THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE FACTS

The science behind the facts:

1. Avoid eating fruits post meal, eat them in between meals like mid day or evening.
Why: There are more than a few reasons behind this one

 A large main meal generally contains a mix of macronutrients such as carbs, fat and protien. While fat and protein digest slowly- carbs digest relatively quicker. Depending on what you ate and how much you ate the food slowly gets broken down and sent into the blood stream to all the waiting organs that require energy. Once this is taken care off the excess energy (or calories) are then converted to fat.
Eating a fruit with your meal increases the odds of this conversion happening as you are adding a carb to and already carb-ed up lunch/ dinner. In addition to this carb on carb complex- you generally arent your most active self post meal.Which means any excess sugars or carbs will quickly buildup in the blood stream with nowhere to go.
Other reasons to avoid eating fruit post meal is based in ayurvedic principle that states eating fruits with  larger meals delays the digestion time causing the fruit to break down in the stomach and ferment while it waits. This fermentation process then causes GI discomfort such as gas ,bloating etc- while simultaneously losing precious nutrients etc that would otherwise be digested better on.


2. Avoid eating mix of fruits at one time. If you chose to eat a fruit eat Any or max 2 different fruit at one time. Avoid Fruit platters and fruit chat.

 While most people consider fruits a super healthy food ( which they definitely are) they also forget that fruits are an easy way to load on up simple fast digesting carbs. All carbs are basically combinations of simplesugars strung together (carbo) +  with water (hydrate)
When these break down sugars and water are released into the body.
Now as you can imagine not all fruits have the same level of sweetness (i.e: Sugar!) eg: mango vs sweetlime or cherries vs a guava
Each fruit has its own GI (glyceamic index - which is basically the way the fruit influences how much your blood sugar goes up - how fast + and how much) which further adds to its GL (Glycemic Load- that is how the food overall contritbutes to the total amount of carbs )
Now to avoid getting into the complicated thick of things- the main reason behind mixing too many different fruits is to avoid raising your blood sugars in a complicated manner. Too many different fruits of varying GI's can confuse the stomach and also cause it to release a lot of gastric juice that again can destroy the delicate nutrients contained in them (as per ayurveda) and once again lead to fermentation tract.
Lastly you wouldn’t mix sugar with sugar would you? Then why a tonne of fruits? The body cannot diffrentiate between table sugar and natural sugar once they are broken down they are all the same chemically to the system- with the major differences coming from things like fibre vitamins etc.
However if your blood sugar goes up beyond a certain level--- and that sugar has no place to go--- it will once again be converted to fat. There are ofcourse exceptions for people who have depleted muscle glycogen stores (like athelets, runners, etc) but for most of us with desk jobs and 20 minutes of elevated heart rate on our evening walks- having fruit salads could be a easy way to gaining fat.

3. Eat local seasonal fruits and avoid imported fruits like purple big grapes and New Zealand apples 

Eating local is so good for you for a number of reasons:
-Foods indigenous to your area and locality are easily recognised by your digestive tract and are thus easier to break down and absorb without being treated as a foreign particle and raising red flags in your gastro intestinal system ( hello food allergies and intolerances!) you may have even noticed these signs and sympotms but thought nothing of it. Indicatiors include gas, bloating etc.
-Eating locally reduces the chances of having fruit that have been transported with chemicals or may have been stored for a long time before it finally gets on your plate. In this waiting periods a lot of vitamins can be lost as certain delicate biochemical compounds cannot withstand time, heat and oxidiation.
-Locally grown fruits are also less likely to have been subjected to genetic modification as simple farmers don’t have much access to these things.

Inputs by Nutritionist Zenobia Chacko