Does fruit make you obese? big fat lies...

Credit: http://artemistics.files.wordpress.com

 I recently came across a very disturbing article by UK 'nutritionist' Zoe Harcombe, the article was titled "Fruit is fuelling the obesity epidemic" and it aims to warn anyone who needs to lose weight, away from eating fruit.

Readers of my blog will know that I promote fruit as nature's wonder food for health and beauty, it is one of our most fundamentally nutritious foods and contains many essential vitamins and anti-oxidants, it is also our healthiest source of carbohydrates.

Zoe's provides no scientific sources or citations for her statements and therefore I can only conclude that she has some strange hidden agenda to stop people eating fruit. She tells us that she is 'horrified' when she hears of parents trying to give their children fruit and offers us trite statements from non-nutritional experts about how giving fruit juice to a child is akin to offering them Coca-Cola or beer!

She claims that fruit has little nutritional value and so is not worth it's 'fattening' properties.

Let the debunking begin!

The images of the data aren't very clear in the video so I have reproduced them here:

Vitamins in Beer

Vitamins in Coca-Cola

Vitamins in fresh Orange Juice

So is fresh fruit juice really as bad as berr and soda? I think not.

Zoe also says that fruit is basically un-nutritious and is only good for Vitamin C and Potassium. Let's see how wrong she is:

So this is the data for a snack of mangoes I often have in the afternoon. Just 2 mangoes - a mere 400kcal. Wow is that 242% of my pro-vitaminA, 72% of my folates, alsmost half of my B6 and 60% of my Vitamin E (plus a generous whack of Vitamin C).

So this is the vitamin data for a Canteloup melon, which is quite a small melon and at less than 300kcal just a snack. But what a nutritious fruit is is: 918% of pro-vitamin A, almost half my folates, good amounts of the B vitamins and a huge helping of Vitamin C.

This is the mineral data for my melon snack, as you can see for a snack of less than 300kcals if has a good selection of minerals too.

Here's the vitamin data for a small meal of 5 nectarines, plenty of vitamin A, B3, C and E

Here's the vitamin & mineral data for my favourite breakfast smoothie of oranges and mango. Oustanding amounts of A, Folates, B1 and C, super amounts of B5 and B6 and good amounts of B2, B3 and E.

Plenty of bioavailable Calcium, Copper and Potassium, Good amounts of Magnesium and Manganese. Good ratio of Calcium to Phosphorous 2:1 (meat is high phosphorous and low calcium which causes calcium loss from the body)

As you can see Zoe's statements about fruit are simply untrue.

Obesity is well researched and the causes remain the same; high-fat, high-refined sugar junk food diet, alcohol and lack of exercise.

Family expenditure on fruit and vegetables has decreased while spending on junk foods, soda and alcohol has risen [Family Spending Survey 2003-2004] as quoted in this recent Daily Mail article 'Blowout Britain'

In beauty,
Star XOXO