Can you eat too much fruit?

[halcyonnwar]

I already posted this in the female nutrition section, but thought I'd repost here to get a male perspective too:

Hey everyone, I'm wondering if you can eat too much fruit. It didn't really occur to me how sugary it is until recently, and I was wondering if any of you restrict your fruit intake, or only have it after workouts or what. I have sort of been (yikes) using it as a free for all snack.

I'm not sure if you'd want to see an example of my diet or anything, but mostly what eat pints of blackberries, or chopped pineapple, etc. I basically sub it for dessert, but I have a feeling I've been overdoing it because I've been feeding a lot of sugar cravings with fruits for a while now. I'd love to see what you think about fruit in general.

Thanks for the advice, and sorry if you are reading this twice.

[lee__d]

hello,

i mean, i wouldn't be concerned with eating too much fruit, maybe if u cut down an orange tree and eat everything u could have some problems....but i would just enjoy the fruit and worry about the bad stuff. and make sure ur getting enough protein and fats, too

[snorkelman]

too much fruit? Too much for what? If you eat 1 piece of fruit during a day where you already ate your target calories for the day, then that fruit will result in weight gain, even if it is just one piece.

Similarly, if you only eat fruit and nothing else but still eat below your caloric goal, you will not gain weight. Those are the extremes.

I think Tom Venuto has addressed the realistic situation quite well in his book BFFM:

"fruit is best used as a small portion of your carbohydrate calories, not the primary source. One or two pieces of fruit a day is fine, with the remainder of your carbohydrates coming from green fibrous carbohydrates (asparagus, broccoli, etc) and complex starchy carbohydrates (such as oatmeal, brown rice and yams)."