What Happens to Your Body if You Eat Only Fruits for 30 Days? Holistic Health Expert Reveals
Lately, terms like “healthy diet,” “plant-based diet,” and “wholesome diet” have been circulating on the internet with a speed greater than light. From TikTok’s viral “Oatzempic challenge” to “Proffee,” people are following all kinds of diet oddities. Another oddity is a frutarian diet. We have grown up listening to elders say that fruits are good for health. It’s like a sacrosanct scripture that most people never question. But holistic health doctor, Sten Ekberg (@drekberg) on YouTube, breaks down the notion that a 30-day fruit diet is always good for everyone’s health. Fruit, which he refers to as “nature’s candy,” may just be overloading your body with sugar.
Indeed fruits are powerhouses of fibers, including small amounts of fat and protein. However, the first error in this line of thinking is that when people eat all their food in the form of fruit, they end up overeating. “If you were to eat only fruit, then you would be getting about 85 percent of your calories from sugar and on average fruit has about 50 calories per 100 grams, so if you're to eat all of your food in the form of fruit, you get 2,000 calories. That means you need to eat about 4 kilograms per day or about a little over eight pounds of fruit,” he explains.
Eating fruit releases two ingredients in our bloodstream – fructose and glucose. The formula for “fructose plus glucose” is exactly the same as that of white sugar, the doctor revealed. So when someone consumes only fruit, they end up consuming 200 grams of fructose and 200 grams of glucose, totaling 400 grams of sugar. And “200 grams of fructose from fruit is like having 12 Coca-Cola every day.” This much sugar would take a toll on the liver because fructose can only be processed by the liver. Plus, the satisfaction triggered by sugar won't last long. One will remain hungry throughout the day. The second problem is “metabolic damage.” Eating only fruit will decrease the body’s sugar-handling ability too.
Dr. Ekberg shared that his insights are based on self-observation. After reading books like Eat to Win and watching movies like Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead, he experimented on himself with fruitarian diets and juice cleanses. He was disappointed. He said although there is a slight difference in protein, fat, and fiber compared to soda and Coca-Cola, for the most part, we’re just basically drinking sugar all day, very similar to drinking soda. As a result, you end up feeling “ravenously hungry” right after a fruit meal.
Most people think that they’re doing good to their bodies when eating fruit. But the important thing is to cut on sugar and balance protein and fat. However, when we’re eating just fruit, we get 86% of the energy from carbohydrates and very less amounts of both protein and fat. “While it flattens the blood sugar curve a little, the fiber you have in the end makes no difference because the sugar load is exactly the same,” the doctor concluded. This, he said, triggers various problems in the body including deficiencies of vitamin B12, calcium, and iron, which prompts a domino of muscle contractions, fatigue, protein deficiencies, and bone problems.
In contrast, he said, he has seen people survive healthily on high-carb diets or even on cigarettes, coffee, and Coca-Cola. These are not recommended, but the point they demonstrate is something called “genetic carb tolerance.” If it suits your body, then that’s probably the best diet to go for. “It's not what you eat it's what the body does with it,” the doctor told people. He concluded that a fruit diet as a lifestyle is “insanity.” And even though fruits may have some benefits, there is always a trade-off.
You can follow Doctor Sten Ekberg (@drekberg) on YouTube for more eye-opening health videos.