Can you eat too much fruit? How much should you have?

How much fruit should you have per day?

Fruit is an important part of a healthy balanced diet – with the UK Government’s Eatwell Guide recommending that just over a third of the food you eat a day should be fruits and vegetables.

You should aim for at least 5 portions a day. There’s no specific advice on how you should split your 5-a-day between fruit and vegetables, but it’s best to have a variety of different fruit and vegetables.

Is too much fruit bad for you?

Of course, it’s possible to have too much of anything, even healthy foods like fruits and vegetables.

But as around three-quarters of people in the UK do not meet the recommended 5-a-day, most of us would benefit from eating more fruit and veg, not less.

Eating whole fruits comes with many benefits. They’re packed with fibre, water, vitamins, minerals and antioxidants, which slow-down digestion, help keep you full and support overall health.

Is the sugar in fruit fattening and bad for weight loss?

Whole fruits taste sweet because they contain natural sugar that’s held inside the cells of the fruit. They also contain a lot of water and fibre and have little or no added fats.

So, another benefit of eating whole fruits is that they are filling for very few calories and can help manage your weight as part of a healthy diet.

Compare this to sweet treats like sweets, cakes, biscuits and chocolate that contain free sugars. These are any sugars added to a food or drink, rather than being naturally in the food’s cells, or sugar that’s already in honey, syrup and fruit juice.

Sweets, cakes, biscuits and chocolate also contain little or no fibre and added fats that can lead to weight gain if you eat too much of them.

You can see the health benefits of fruit by comparing a medium banana (100g) with a standard 50g bar of milk chocolate.

The banana has less sugar containing 18g versus the chocolate’s 28g, and half the calories with 81kcal for the banana versus 260kcal for the chocolate bar.

This makes the banana a healthy swap for the chocolate.

However, be careful when juicing whole fruits, such as for juices and smoothies, as this results in a high-sugar drink that has none of the other benefits of eating a piece of fruit.

This is because the juicing process breaks down the fruit’s structure releasing sugars and removing fibre, turning them into free sugars – the type you need to cut down on.

And, because it’s much easier to drink a glass of juice, which might contain several fruits, than to eat the equivalent in whole fruits, you can easily consume a greater amount of sugar too.

For these reasons, stick to a 150ml portion of fruit juice a day.

Can eating too much fruit give you diabetes?

Eating fruit does not cause diabetes or increase your risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Diabetes UK is clear that the natural sugar in whole fruit is not the type you need to cut down on.

In fact, research shows that eating plenty of fruit and vegetables is linked with a lower risk of heart disease and better long‑term health overall.

What can increase your risk of type 2 diabetes, however, is regularly eating too much free sugar in foods like sweets, cakes, biscuits and chocolate – as mentioned above.

This is because these foods can contribute to weight gain, which is a risk factor for type 2 diabetes.

Sugar sweetened drinks, like canned soft drinks, are also associated with a higher risk of type 2 diabetes.

However, more research is needed to find out why this is, as current research shows it is not necessarily linked to their effect on body weight, says the UK’s Science Advisory Committee on Nutrition.

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