 The best and worst fruits to support your health. Okay, as you might already know, I have three rules when it comes to consuming fruit. Number one, stick to low sugar fruits. Number two, only eat them when they're in season. Check out episode 149 or 110 to learn more about this. And number three, consume fruits in moderation, even when they're in season. Okay, the truth is the main purpose of fruit is to help us put on weight. We actually have a deep rooted desire for fruit. It turns out that great apes suffered a genetic mutation that allowed them to convert the sugar and fruit fructose into fat. In fact, great apes only gain weight during fruit season and fruit season occurs seasonally. Fruit does not ripen year-round in the jungle. We've inherited that genetic mutation so that fructose, which is the sugar in fruit in high amounts leads to all sorts of weight gain issues. Also, fructose is the main cause now of fatty liver disease, which most people that I see in my practice have. And it's one of the main causes of insulin resistance and mitochondrial dysfunction that I've talked about in previous episodes. So I do have a saying, give fruit the boot. But that's just to get your attention that there are certain fruits that we really should avoid pretty much at all costs. So what are some of these high sugar fruits to avoid? Well, some of them might surprise you. Apples, believe it or not, an apple a day does not keep the doctor away. These days, a glazed donut has about half the sugar content as an apple. Now, interestingly, a new study from Tufts University in Massachusetts suggests that ice cream is a healthier choice than a multigrain bagel and other foods like salty crackers. In fact, in the research which was just published, experts developed a food compass to rank any type of food from one to 10 based on nutrition, the higher the number, the healthier the food. When comparing foods, the study gave an ice cream cone with nuts and chocolate ice cream a 37 while a multigrain bagel with raisins received a 19 and saltine crackers got a 7. Now, ripe bananas, believe it or not, one ripe banana contains 15 grams of sugar. But if you love bananas, you don't have to give them up. Eat green bananas. Green bananas have not changed into sugar. The green banana is basically one of the best prebiotic fiber bombs there is. So eat green bananas, throw the ripe ones away. How about grapes? Now, sorry people, grapes are probably one of the worst fruits out there. They have a cup of grapes, has twice the sugar content as a Hershey's chocolate bar. Twice in one cup of grapes. There's very little fiber in modern grapes. They have been bred for sugar content. Remember, the benefits of grapes long ago were in the seeds and the skin. We've genetically modified the grapes to no longer have seeds. And now the skin, which on a small grape was most of the grape, is all stretched out. Instead, it's been replaced by all that sugar in the grape. So leave the grapes alone. Okay, with all that doom and gloom, let's get to the fruits we should eat. Now berries, particularly raspberries and blackberries, really top the list. Blueberries are getting lower and lower and lower on the list. Why? Because blueberries have been hybridized for sugar content. When I was growing up, blueberries were these little bitty things that were so bitter, you had to put a ton of sugar on that, which was wonderful. But now blueberries have been bred for sugar content. That's why you can go to the grocery store and buy organic blueberries that are the size of grapes and taste sweet. If you're going to get blueberries, get the frozen wild mountain blueberries or the small ones and you'll be quite safe. But again, remember, blueberries only ripen normally once a year, usually in the late summer and early fall. There were no 747s bringing blueberries to Costco in January from Chile. So 365 days of endless summer, even if you're eating lower-sugar fruits, is not how you were genetically programmed to handle fruit. Now there is a fruit that you can eat year-round, and that's an avocado. An avocado is actually a single-seeded berry. And the good news about an avocado is that it's mostly mono-unsaturated fat and fiber, soluble fiber. So you get all the benefits. So avocado is the one fruit you can have every day. Mulberries. Mulberries may be one of the best high-polyphenol fruits there are. They are low-sugar. They are prized in Middle Eastern and Asian foods because of their potent health benefits. They once again only last for a very short period of time, and during that time they're perfectly safe to eat. Probably the lowest commercial sugar fruit that's available year-round is a kiwi. Now a trick is eat it with the skin. Cut the ends off and eat it like an apple. You will actually get tremendous polyphenol benefit out of that skin, and it'll take you just one time to get used to the hair, but it will become an enjoyable experience. So kiwi is actually one of the lowest sugar-containing fruits. But again, don't eat it year-round. Try to eat it during the season. Finally, pomegranate seeds. Pomegranate seeds contain a really cool omega fat and have tremendous ability to uncouple and protect mitochondria. But here's the trick. Eat the seeds, not the juice. You're actually throwing away a lot of the health benefits that are in the seed, particularly the omega fat that's in it. So again, pomegranates only occur once a year, usually in the late fall, perhaps in the early winter. That's when to eat them. Okay, now remember most of our fruit that's brought from other countries is picked unripe. And if you remember from the plant paradox, unripe fruit is actually loaded with lectins, and they do not get the message from the mother plant to stop those lectins because they're no longer attached to the plant when they fully ripen. So what happens is they're brought to America unriped and then exposed to ethylene gas, which starts the ripening process, but they no longer get the reduce of lectins. Also remember, really ripe fruit is a sugar bomb. Fruit was designed by the plant to tempt you to eat it and to take its seeds elsewhere and deposit them with a generous dollop of fertilizer, your poop. So the plant is trying to get you to eat its fruit for its own nefarious purpose, and don't listen to that siren song. All right, to conclude, stick to low sugar fruits. Number two, only eat them in season. We have never been exposed to fruit 365 days a year in the past, and please remember that fruit is nature's candy and approach it as you would any other candy. Also remember, a cup of grapes has more candy than a Hershey's candy bar. Choose accordingly.