This was one of the headlines in today’s Guardian newspaper. I really don’t know where to start, but this has got to be one of the worst articles I’ve ever read. The lowest point was this statement, made by Tom Sanders, director of the Nutritional Sciences Division at King’s College London. He was talking about fruit smoothies:

“If you liquidise it into goo it’s just like drinking ordinary Coke. Or worse, actually,”

I don’t think so. Fruit has a vast array of different nutrients; minerals, some protein and lots of vitamins including Vitamin C, which may be more important than conventional nutritionists realise. Look at the nutrition of coke. It’s got zero vitamins, zero protein and lots of sugar and some nasty acid. Work out for yourself which is best!

The articles finishes with the following:

“The way you’ve got to look at fruit is that it’s better to eat fruit than biscuits, cakes and puddings, because there’s very little energy value in it and it’s not fattening,” he [Sanders] says. “A bit of sugar gives you a lift and takes the pangs of hunger away. But it’s not full of all sorts of other nutrients as well. That’s a myth”

The nutrition is fruit is a myth is it? Has he looked at nutritiondata.com recently? Maybe he should try it. You can enter any fruit and it will list all the vitamins and minerals they contain. For example, one large kiwi fruit gives you 68.2mg of vitamin C, that’s 114% of the RDA.

The bit of the article they do get right is about ready prepared fruit (like sliced apples, etc) is not as good for you as it starts to loose nutrition from the moment it’s been cut.

If you want to read the whole article, it’s here, but don’t worry, you are almost certainly not eating too much fruit!