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Originally Posted by inavalan
Fruits are high in sugar, hence unhealthy except in very moderate quantities. You'll get diabetes and all other kind of degenerative diseases. That's a very bad option.
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Yes the calories in fruit is from simple sugars, which means that calorie content is mostly carbohydrate, and excessive consumption will leave little room within ones respective calorie allowance for protein and fats, but taking sugar in fruit does not spike insulin levels in the way an iced donut does because the fiber content subdues the rate at which the sugar is absorbed. Hence, we can't equate eating fruit with eating 'sugary food', and fruit is a healthy way of getting carbs along with a wealth of micronutrients.
If you eat fruit every 2 hours, that's maybe 5 cups of fruit a day, which with a variety would probably work out around 100g of carbs or so, which isn't particularly excessive, but I think a person would do better with some fruit and some veges, rather than that much fruit, because you'd get more food variety and a better spread of micronutrients that way. Personally I have about 2 cups of fruit a day in my smoothie and as snacks, incuding bananas which have a very high sugar content. That works out at 100g of sugar from fruit tops, which is 400 cals. I need about 150g of protein = 600 cals, which means I need extra carbs and fats to make up the 2800cals I need to maintain weight. Hence I have oats in the smoothie, rice or starchy veg at meals along with animal protien, and some sort of vege oil, peanut butter and/or fatty food like avos.
When you look at the diet in its full context, you can't say the fruit component is bad. It's actually an optimal source of carbs and micronurtrients in addition to grains, rice and vege sources.
Considering the overall view, it does me no harm at all the eat a sugary donut. Once I get the nutrients I need from health food, I get no additional benefit from getting even more, and there is room in my calorie range for a treat such as an iced donut, cake, icecream or whatever. Within context then, these treats cannot be considered 'bad foods', and this is why calling any isolated food or food group 'bad food' is a myth (but not entirely fallacious). After all, we don't eat foods in isolation. We eat food as an overall diet. If this sort of food dominates the diet, then you take a lot of calories without adequate nutrients, so we can say that's a bad diet on that basis alone.
There are no bad foods, but there are bad diets, and people who are underweight or overweight can address it by improving their diet, which does not necessitate excluding some kinds of food or food groups. It simply means prioritising a variety of health food, and making 'junk food' a very low priority.
So, excessive consumption of fruit is a factor in a bad diet even though fruit is not bad food. Fruit is very nutritious and for that reason should be part of the variety that makes up a good diet, but not so much that leads to the exclusion of other foods or food groups.
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