The Truth About Fruit & Whether It’s Healthy with JJ Virgin

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Welcome to the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show with celebrity nutrition expert, Fitness hall of Famer and four time New York Times best selling author JJ Virgin. JJ is a warrior mom whose knowledge and expertise have helped change hundreds of thousands of lives with over 3.5 million podcast downloads and appearances on Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, the Today Show, Rachael Ray, Larry King Love Whoa, whoa, whoa.

This show is about you, not about me. I want to help you find practical, real world ways to dial in your health and mindset so you can finally lose that weight and feel strong and energized. Stop settling for less than your personal best. It's time to find out how to look and feel better than ever. And I'll be right here with you the whole way.

Hey, it's J.J. and you got me solo today. Now I'm gonna go on a bit of a rant. I'm warning you in advance it's coming because I get asked all the time. Well, besides, just what should I eat? What about fruit? I mean, fruit's all natural, right? I can use as much fruit as I want. Well, I'm going to tell you today how much fruit you should eat, what kind of fruit you should eat, what form of fruit you should eat. We're going to be going into all of that and be sure to grab the show notes@jjvirgin.com Fruitrant Yep. Jjvirgin.com Fruitrant Because I've got something cool to share with you there. I'm going to share with you my Sugar Impact scales. And I've got a scale that shows you the different fruits and if they are green means go, yellow means slow and red means stop. So you'll be able to get those there. Now before we dive into that, I want to do a shout out. Actually, this is an interesting review today and I really appreciate this review from Alexandra. It says six kudos and one suggestion. It's from Alexandra Paul. She says, I am a health coach and I love this podcast for several reasons. The length of each podcast is perfect.

Just like her body.

There's no fat in this show. That's funny, Alexandra. Now, because each interview is only 15 to 20 minutes long, JJ gets right to the point and asks the questions that we listeners want to know the answers to. If you want to learn about a variety of ways to get healthy, this is a great show to listen to. The guests are experts in a wide variety of health disciplines and philosophies. JJ is very upbeat and positive in every show. Her enthusiasm is one of the reasons I listen to her podcast. When I swim, I am able to hear the audio through the water because.

Her energy is so strong. Wow.

Like, the force is strong with me.

All right, that's crazy cool.

She speaks honestly about her own personal struggles and the mistaken advice she has given clients in the past. Yeah, and disclaimer. Sorry about that, clients. But, you know, one of the things I've always been really aware of is I stay up on all the latest science and some of the stuff that we were told way back when, like, you know, fat is making us fat and you need to lower your fat dramatically and you got to do loads and loads of cardio and you need to work out at least an hour every day. All that kind of craziness I have whenever I grab anything and I can really look at the research and test it out, I am going to be shouting it far and wide now. Next thing she says is JJ approaches each interview with the point of view of the listener. When things get too technical, she asks for clarification. Even though she understands it all perfectly well, she's always thinking about us listeners and making sure that we are getting what we need from the discussion. JJ is very non judgmental. You can tell her anything and she would not be shocked or shaming. Well, deal is, I've seen just about everything.

Alexandra.

Oh my gosh, I should just do something like at some point, Confessions of a Nutrition and Fitness Expert or some of the crazy stuff I've seen, especially like on Freaky Eaters, I mean, and Dr. Phil. Amazing stuff behind the scenes on these reality shows.

That would be fun.

Anyway, I really appreciate that about her. She really comes off as such a lovely person. This again is what Alexandra is saying now. She says, I have one criticism of the show. 99.9% of the guests are Caucasian. She occasionally interviews people from Canada or Europe. There's a good mix of men and women in her experts, but I think the show would be well served to include some folks from other cultures and backgrounds and their health practices. And here's the Deal. Alexandra.

I agree.

Hey, here's the first thing. I'm from Berkeley, California.

I grew up.

I was so fortunate to grow up in just kind of a mass of all these different cultures where we had a very diverse high school. My best friends growing up were all sorts of races and religions. I was exposed to everything, and that's what I thought was normal. Then I leave there and go that, like, how fortunate was I? I would love to share more of that. So if anyone has any ideas. I've pretty much been limited to a little bit of UK and the US and Canada. I'd say we're about 80% Caucasian. Maybe 70%. And that's not out of any sort of planning whatsoever. I'm open to everybody and everything. I like to show all sorts of different viewpoints, and I have a lot of great friends. I put on an event every year called the Mindshare Summit. That's for health experts, doctors, health entrepreneurs. So I have access to some of the most amazing people out there, but I'm always looking for more. So, hey, I'd love it if you jumped on. We read all the reviews, so jump on if you want, leave a review and make some recommendations. Or you can always send them to us@supportjvirgin.com we would love it. Hey, by the way, while you're over there leaving that review, be sure you also subscribe and share it with some pals. And I'd love to do a shout out for you too.

So you leave a review, I shout you out. It's fruit rant time. Time. Okay, here's.

Here's what happened.

I was doing a podcast interview with this super cool guy, Jonathan Levi, and he, we were talking all about health and health hacks and intermittent fasting and food intolerance. And he goes, all right, well, what about fruit? And I was like, it's coming. How much fruit can I eat? Fruit's okay, right? And, you know, I'm. I'm looking at what happened years ago, and, you know, I've been around for a while here. Not my first rodeo. And it used to be that fruit was considered this free food. It was great. You could just fruit for dessert, fruit, you know, in between meals, snack on. Fruit, fruit, fruit, fruit. I want you to think of this, and this is actually a very interesting concept, when you sleep. Let's go back a thousand years ago when we did not have lights or alarm clocks. And so we would sleep longer in the winter when the days were shorter, and we would sleep less in the summer when the Days were longer, right? When you're sleeping less, you're more insulin resistant. So you're actually better at storing fat when you're sleeping less. When you're sleeping more, you're better at burning off fat. In the summer is when we have all of this fruit. So if you look at it, what did nature do? Nature created a system whereby we could have access to a lot of fruit, which was our source of fructose back then, our key source of fructose, because back then we didn't have high fructose corn syrup and all this ridiculous and agave syrup and all this crystalline fructose that we were putting into our foods, trying to pretend they were health foods, right? We were getting it from the fruit we ate. That's where we would have gotten our fructose. And so during the summer, we could gorge on fruit because we were hardwired to seek out sugar. We would sleep less and we would store fat so that in the winter when we were sleeping more and we had less access to food and definitely didn't have access to fruit, we could burn off that stored fat for fuel. We don't really want to do that now. So think about what fructose is. So fruit, it comes with fructose, sucrose and glucose, right? That's what we get from fruit. We have fructose is from fruit and fructose is. We get from that, we get glucose and fructose, right? So we have fructose, we have that split into. Or we have sucrose and we have fructose and sucrose. Fructose and glucose spread into it. All right? So from that you've got glucose that's going to raise blood sugar and raise insulin. And then you have fructose, which doesn't raise blood sugar. So for a long time we thought, oh, this is great, we should use fruit sugar. We should use fructose as a safe sweetener for diabetics because it doesn't raise blood sugar, but it turns out it actually makes you insulin resistant. It doesn't raise blood sugar, so it doesn't trigger insulin response, but it perturbs insulin metabolism. And because it doesn't trigger the insulin response, you're still hungry. It doesn't trigger satiety either. Instead, it's going to the liver. Now on the way, it makes the small intestine more permeable. It's a very glycating sugar. So it's very aging seven times more than, say, gluten and glucose would be because again, remember, sucrose fructose, glucose, Right? So, but the fructose goes to the liver where if it can't be turned to glucose and stored as glycogen energy, and let's assume it can't because there's not a lot of space in the liver, you're going to get fatty liver, you're going to get a congested liver that can't now burn fat, which is not what you want. If you want to make a lab rat hypertensive, feed it a bunch of apple juice concentrate. That's the fastest way to make it hypertensive and to make it pre diabetic. Now, I'm not saying this to say.

Hey, no fruit, no, don't eat fruit.

I'm saying that fruit is not a free food and there are times that you shouldn't eat fruit and there's ways that you shouldn't eat fruit. Okay, so when should you not eat fruit? If you are diabetic, insulin resistant, hypertensive fruit is not going to be a great thing for you. Like you're going to want to move from being a sugar burner to a fat burner that I talk about in my Sugar Impact diet book and become more insulin sensitive before you start loading up with a lot of fructose. So if you've got any of those issues, zero to one piece of fruit a day. Piece of fruit. I didn't say fruit juice, I didn't say dried fruit, and I didn't say fruit syrup or jam.

We'll talk about that.

But you keep it down low. If you are metabolically flexible, you can go four to six hours between meals. You easily burn fat off your waist, you don't have belly fat, you're active every day, then one to two pieces of fruit a day is fine, maybe even up to three. Here's what you want to do when you're choosing that fruit though, and this is super duper important. First of all, don't think fruit is some kind of free food that you snack on between meals. Because if you're snacking on fruit, remember blood sugar, insulin. So the glucose side of it's going to raise blood sugar and insulin. The fructose side is going to the liver. And you know, ideally, if you're very active, you've got place for that glycogen store in the liver. But if you fill it up, guess what? And the more fructose you eat turns out, the better your body gets at turning fructose into fat. So what you want to focus on, if you are eating Fruit is eating whole fruit. Now, I really love in smoothies, frozen berries, because generally when you're eating frozen fruit, it's been picked at the height of potency, peak potency, and frozen. So that's super cool. But what you don't want to do is this. You don't want to eat dried fruit because all you've done is condense the sugar and generally they're going to dry fruit when it's a little bit on the more sweet side. Right. And then you condense it and now it's really super duper sweet. So I think of dried fruit like fruit candy. And then you also don't want to do jam or fruit syrups like apple juice concentrate used as a sweetener that's got more fructose than maple syrup. Right. So you don't want to do anything like that because apple juice concentrates just like a syrup. You don't want to do jams. And they'll put on the jam no sugar added because they can put no sugar added if it's just fruit. But fruit, if you flip it over, is sugar. Right? So now the good thing about fruit versus say jam juice or dried fruit. Well, specifically jam or juice is that you're going to get the fiber with it. Either way, you're getting phytonutrients, but when you eat fruit fresh or frozen, you're getting the fiber with it as well. That will temper the blood sugar response. So dried fruit is candy, jam or syrup as syrup. And then look at, or a Sunday topping, basically. And then look at at fruit juice as a soda, basically. They unwrapped the fruit, they took out the fiber and they gave you everything to hijack your blood sugar. So you especially want to stay away from that, especially things like apple juice. Apple juice, again, has more fructose than a soda. I mean, that's just crazy. And you wouldn't sit down and eat four apples, but you're going to sit down and easily drink that in some juice. So really be careful with that. Now, I might put a couple sliced strawberries in some sparkling water or squeeze in a little bit of pink grapefruit juice or tangerine juice into a sparkling water. Although I really love shout out to my girlfriend, Kara Golden, I'll just drink her sparkling hint water. But be really careful with juice. It super adds up. And again, you don't have the fiber because what are you getting when you're eating fruit? You're getting the phytonutrients and that's why you want to eat from a rainbow of different fruits. So you're getting those phytonutrients and you are getting the fiber. When you unpack it into juice, you just took all that fiber away. And it's really easy when it's dried or it's juice or it's jam to overload it. Now one more place that you have to be super careful is when they've put it into Greek style yogurt or almond yogurt or coconut yogurt. First off, just make your own coconut yogurt. You're not going to get any of the sugar and then add in fresh fruit or frozen berries.

Way better.

And I especially love organic, dark, unsweetened, organic cherries. Oh my gosh, those are my favorite. We always keep those in the freezer. But when you get it already done like that in the store, they put a load of sugar in it and it might just be fruit juice concentrate. And then they say no sugar added, which is really a dupe. So final thing is to look at how ripe fruit is. As it gets riper, it gets sweeter, the sugar gets more dense. Here's a big takeaway. When I was writing the sugar impact diet, I put berries and citrus down on low sugar impact. Then I put apples and pears on medium sugar impact because of the fructose. And I put the tropical fruits there, mangoes and papayas and pineapples, which have great enzymes but they had a little bit more sugar. And then the dried sugar, the dried fruit and the jams and the juices all went onto the high sugar impact. I've actually changed my thinking on bananas and ripe bananas would be medium sugar impact, but green bananas would go to low sugar impact because of the resistant starch in them. So resistant starch is called that because it resists digestion. It's the highest places you're going to find resistant starch or green bananas, potatoes especially, they've been boiled and cooled, legumes and oats. And when you eat these, it goes to large intestine. It's used by the gut there, the gut microbiome to make food. And it produces short chain fatty acids that can help you burn fat. It also helps with blood sugar control and insulin satiety and or insulin sensitivity and satiety. But super good for feeding the gut microbiome, helping your body burn fat. So do not fear the banana. What I do with these, here's my little banana hack is I do green bananas and I put them into baggies in the freezer and I'll Put off take a third of a banana and put it into my smoothie because a little bit of that and a little bit of avocado makes for really good texture. So I'll use my all in one Paleo shake which is my bone broth protein with some extra fiber because I.

Always like to add more fiber with.

Some avocado frozen because that makes the shake thicker with a little bit of green banana. And that's a really good mix of soluble, insoluble and resistant fiber and resistant starch. So there's an easy, easy hack for you. We will put that recipe in the show notes My resistant Starch smoothie and again, the big takeaway from today is if you are metabolically healthy one to two pieces of fruit a day. You know, occasionally go to three, but I would keep it more around two. I count them into my slow low carb category in food. I have people eating protein, fat and fiber from non starchy vegetables and a little bit of slow low carb. And generally I'll have the fruit in a smoothie. That's the easiest way to go with that. And if you are struggling with diabetes, hypertension, insulin resistance, 0 to 1 pieces of fruit until you get that under control. All right now after the break, we'll be answering listeners questions, so stay with me.

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All right, so welcome back. Now, I get asked a lot about fruit, as you can tell from that rant. And I want to give you a concept that we don't talk about enough. That's really important, not just regarding fruit, but regarding nutrition in general. And that is that we should be eating seasonal, local, organic, which then means we're going to be rotating our foods. Now, what's super cool is that a lot of the stores like now, Whole Foods, et cetera, it used to be you had to go to the farmer's market or join a collective in order to get local produce. But a lot of these stores now feature local produce, feature local farmers, which is so awesome because here's the thing, if it's the middle of winter and they have fresh peaches in your store.

I'm just willing to bet that they.

Were not local, that they got flown across the world to get to you. And what I want you to really focus on is if you want to have peaches in the winter, hey, here's what you do. And it's an easy solution. Buy them frozen. And I love frozen fruit for a couple reasons. Number one, because you can have it any time of year. Number two, because it's picked at the peak of season. And number three, you can make sure that you get it organic because sometimes you might go in and they go, they got nothing organic right now. And hey, here's the thing. And we'll put this in the show notes. Environmentalworkinggroup.org Clean 15 Dirty Dozen There are certain foods like apples and berries. Do not eat those if they are not organic. Berries are like little pesticide sponges. So you want to make sure you're getting organic.

And ideally you are rotating.

You're not having the same thing every day. We're always mixing up our smoothies with the things that we rotate in. We have a ton of frozen fruit. And also I will make a resistant starch smoothie. And you're gonna hear about this more as we start to get into this new breakthrough carbon tolerance program in in the sugar impact diet. But I'll freeze bananas that we get green so they have higher resistant starch. So you can freeze fruit which makes better consistency for your smoothing. You can freeze vegetables to throw in there as well. But you know, freezing is fantastic because it allows you to rotate, allows you to eat local, allows you to be seasonal but still kind of have during the winter that you wouldn't normally have access to.

See how well that worked.

And you also then can have a lot of different colors. Remember, all the different colors represent different phytonutrients. Super important. All right, so remind you again if you have not left a review yet big ask to do it so I can do a shout out for you. And while you're over there, be sure you subscribe and share this with a friend so you never miss any goodness and grab the goodness of the show. Notes jjvirgin.com fruitrant See you next time.

Bye.

That's all for this episode of the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show, which marks another step towards a healthier body and mind. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the show and we'll talk to you next week.

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