| By Dr. Brett M. Carr, February 11, 2009 |
Dr. Brett M. Carr is a Clinical Nutritionist and Certified Chiropractic Sports Physician. An Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Bridgeport, Dr. Carr maintains a private practice in Fairfield, CT, and can be reached at 203-256-9971or drbrettmcarr@yahoo.com.
Tell me one person you know who became diabetic as a result of eating too much fruit! I am always asking this question of those with an interest in health, professional or not, because I am continually amazed at the number of my patients or students afraid to eat fruit. “It’s high in sugar”, one student states. “Do you know the number of carbs it contains”, another asks. Or the one I’ve heard from patients more than once, “my nutritionist told me not to eat fruit”.
We’ve come so far from the basics when it comes to understanding nutrition in this country that we now question the benefit of eating fruit. Amazingly so, since it’s a simple, wonderful item, loved by infant and adult alike, notorious for it’s presence in a certain Eden garden, and even present in literature over the ages, as it has drawn comparisons to love, lust, pleasure, and the sweet things in life. And yet, in the “carbo craze” of recent years, the health benefits of fruit have fallen into question. I’m not entirely sure why.
Certainly, we are going through a period of great difficulty when it comes to the health of Americans. According to the Center for Disease Control, in 1991 4 of 45 states had obesity prevalence rates of 15-19%. None had rates above 20%. By the year 2000, all 50 states had rates above 15%, and 35 had rates 20% or more. Diseases like Metabolic Syndrome (characterized by a constellation of disorders including obesity, high blood pressure, and elevated blood fat and sugar levels) have become common. Today, 2/3 of Americans are overweight, and more than 80% of those with type 2 diabetes are overweight. So, I guess there is no surprise as to our collective health concern, particularly when it comes to our diet.
When searching for a cause to our collective obesity, finger pointing abounds. And I would have to say, rightly so. Is it that kids are less active? Certainly, for those of us who grew up when it was considered safer to play outside and the first video game was still under development, it was common to be running around until 9 at night. Who can forget those mothers’ voices, screaming from the front door, telling you your evening fun had ended? Or the hours upon hours of building snow forts after a major storm, only returning home when frostbite was knocking on the door?
We can look at our portion size, and how it has increased over the past 2 decades. Or our food choices, which now includes increasing quantities of refined foods like candy, cake and cookies, and less whole foods. We might even look at the consumption of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), which has increased in the American diet (according to the USDA) from almost none in 1974, to about 60 lbs. per capita per year in 2002. There is enough of a concern about the possible ill effects of HFCS that the Corn Refiners Association felt the need to develop a website and marketing campaign to fend off the assault concerned consumers.
However, my topic of choice today is none of the above. It is the simple fruit. Although it has been ridiculed and tossed aside to the protein gods, I would argue that this is a case of the baby being thrown out with the bathwater. In fact, there is copious evidence of the health benefits of fruit, with much of that evidence being in the prevention of the exact disorders for which people are avoiding fruit (i.e., diabetes, elevated insulin levels, and metabolic syndrome). A 2007 study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (AJCN) showed that a “healthy diet”, which included a high intake of fruit, caused a reduced risk of both diabetes and heart attack when studied over a 15 year period. A 2008 study in the Journal of Diabetes Care came to the same conclusion: that a diet including fruit was associated with a lower risk of diabetes.
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