Fruit has a very positive reputation. But the story about fruit is actually more complicated. The other things in fruit are good, but the sugar in fruit is bad. Sugar doesn’t magically become innocent by being inside of fruit, though if there is enough fiber in a piece of fruit, that might slow down the absorption of the sugar somewhat.
In her Wall Street Journal article “Is Fruit Getting Sweeter?” Bee Wilson writes:
Is modern fruit bred to be sweeter than in the past? The short answer is yes …. Some of the most powerful evidence that fruit is sweeter than before comes from zoos. In 2018, it was reported that Melbourne Zoo in Australia had stopped giving fruit to most of its animals because cultivated fruit was now so sweet that it was causing tooth decay and weight gain. The monkeys at the zoo were weaned off bananas onto a lower-sugar vegetable-based diet.
Among fruit breeders, the word ‘quality’ is now routinely used as a synonym for ‘high in sugar’ (though firmness, color and size are also considerations)…. ‘in general, the sugar content’ of many fruits are now higher than before ‘owing to continuous selection and breeding.’ …
… the real problem with modern fruit is that it has become yet another sweet thing in a world awash with sugar. Even grapefruits, which used to be bracingly bitter, are sometimes now as sweet as oranges.
Thus, fruit is being bred to be less and less healthy. I hope this can be reversed. For those people who realize how unhealthy sugar is, it is possible to breed fruit that is tasty in other ways. This is something I predict people will become more and more interested in in the future.
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