The Benefits of Fruits: No Celebrity Status Needed to Enjoy This Healthy, Juicy Loophole

What does a Minnesota Bar called Barnacle Bar have to do with the benefits of fruits?

Minnesota bars in 2007 were struggling to get patrons because of new anti-smoking laws that prevented people from enjoying the murderous cocktail of drinking and smoking.

No one is really game to get tipsy with friends at a bar, but then have to step outside into -10 degree weather to light up.

Just some actors getting into character…

Well the owners at Barnacle Bar got crafty and combed through the law to find a loophole. They found out if a person was an actor in a play and your character smoked, then you could smoke your stogie in public establishments.

So Barnacle Bar instituted an “ongoing live performance” where everyone in the bar were actors and required them to smoke to get into character. Talk about method acting.

The law was pretty vague on what “stage performances” meant or what could be deemed as “professional actors”. So Barnacles Bar all of sudden was a bastion of improv and arts. Minnesota lawmakers realized quickly they would have to be a little more specific in the future.

When it comes to your health, there is a bit of a loophole that you can use as well during those time when you want to be naughty and you have that unbearable sweet tooth craving. And the great part is you don’t have to be a “celebrity” or show a Screen Actors Guild card to eat it. It’s fruit.

Fruit is one of those rare sweet treats that helps “feed the need” while also providing some value to your body. It is one of the best benefits of fruit.  If you are smart with it, as we will talk about, it will help during cravings and not backfire on you.

What are the Benefits of Fruits?

So what are the health benefits of fruits?  The health benefits of fruits are actually huge.  Fruit provide several essential factors for optimal health:

• minerals,
• vitamins, and
• antioxidants.

Let’s break down each of these three:

Minerals

Fruit helps more than just Pac-Man.

The minerals in fruit are like those Lincoln logs we talked about for protein, amino acids. These fruit benefits help with some of those same structural aspects of your body such as your bones and teeth.

One of the major things the fruit sugar, fructose, impacts at right doses are hormones. This is one of the most subtle health benefits of fruit.  Fruit assists with raising testosterone. This helps to fight against depression, have a little more sexual buzz without the Viagra, and just overall better energy and strength to be active with your family and assertive at work. So it helps turn you into a professional athlete without the roids.

Fruit is also a master at improving thyroid hormone levels, which improves growth especially for kids. It also helps to burn more energy in order to lose more fat. Fruit also speeds up neurotransmitter activity to help with faster reaction, better attention, faster learning, longer memory, and mind bullets. The bottom line is without ample minerals in the diet, our bodies and our brains don’t work very well.

Vitamins

The nutritional benefits of fruits are built around the vitamins they have.  Fruit is loaded with vitamins that are kinda important for mineral metabolism. They help with bone and muscle tissue regeneration and growth. This is especially important after working out in order for your muscles to get glycogen repletion (getting energy back into your muscles).

It also helps with digestive enzyme production.  These enzymes are some of the major benefits of eating fruits. Remember that dairy, legumes, and grains have lectin protein that is hard for our bodies to break down and can cause terrible damage and stress in our intestinal lining. Fruit helps to take care of this digestion process. That doesn’t mean you can go eat a bunch of dairy, legumes, and grains if you are eating fruit. But it does say that fruit is helpful in this leaky gut issue.

Fruit is a great source of calcium, magnesium, vitamin C, Folate, vitamin A, and decent for certain B vitamins like Vitamin B6. I could go through a bajillion reasons why these are great for you, but I think you already know this.

What is a bit of an unknown little secret is that your body does a better job at taking advantage of those nutrients in fruit compared to say dairy. Your body deals with an acid-base balance issue. As you eat more bases like fruit, you retain more of the nutrients in the foods and use it to benefit your body. As you eat more acids like dairy, you excrete (fancy word for pee) more of those nutrients. So not only does your body get more nutrients through fruit, but it retains more of those nutrients through that same source.

Antioxidants

If you have ever been involved in some health potion MLM, there is a pretty good chance you have heard the phrase antioxidants. While the health potion may not be real, the antioxidants are very real.

No Bernie Madoff scam when it comes to fruit.

Antioxidants fight free radical damage to your cells as molecules become unstable. This becomes a chain reaction effect as more cells deteriorate in your body. Think vampires, zombie mutation, etc. This is what is going on when your body ages faster (ok maybe not the zombie thing).  But your body does deteriorate as cells oxidate. This can be from what you eat, the chemicals you put on and in your body, smoking, taking baths in a nuclear reactor, or trying to use a transformer as a jungle gym. Highly recommend against the last two.

By eating these colorful fruits it helps our bodies reduce oxidative damage to our cells and can reverse or prevent future damage. Think of it like a Zombie blood transfusion or stabbing the main vampire in the heart to turn the henchmen vampires back into normal people.  I don’t know of any MLM promising that.  Fruit might not stop us from turning into a vampire or zombie, but it helps to keep us very human.

Barring a zombie apocalypse or a vampire invasion, fruit’s main purpose is to help slow aging, lower risk of chronic diseases like cancer according to the National Cancer Institute and others, and lower the risk of other degenerative diseases like arthritis, Alzheimer’s, and even autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis.  And what is nice is you don’t have to build some MLM down line to eat it!

Wait…Doesn’t Fruit Have Sugar in It?

Ahhh…that sweet, sensual taste from fruit. Why does it taste so good?

Well because of an ingredient called fructose. You may have heard about fructose and it’s equal sugar counterpart sucrose (table sugar) and it’s bad effects. There is a chemically altered version of fructose called high fructose corn syrup. Again, not very different from fructose and how it acts in the body.

You may also have heard that all of these sugars are toxins. It is true!

Fructose is a toxin because it spikes insulin levels causing you to retain more fat, pounding your liver, and leads to obesity, diabetes and many other diseases.

It also is pretty addictive stuff. The insulin spiking stymies other hormones like leptin and PYY that help you know when you have eaten enough while at the same time triggering the same dopamine levels in your brain as crack or alcohol.

This is why we love this toxin. We love it enough to go out of our way to find it at 1am at night. And don’t tell me you haven’t gotten up at 1am to drive 5-10 minutes to a store to get some donuts!

Your brain may be saying, “So wait. This seems really bad! Maybe sugar isn’t that great after all. What ‘loophole’ are you talking about here Cade? A faster way to death?!?!”

Actually some of the biggest benefits of fruits and vegetables are not what they do, but what they don’t do.

Hold your britches.

While fruit has fructose in it, which is a toxin, it is a smaller dose than sugar products.  Fruit also comes with the antidote: I give you indigestible fiber.

Fiber-containing carbs also contain a great deal of water which works with the fiber to slow down the digestion of these carbs causing a steadier blood sugar level. In fact, fruit has almost twice as much fiber as whole grains according to Dr. Loren Cordain. This will prevent that easy insulin spiking we talked about.  This is prominent in both fruit and vegetables.

At the same time what makes carbs so great is that they provide necessary energy to maintain your glycogen levels and sustain energy. This is especially the case if you are involved in high endurance training like running marathons or a modern day version of The Hunger Games.

As you start eating more fruits, it not only satiates that trigger for fructose, but also tells your brain that you are full. The further you move toward fruits and away from table sugar and high fructose corn syrup, the more sensitive your taste buds become to the sweetness of fruits.

Think of it like your eyes adjusting to minimal light in a room and being able to see your surroundings more clearly in the darkness. It is less light, but in some ways you can see more. This is the same thing that happens when we pull away high fructose corn syrup and sucrose and move toward natural carbs like fruit and vegetables that are filled with fiber.

Be Careful with This Loophole

Now the Barnacle Bar got in trouble with their continuous performance of “Smokin’ Aces” because they over did it. Every night was improv night and the state government felt burned. The Man wasn’t going to let Barnacle Bar get away with it. Minnesota lawmakers and Barnacle Bar eventually got tangled up in fines and a good deal of litigation. If you are smart with fruit, then you won’t have it backfire on you and you won’t lose out on the benefits of fruits.

Be careful…too much fruit can be a bad thing.

In spite of this loophole, you still want to limit fruit, even though it has fiber, because it has fructose. Fructose will still do it’s thing and there can definitely be “too much fruit”. This is especially the case if you are trying to lose fat.

Even the fruits we eat today compared to hundreds of years ago are now year around and in abundance with a variety of kinds. That is a huge difference than what our ancestors were used to with seasonal fruit. We have only been really cultivating fruit for the past thousand years and on top of that we have genetically bred fruit to be much sweeter than the fruit that shows up in the wild. So this is all the more reason to watch your fruit intake.

Being Smart, Being Conservative

So how can you be smart about the amount of fruit you are eating? Just like with any other food, genetics and goals play such a big deal in this. The safe and smart route for anyone will be the same one I recommend to the person trying to lose fat. If fat loss is your goal, then limit it to 1-2 pieces or maybe even no fruit.

I would try eating no fruit for a month or two if you are struggling with obesity, diabetes, depression, or any fertility issues. Then reintroduce fruit gradually and see what you can handle.

Do you start putting on more fat? Is your energy draining? If so pull back.

Some of you may realize that you didn’t win the genetic lottery and in order to get the most optimal success you should remove fruit altogether. Some of you will be able to eat as much fruit as you want and be in great shape with exercise and a diet rounded out with protein, vegetables, and fats.

If you can’t eat fruit, don’t worry. Any nutrients you need in fruit you can get the proper amounts from vegetables, protein, and fat. Fruit is the attractive sister to vegetables, but extremely high maintenance. Vegetables have a higher thermic effect than fruit and less fructose. This means it burns more fat and retains less of that puffy body insulation. We will talk more about this in the future.

So there you have it: a get out of jail free card (well at least for most of you). It is just a matter of how much and how often you can use this loophole. Be smart with it and tinker to see what works well with your body. And if you are smart about it, you can fill your fix and not have to fake being a celebrity to do so.

About Cade

Cade is the founder of Know My Body. Sorry...no doctor degree, fancy gym, multi-million dollar fitness program, or label as a self-proclaimed health guru of biblical proportions. He is a common guy just like you. Maybe that helps him get you a bit better.

He has worked the past several years trying to get a grasp of "health knowledgeries" from the perspective of a person working a 9 to 5 job and dealing with the normal and not-so-normal challenges that life gives. Visit our About Page to chew on some more knowledge about Cade and how we want to help you at Know My Body.