Question: weight loss and Fruit consumption in day

Segnosaur

Penultimate Amazing
Segnosaur
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I have a question for those with a background in medicine and/or nutrition....

A friend of mine is trying to loose weight. They have a relative that is a Nutritionist or dietitian (not sure which one, but it was something they had to train for, although I'm not sure what sort of accreditation they have.)

One of the things they were told by their relative is not to eat fruit before 4pm in the afternoon. That kind of set off some skeptic alarm bells. I know there are a lot of dietary fads; plus, occasionally small-size tests sometimes get a lot of publicity before they can get verified, and that can lead to some bad advice. I suggested that this might be the case with the 'No fruit before 4pm' but dismissed with a "you aren't the only one who knows stuff".

Seems to me that fruit at any time would be good. Yes, it has sugars (which contribute calories), but they are also sources of vitamins and fiber (and fiber can help make a person feel 'full' thus helping with hunger.) I have tried googling for it, and the few mainstream articles I found said fruit at any time is OK.

So, can anyone tell me if they've heard anything about this particular claim? Is it based on a real study? If so, what is the science behind it?
 
I've not heard this one specifically.

There are some diets which say not to eat carbohydrates after a certain time. The "17-Day-Diet" apparently said no fruit after 2.00pm

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/best-time-eat-fruit#section5

There are other diets that say that fruit is better eaten in the afternoon but not with a specific time given.

AFAIK there isn't a wealth of evidence to support either claim and it certainly has the whiff of fad-diet about it.
 
I don't know how helpful this will be but your friend should look to "lose" weight as "loose" weight is liable to cause instability.
 
I tend to go with what one doctor said - "nobody ever became fat by eating too much fruit".

I'm no expert, but it seems to me that there can be valid reasons for not eating things after certain times of day - in order to prevent them still being in the stomach while asleep - but I can't think of one reason why you shouldn't eat something before a certain time of day.

I also think the idea of that time being so rigid is a warning sign. If I get up at 5 in the morning and go to bed at 9 at night while someone else gets up at 10 in the morning and goes to bed at 2 in the morning, and we both eat at the same intervals from when we get up, then why would the time after which we can eat fruit be the same for both of us? And what about night/shift workers who are in bed at 4PM? Can they eat fruit all the time or not at all?
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
I tend to go with what one doctor said - "nobody ever became fat by eating too much fruit".......
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I think this is dangerous advice. Fruit is very high in sugar (therefore in calories), and in these modern times there is an awful lot of fruit about. It is perfectly possible to exceed your recommended daily calorie limit just by eating fruit, particularly if you take your fruit in concentrated forms such as smoothies.
 
Anything that helps control your appetite is a good thing. Even if it's a placebo of clock watching.
 
MikeG said:
I think this is dangerous advice. Fruit is very high in sugar (therefore in calories), and in these modern times there is an awful lot of fruit about. It is perfectly possible to exceed your recommended daily calorie limit just by eating fruit, particularly if you take your fruit in concentrated forms such as smoothies.
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Drinking smoothies is a different thing from eating fruit. And a quick search of the web shows that the general consensus on how many calories an apple contains is 50. The general consensus on what the average man should consume to maintain his weight is 2,500. So to do that he'd have to eat 50 apples a day.

I don't think anybody is going to do that unwittingly.

I'd say that if eating apples is putting you over your daily calorie limit, then there are probably better things you could cut out of your diet than the apples.
 
Three "cups" of orange juice would be about 20% of your total daily recommended calorie intake. Add in a couple of bananas (100 calories each) and an avocado (300+ calories), and it is perfectly possible eat an ostensibly healthy fruit-rich diet and yet take in too many calories (and this before even mentioning dried fruits). High calorie fruit.
 
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MikeG said:
Three "cups" of orange juice would be about 20% of your total daily recommended calorie intake.
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Just like with smoothies, juice isn't fruit. It's far easier to consume more calories (and less fiber) with juice than with actual fruit. It can take up to four oranges to make a cup of orange juice, so three cups of juice can be the equivalent of 12 oranges. How many people do you know who would eat 12 oranges in a day?

Sure, it's possible to consume too many calories from raw fruit, but generally speaking, raw fruit isn't the problem.
 
Ziggurat said:
......juice isn't fruit.........
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Silly and pointless splitting of hairs. You carry on, please.

"I take your point, but you're talking about a marginal situation" would be the sensible response. Who'd be silly enough to expect a sensible response around here, hey?
 
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MikeG said:
Three "cups" of orange juice would be about 20% of your total daily recommended calorie intake. Add in a couple of bananas (100 calories each) and an avocado (300+ calories), and it is perfectly possible eat an ostensibly healthy fruit-rich diet and yet take in too many calories (and this before even mentioning dried fruits). High calorie fruit.
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Avocados are also loaded with fat.
 
baron said:
It's not based on anything but silliness.
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I agree that it is probably silly. But, it would be nice to see where the claim came from, so it could be debunked properly. (Something like "it came from one study that involved 5 rats", or "there is no evidence but here is the theory behind it".)
 
A woo-friendly house guest once informed us that you shouldn't eat fruit after the evening meal. She said that all that fibre pushes the rest of the food through your guts so fast it can't be digested properly :)
 
Segnosaur said:
I agree that it is probably silly. But, it would be nice to see where the claim came from, so it could be debunked properly. (Something like "it came from one study that involved 5 rats", or "there is no evidence but here is the theory behind it".)
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I don't criticise your sceptical drive but there are so many of these nonsensical assertions knocking about that by the time you've disproved one, three others are waiting to take their place. They are all nonsense, seriously, even the ones allegedly based on studies*

There is only one rule: Eat sensibly and in moderation. And that's it.


* With the exception of diets for specific medical conditions, such as diabetes.
 
What Baron said.

(Insert pedantic ass covering acknowledging the existence of special dietary cases that have nothing to do with most people dieting to lose weight before someone brings them up for no reason)

Fad diets often work, even the silly ones, in the short term because doing something like eating only one specific type of food or only eating at specific time just tends to reduce the amount of calories you take in. But these are rarely long term diets that people can really expect to maintain.

But it all boils down to nothing more than calories in versus calories burned.
 
MikeG said:
Silly and pointless splitting of hairs. You carry on, please.
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MikeG won't see this because he has me on ignore, but IMO this isn't a case of splitting hairs because there is a significant difference between eating raw fruit and drinking smoothies or juice. As has been pointed out, a comparatively small amount of juice or smoothie may contain many large pieces of fruit.

Similarly with the dried fruit products being marketed to children these days - much more concentrated in sugar than the raw fruits.
 
JoeBentley said:
But it all boils down to nothing more than calories in versus calories burned.
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Well, it's not quite a linear relationship between the two - the body is too complicated a mechanism for it to be that simple. Amount and type of exercise makes a difference, for example.

But, yes, on the most basic level it does come down to reduced calorie intake. Your assessment of why fad diets work is right, as is baron's contention that the best way to lose weight (or maintain a healthy weight) is to eat a balanced and varied diet in which you don't indulge in gluttony. Ice cream, for example, can be part of a healthy diet, if had in moderation.

A few years ago I had an illness which laid me out and necessitated me changing my diet on doctor's orders. Going from doing a lot of exercise every day and eating lots of vegetables to doing no exercise and eating fattier foods, unsurprisingly, made me gain weight. When I was losing the weight again, if I was eating with others the fact I was on a diet would often come up. Inevitably the first question they'd ask would be "oh, what diet are you on?", to which the reply would be "just a diet. I'm eating properly, while making sure I'm ingesting fewer calories than I am using in my daily activities"*. People just couldn't seem to get their heads round the fact that I was trying (and succeeding) in losing weight by just watching what I ate, rather than cutting out carbs, or eating tonnes of red meat, or whatever the nonsense of the month may have been.

*or words to that effect.
 
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