Cherries, peaches, plums and grapes, raspberries, blueberries, watermelon who can resist the cool fruits of summer? Well, since completing a 12 week detox under the guidance of Dr Zenon Gruba that excluded fruit from my diet I am re-thinking the best time of day to eat fruit.
Following the detox Dr Gruba advises eating fresh fruit only in hot weather and only before breakfast, never after a meal. The reason for this is the food you eat in a meal – meat, grains, vegetables etc; - take longer to digest than fruit and the fruit can ferment easily leading to bloating and flatulence.
In traditional Chinese Medicine fruit is said to be cooling, hence the recommendation to eat it in warm weather. In cool weather, Chinese Medicine practice is to cook fruits in season and eat them warm.
While we’re talking fruit, let’s talk about fruit juice. If you juice fruit at home pay attention to the amount of pulp you throw in the bin (or compost), that’s the fibre you are missing out on. Better to drink some water then eat the fruit.
Bottled fruit juice is almost a post on its own but I’ll cover it here, it is something I generally steer clear of and give it to my children only occasionally. Even if you can find bottled juice that is organic and contains no ADDED sugar, fruit juice still contains sugar. I hear you say ‘but its natural sugar’ sugar is sugar. Children are happy to drink water unless they are given juice from a young age then they will ask for juice, stick to water and protect your child’s teeth from tooth decay.
Fruit contains fructose, a simple sugar found in most plants. In our ancestors day fruit was scarce and strictly local and seasonal. Today fruit is picked early, ripened in a cool store and transported all around the country or world and often eaten out of season. A couple of pieces of fruit eaten on their own is not going to overload your system with fructose, however fructose is an ingredient in many processed foods (soft drinks, breakfast cereals, yoghurt, ice cream to name a few) so people are inadvertently overloading their bodies with fructose. Another reason to avoid processed foods. Our bodies are not designed for a high sugar diet. Fructose is processed in the liver and any overload is stored as fat. For more information about fructose and sugar and the effects is has on our health read this article .
