientific trials that bear them out. And so then when you as a layman hear a credentialed expert make a claim that is not supported by scientific research, but also is not contradicted by scientific research, and when it sounds

like they know what they're talking about, and when they're saying by scientific research. And when it sounds like they know what they're talking about and when they're saying that scientific research just hasn't been able to address this yet, it can be hard to know whether you should accept what they're saying as true or not, whether you should assume that they are being truthful or not. And so we do have a bit of this going on with the modern fruit dilemma, but we can also gain a lot of insight by looking at wild fruits, which are undomesticated fruits found in sparsely populated areas of the world. Now, since these fruits have never been selectively bred, they give us an idea of what fruit is like naturally before humans started to tinker with it. And contrary to what some people are saying about modern fruit

being oversized compared to undomesticated fruit across the board, well, there are many African wild fruits, including the jungle sop and soursop, that are larger than most modern fruits. According to the book Lost Crop of Africa, jungle sops and soursops are almost as long as a person's forearm and as thick as a leg. And they typically weigh between nine and 13 pounds. That's a lot of fruit. And my point with that is fruit isn't necessarily large because of human intervention. Now, isn't necessarily large because of human intervention. Now, that's not to say that all undomesticated fruit is bigger than modern fruit or vice versa. It just varies from fruit to fruit. But to say that humans did not eat large fruit until recently is patently wrong. And as for the sugar content of fruit, there's evidence that at least in some fruits,

And as for the sugar content of fruit, there's evidence that at least in some fruits, it doesn't seem to have changed much at all. Consider a study published in the South African Journal of Nutrition that showed that between 78 and 92 percent of the calories in wild fruit, such as the wild plum, wild apricot and monkey orange, come from carbs, mainly sugar, which is consistent with the amount of carbs and sugar in modern fruits such as papaya, strawberries, and cantaloupe. Now, some people will bring up fiber at this point in the discussion. They will say, well, the sugar content hasn't changed very much, but it's the fiber content. Modern fruit has less fiber on average than ancient fruit and that changes how our body processes the sugar more fiber is better less fiber is worse for sugar processing but that does not appear to be true either the same study showed that wild fruit and modern fruit contain very similar amounts of fiber another claim is regarding fructose which is a natural sugar found in fruits. And specifically, the claim is that the total sugar content has not changed, but modern fruit contains

more fructose than ancient fruit. And that then is claimed to contribute to different health conditions like metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and others. And by the way, research shows that fructose in fruit almost certainly does not contribute to any of those problems, as opposed to fructose in processed foods that contain high fructose corn syrup. So you have to differentiate the fructose in natural foods in an apple versus the fructose in candy or soda. But anyway, coming back to this fructose in fruit claim, a study published in Food Chemistry shows that typically around 50% of the sugar in wild fruits from Southeast Asia, including the star apple, Bengal quince, and hog plum is glucose, and the remaining 50%

is split between fructose and sucrose. And there is usually more fructose than sucrose. Well, that is very similar to what scientists have seen in studies on modern fruits, such as strawberries, blueberries, and bananas. That said, there are examples of wild fruits that have very different carbohydrate compositions than their modern fruit equivalents and vice versa. Sometimes it's the wild fruit that contains a lot more fructose. Sometimes it's the modern fruit that does. Sometimes one contains a lot more glucose than the other. Sometimes the variation is in the sucrose content. And so my point here is there does not appear to be a pattern of higher fructose in modern fruit. And even if that were true, that doesn't necessarily mean modern fruit is worse for us, that it's more dangerous than

wild fruit. Now, as to the argument that we modern humans eat more fruit and a wider variety of fruit than our ancient ancestors, there is some validity to that. That's reasonable, but our habits probably have not changed as much as some people think. So the main point that some people try to make here is that we used to eat comparatively little fruit in the past because we had no way to keep the fruit fresh and that means a lot of it would spoil and go to waste and the only way we could really eat fruit then was to get whatever was in season and while that is true to an extent it ignores the fact that many wild fruits stay edible for months after they ripen and others sun dry on the plant, making them last longer and making them fine to eat later. So it's probably wrong to assume that we didn't eat fruit year round because we had to pick it and eat it within a couple of weeks or it would go to

waste. And again, this line of argumentation assumes that eating more fruit than we once did or eating a wider variety of fruit than we once did is bad for us. And that is not an established fact. I would say the weight of the scientific evidence is against that. And so even if we are eating more fruit now than we used to, and even if we are eating a wider variety of fruit, we are eating more types of fruit now than we used to, who cares? So eat your fruit. I recommend two to three servings per day and four to six servings of vegetables per day. to three servings per day and four to six servings of vegetables per day. Eat the fruit that you like. Make sure you understand energy balance, understand the importance of calories in and calories out,

and regulating your calories based on your body composition goals and needs. Understand macronutrient balance, how those calories break down into protein, carbs, and fat, and why that matters. And just try to be consistent. Try to be good enough most of the time with your diet. If we want to put a number to it and make a game out of it, let's say 80% consistency. That's the target. So 24 out of every 30 days are more or less on target. Your calories are more or less where they should be. You are getting enough protein. And on those remaining six days, just try not to go too overboard. Try not to eat 5,000 calories a day on the remaining six days. And lastly, you got to stay patient because if you are on a weight loss journey, remember that it took

more than 30 days to gain that fat that you want to lose. And so it is also going to take more than 30 days to lose it. Well, I hope you liked this episode. I hope you found it helpful. And if you did subscribe to the show, because it makes sure that you don't miss new episodes. And it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which of course then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people who may like it just as much as you. And if you didn't like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, mike at muscleforlife.com, muscleforlife.com, and let me know what I could

do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you'd like to see me do in the future. I read everything myself. I'm always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.