Eating fruits only, while drinking no liquids

I mentioned recently that I wanted to try eating fruit for a day and not taking in any other food or liquid. And so yesterday that is what I did. The difference from my other fruit days was the absence of cream or drinks. All the calories were from fruit.

1740 calories, 435 carbs, 1500g oranges, 1050g pears, 600g plums, 600g apples, 400g peppers, 200g tomatoes -0.5lb

When I began the day, I had no idea how difficult it would be. I found myself in trouble right from the start.

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On rising, I usually eat a big fried breakfast without delay. By the time I finish it, I am raring to go for the day. I follow it with my first coffee and cream. I know from experience that this combination gives me the perfect boost, after which I can work for an extended time at peak concentration. My former habit of slowly groping my way into the day over several hours has become a thing of the past

For breakfast yesterday, I microwaved some peppers and tomatoes and followed them with ripe plums and pears. But this repast, far from setting me up for work, left me feeling as groggy as when my alarm clock had gone off. As the day proceeded, I found myself unable to get much done. The hours crawled slowly by, and not only did I feel less than awake but increasingly weak and febrile. In a way, it felt like being ill but without precise symptoms.

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At the time, I assumed this had all to do with caffeine withdrawal. I normally drink three mugs of coffee a day plus several of green tea. Recognising how much I depend on those stimulants, to the point of being wrecked without them, flabbergasted me.

But today I am less sure caffeine tells the whole story. Yesterday evening, I, who never has headaches, was beset with a pounding one on my right temple. When I woke up in the night, the headache filled the room. And nothing had changed when I rose this morning. Yet, almost as soon as I started my breakfast, the headache vanished, as if by a miracle.

Since that happened before I had even made my coffee, I now think the lack of fat in the previous day’s fruit diet may have played a part in my dismal state. (In view of the fact the fruit I ate contained a passable amount of protein, I am disinclined to blame low protein, at least not largely.) Without cream, this fruit day–unlike the others, during which I had felt as dandy as a vegan on acid–notably lacked fat.

Overall, I guess my problems were caused by the combined absence of fat and caffeine.

The one factor I will not blame is lack of fluid, because, as I had hoped, the liquid in the fruit kept me well hydrated. I was not thirsty once the whole day, and I peed normally. That side of the experiment proved my hypothesis that a human can, like a wild ape, obtain ample fluid from a diet of fruit. All the same, I missed drinking. The instinct to take liquid refreshment is hard-wired in human beings, I believe, which is why drinking is built into our social and nutritional rituals. I also suspect that occasional flushing with simple water routinely helps prevent sodium or sugar levels from getting out of hand in the body.

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I mention sugar levels, since an extraordinary aspect of yesterday’s experiment was that, almost against my will, I had to take two naps. About 40 minutes after the second and third of my three fruit meals, I was overcome by an irresistible drowsiness. On both occasions, I leaned back in my chair and nodded off for a fitful quarter of an hour, before reviving from the mists of sleep. The two events were so similar that clearly I was in the grip of an involuntary process of the body.

All right, extraordinary might not be the right word for what was obviously a blood-sugar spike, followed by a textbook postprandial slump. It was, however, extraordinary for me, because not once in these 28 months of diet and maintenance have I napped, or had the impulse to nap, during the day. In fact, I have come to nurse a vain pride in my unrelenting alertness, which lasts until about midnight, when sleep "knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care". I have often watched for evidence of sugar spikes upon eating one of the high-carb meals that now compose my diet, but, no, nothing, ever. Like Achilles, I had started to think I was immune.

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So what happened yesterday? Well, I ate an enormous amount of fruit, more than on any other fruit day. But I am sure the difference lay in eating it unaccompanied by fat, because research has proved that fat slows the metabolism of sugar. Low-carbers know this well, particularly those with blood-sugar issues. Apart from not eating fat with the fruit, I also omitted to punctuate the day with my usual cream or milk in coffee. And this absence of drinks may have left the fruit sugar more concentrated in my gut than is normally the case. These possibilities reconfirm for me the usefulness of liquid refreshments during the day.

It is normally assumed that the sugar in fresh fruit presents no blood-sugar challenge to non-diabetic people. The reason is that fruit sugar is embedded in fibres which take so long to digest that the sugar's entry into the bloodstream is delayed and spread out. What transpired yesterday does not challenge that, because not only did I eat the fruit on its own but I overate it to a ridiculous extent.

To make up my maintenance calories, I had to eat a small mountain of fruit, and that took considerable time–well over half an hour for each meal. It meant I was still taking sugar on board while the first amounts I had eaten were already digesting into my bloodstream, leading to a level of overload more associated with rapid intakes of refined sugar. I have long known that sugar is sugar–the only difference between fruit sugar and refined sugar is that the former cannot enter the bloodstream in a sudden flood.

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Awful though it was, I found yesterday fascinating. What happened showed that fruit sugar is not entirely harmless, even for a non-diabetic. And it underlined the benefit of combining sugar, fat, and protein in mixed meals to forestall extreme blood-sugar spikes. Nevertheless, the experience has not put me off fruit. As in much to do with diet, it is overeating that causes problems. Overeat any food–cabbage, pork, cheese, beans, nuts, boiled toad–and metabolic strain must follow.

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So, there it is. I discovered nothing new; but I discovered it for myself.

and Hurrah for your discovery..... I think it would be interesting to test your glucose with a meter, before and after meals, but I am not going to suggest you do this again!

I find your nut and cheese experiments interesting because these are my trouble foods. The fruit is even more interesting, because my experience when I tried three days of mostly bananas (I also had a few peaches a day, a couple eggs and some tuna, being a little more worried about protein than you), pretty much matched yours. Two days of potato only drove my weight up, and the banana days flushed out the water retention from those days, and then some.

With the sugar and the fruit... a bowl of sugar water, and a bowl of mashed banana, which ferments more quickly? We provide our gut beasties with their environment in food, and in turn they provide our gut with its environment. This goes right past considerations of fiber, resistant starch etc. Even when the sugar is easily broken down and absorbed, the fruity environment will be friendly to different gut beasties than the purely sugary one, and they will react differently.

When I've experimented with soda, my blood sugar has dipped down into the 70s. A can of pop will do this. I wonder what an equal amount of sugar as fruit would do?

Super interesting Plinge. I also seem to do awfully on days made up of just one or two food types; I suspect my system is not as robust as yours based on the nut experiment results, where we were trying to emulate you by eating nuts and fat (mascarpone, cream cheese, what have you) and it wrecked my digestion. The all fruit sugar results are especially interesting, and your conclusion about overeating (bingeing) on one food type. Hmm.

No, I will never eat that much fruit in a day again. I found it all slightly frightening. One reason I went on my original diet was to prevent myself getting diabetes. We have it in the family: my mum and two of her brothers have it, as did an uncle on the other side of the family.

One thing I forgot to mention was that I found myself breathing faster than usual. It reminded me of how I used to breathe when I was overweight, and I had thought that could not come back at my present weight. I always assumed it was to do with high blood pressure--but perhaps not. Perhaps it was to do with high blood sugar. Eek!

I do have some little glucose strips, but I forgot to use one. All they would tell me is whether my blood sugar is not normal. Every time I have tested, it said I was normal. But I did not try it when I was eating lots of fruit.

It is odd, though: I do eat a lot of dried fruit but have not once had a feeling of postprandial drowsiness after eating it. Despite the high sugar load, I suspect dried fruit digests very slowly, owing to its tough fibres.

Although I think of food largely in groups, I always place potatoes, bananas, and avocados in categories of their own because when they are included as vegetable or fruit they tend to throw things out. Most of my old experiments where they were included have had to be redone without them, because they change everything.



This is why I wanted to do that experiment without drinking anything. I figure that whatever effects a food has on the gut will be diluted by accompanying water. Not that that would be a bad thing. For all I know I might have had fewer problems that day if I had been accompanying the fruit with water. Fruit and its juice is evidently very powerful stuff--more than we can know.

I do not think your digestive system is less robust than mine but more sensitive. That is a good thing, though it might mean you cannot just eat the kitchen sink, as I do. I wish my digestion was as sensitive as it used to be, to be frank, because quite clearly I am not digesting things as fully as of yore.

It is all about getting older, I suppose. Failure to digest properly actually becomes a challenge to a lot of old people, because they are not gaining the nutrition from their food that they should be. Mind you, there are some upsides. I read that older women become completely insensitive to phytates, which are supposed to cause trouble to a lot of people. They become adapted to them. So you have at least that to look forward to.

Fructose neurosis

Apart from the horrible experience of my latest fruit day, my recent vastly increased fruit consumption has caused a few other problems. I have become uneasy at some of its digestive effects.

Oddly, the traditional comic consequences of overindulging in fruit have been absent. That is to say, my insides have remained surprisingly quiet in the earth, wind, and fire department. But I have suffered strange pains high in my abdomen, particularly in the “stitch” area, which I presume marks the small intestine, where unwelcome needling sensations have occurred. Apparently, fructose is largely absorbed in the upper intestine, so I wonder if the great quantity I consumed caused that region of my anatomy to become overtaxed.

Also, I have several times detected a soreness around my liver area. Mostly I noticed this only if I pressed there with my fingers; but sometimes a distinct inflammation around my lower right rib cage made itself felt when I leaned forward.

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To add insult to injury, on two evenings in three days my right big toe fell prey to an attack of gout. I have been prone to gout for a couple of decades, though that particular old friend has given me little trouble since my diet improved.

Having once investigated its causes thoroughly, I now believe that gout results from elevated uric acid levels. And it so happens that high fructose intake elevates uric acid levels. It seems most likely, therefore, that fruit was the culprit behind these attacks. The possibility reminded me that my previous last gout attack occurred the day after my salt experiments, when I so craved fruit that I gorged on it all day like a gibbon. At that time, I was unaware that high fructose is associated with gout, and so I put the attack down to salt, though it happened the day after I stopped eating salt.

Fortunately, I have since then worked out how to lower my uric acid levels. It can be done by taking half a teaspoon of potassium bicarbonate in water. This reduces the acidity precipitating the uric acid crystals that cause the pain of gout, and it makes the crystals dissolve--or at least seals them off. (Enough reading to last a lifetime led me to deduce this remedy.) So within an hour or two, the gout attacks were over. I shall write more about gout in the future, as it is a very interesting complaint.

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On one single occasion, for about three hours, I also felt distinctly sore at a point midway under my left ribcage. I have never had a pain in that spot before; and when I consulted a diagram, it corresponded, to my alarm, with the position of my pancreas. I say alarm because one fears a pancreas issue above all else, since that vital organ is known to lack the recuperative ability for which its companions the liver and the gut are renowned. Get sick there, and you are in trouble.

“Pancreatic cancer is the 4th leading cause of cancer death in the United States. The National Cancer Institute estimates in the year 2012, there will be 43,920 new cases of pancreatic cancer—and 37,390 deaths. Currently there are no established methods for screening or early detection; thus primary prevention by altering modifiable risk factors is probably the most effective way of reducing the pancreatic cancer burden. With the exception of tobacco smoking, diabetes, and obesity, relatively few modifiable risk factors have been established.” (Aune et al, “Dietary fructose, carbohydrates, glycemic indices and pancreatic cancer risk: a systemic review and meta-analysis of cohort studies, Ann Oncol, 2012)

I find it scary that here is the fourth most common cancer in town, yet we have little clue how to prevent it.

What leapt into my mind immediately were the stories about Steve Jobs and Ashton Kutcher. Jobs, of course, died of pancreatic cancer after years of vegan, vegetarian, and fruitarian eating. He clearly had none of the above risk factors, as he was a slim health nut. The suspicion must be that he contracted pancreatic cancer from overdoing one of his healthy practices. And Kutcher was hospitalised after eating a fruitarian diet as part of his research for playing the part of Jobs in a movie. Precisely what befell Kutcher is unclear. In his own words:

"First of all, the fruitarian diet can lead to like severe issues. I went to the hospital like two days before we started shooting the movie. I was like doubled over in pain. My pancreas levels were completely out of whack. It was really terrifying, considering everything."

That is the sum of public information about poor Ashton’s pancreatic episode.

Now, I am not writing this thread in order to disseminate disinformation of the sort purveyed by the media stories about Jobs and Kutcher, so I shall set aside my reference to them as an example of the dietary neurosis to which I am subject. Facts beat media scare stories every time--at least when we have any. Nevertheless, the question of high intakes of fruit and their effect on the body intrigues me.

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Until my recent fruit experiments, I gave little thought to the wave of fructosephobia that has raced through the nutrition blogs in the last year or two. I mean the growing claims that fructose is the ultimate villain among sugars, owing to the damage it can cause the liver and the pancreas and to its indirect influence on diabetes. People once thought fructose the least harmful sugar, because, unlike glucose, it does not go straight into the bloodstream and so has no instant effect upon blood sugar. Instead it goes mostly to the liver, where it is processed into glucose, glycogen, lactate, or fat according to the body’s needs at the time.

As with everything that enters the body, however, a problem with fructose arises when it is overeaten. In that case, the liver and the pancreas have difficulty dealing with it fast enough, leading to dysfunctional responses on their part. For example, the liver may store fructose as fat for the moment. If it has to do that for too long, the result could be a fatty liver of the type found in alcoholics.

I have not paid much attention to such information because till now I never ate much fruit. Apart from which, the main sources of fructose in the western diet are not fruits but refined sugar and high-fructose corn syrup, which I try to avoid. People overeating a processed junk-food diet, however, are liable to be absorbing too much fructose all the time. If they are overweight and consuming more calories than they need, this excess sugar could damage their organs, with fructose playing a leading part.

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Now that, for the present experimental period, I am eating lots of fruit, I am forced to address the possibility that the disturbing pains I have experienced might stem from my high intake of fructose. If so, I hope this brief overexposure to it has not damaged me. Even though I am not eating more than my maintenance calories, that still allows a very large quantity of fruit since fruit is so low in calories. As I mentioned in my last main post, it proves possible to overload the system with sugar when eating copious raw fruit, despite the absorption being gradual rather than sudden as it would be from sweet drinks. Even so, the only time fruit seemed to affect my blood sugar was when I consumed it in the absence of accompanying foods that might have moderated its impact.

Checking my food journal to see if eating any particular fruit correlated with the pains I described above, my suspicion fell upon grapes. Those delightful balls of sugar happened to be on offer, and so I was getting through them with the enthusiasm of a Roman emperor on his day off. What distinguishes grapes from most fruits is that much of their content is pure liquid. Other fruits, even watermelon, might contain as much juice, but the juice in grapes is free, enabling its sugar to reach the bloodstream quicker. Fruit juice is known to be far more problematic than solid fruit because its sugar is released straight into the bloodstream, unhindered by fibre. And, unprocessed though they are, grapes might be considered little cartons of fruit juice.

This is not just supposition. Kenneth Heaton and his colleagues once performed experiments in which grapes proved the only whole fruit with a higher insulin-stimulating rate than the juice made from it (Bolton, Heaton, & Burroughs, “The role of dietary fiber in satiety, glucose, and insulin: studies with fruit and fruit juice”, Am J Clin Nut, 1981). I suspect the reason is that if you pulp grapes into a juice, the fibre mashes in with the liquid, reducing how fast the latter hits the bloodstream. So I wonder if my high consumption of grapes forced fructose into my liver so fast as to cause pain.

Such reflections are sobering. I have often consumed extreme diets for long periods and never faced any digestive issues, apart from a degree of constipation on a very low-carb diet. Even nuts, which trouble many, cause me no problem. While the pains I described above were not severe, they occurred in parts of my body where I am not used to digestive protest. This has taught me not to disregard concerns about fructose just because I do not eat high-fructose and processed products.

I have also gained a new respect for my body. Surely it is trying to tell me something. Given those pains, plus the blood-sugar slumps I sustained on my fruit-only day, I need to consider the possibility that fruit does not agree with me. After all, some people are known to be sensitive to fructose. Perhaps it is no coincidence that all my life I have been indifferent to fruit. Even when I lived with people who kept fruit in bowls around the house, I was rarely tempted to eat any. I used to feel guilty about that, as if I was somehow letting down the government authorities, besotted as they were with the notion that each citizen should polish off a wheelbarrowful of fruit a day. Did my instinct know best all along?

Perhaps it is wise to be cautious. I have decided that after I finish my fruit experiments in the next couple of days, I will never eat more than three portions of fresh fruit a day, a maximum of one after each meal.

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If you are reading this post and do not know much about fructose, I hope it does not make you distrust fruit. Bear in mind that for experimental purposes I have been overeating fruit to a ridiculous extent--such is my method of finding things out. Consuming any food to excess is bound to stress the body.

The only thing I would say is that I do not think fruit is the best choice for an isolated snack. Well-meaning nutritionists, by way of discouraging us from eating junk, love to suggest that we snack on a nice piece of fruit to fill that gap. But for someone feeling peckish who has not eaten for a long time–the plight of many a dieter–I doubt that eating fruit without accompanying fat will satisfy. If they have blood sugar issues, it could conceivably make their hunger worse.

I speculate, admittedly. But I recall some researchers who found that though oranges, for example, are satiating in the short term, the effect soon wears off. I guess that is because their bulk initially triggers the stretch sensors in the stomach to signal satiation, but that when they subsequently break down in the gut that sensation swiftly passes.

I am finding the best time to eat fruit is after a meal, as a sort of dessert. It feels more filling then, because its sugar is impeded by other foods from digesting too quickly. Under these circumstances, fruit makes a rewarding end to a meal and is unlikely to be overeaten.

The banana days were funny for me. I was able to get through my workouts, and do the usual reps/weight/sets. But still felt drowsy between sets--if I sat down on my bed, I was liable to end up napping.

My banana eating was on the high side, too. I wasn't trying or hoping to under eat, I wanted to see the effects of eating a normal day's calories as bananas.

I believe our forebears probably would have gorged on fruit seasonally, at least early on, before they figured out how to preserve it and enjoy it throughout the year. People with undamaged metabolisms might not have to worry too much--how many of those are walking around?

Fortunately, I think, my banana days were an example of top-down management of appetite. I never would have gotten there just eating the bananas my body actually wanted. There've been times in the past when I thought I felt like eating five or six bananas, they looked so good--but halfway through my second banana, the urge is gone.

I know what you mean. I once ate bananas for a whole day (aren't we weird?), and though I like bananas, it soon became hard going. They seemed to become less sweet and more stodgy as the day wore on.

As far as early man goes, the argument runs that they would not have had access to such sugary fruits as we do. So even if they did gorge on fruit all day, perhaps it would not have screwed with their blood sugar. The primatologist Richard Wrangham once tried to live on a chimp diet--as an experiment--and he found many of the fruits they ate very bitter, which presumably means their fructose level was low. I think if I had been restricted to wild fruits, perhaps I would not have been able to derange my system in the way I seemed to do on my all-fruit day. Maybe we evolved a digestive system to handle a certain level of fructose and no more.

The bitter chimp fruits might not be that low in sugar, not that I've looked into it. But a strategy modern agriculture has taken is to breed out all the bitter compounds that interfere with the sweetness of the fruit--the same ones they keep extracting from fruit, and using to rescue rodents from the effects of a high-sugar diet. Of course, if the bitterness (or richness of flavour, depending how we look at it) means that we're satisfied with less fruit, we'd still end up with less fructose.

Interesting how people differ, even on a mono-diet (although in my case it was only 90 percent or so mono). For me, the bananas got sweeter and sweeter. I wonder if this is a difference between us, or a difference between our respective diets, going in (before the potato days, I was still eating around 80 percent fat, low carb).

The Jobs/poor Ashton comparison is really interesting Plinge. I've been wondering about fruit as a snack, too. I was so excited about whole foods, that I would snack on fruit, but find it very unsatisfying without nuts/cheese/eggs/coconut butter to accompany it. Interesting.

Ditto on the fruit - if I don't have it with nuts or cheese it does NOT last and I am very hungry, much sooner than with any typical meal. But with a moderate amount of fat, it's totally fine. I think I will use it in the same way you are - primarily as after meal sweet. Thought I do love figs/apples and or dates and pears in salads and I've never had an issue so will likely keep that up, as well.

Gosh, Plinge, I do hope you are feeling better and Yes, the Jobs /Kutcher story is very interesting. To think, that he wanted to be so healthy.....

I so agree. I found that I could tolerate an apple if I had a nut butter with it, or cut up and in teh micro while melting my coconut oil to mix those two with shredded coconut and a few pecans for a small meal. I had an apple alone after dinner, and even then I wanted more. It has to be WITH fat.

I knew I could not have what you all are having, the dates and figs and all without a craving starting. I can make due without fruit. Or have a small amount in a salad.

WHen I eat one apple, a small or 1/2 of a larger apple, I want to eat again. Will make sure I eat it with fat.THe Carb Addict Diet combines other foods including a whole meal before eating the apple. THis usually works for me too.

Love plinge that you can eat all this variety in foods, I envy that. Each body is so different. I never eat roasted nuts any more-- love raw walnuts in my pumpkin cheesecake, on the bottom like a crust.