Bored of Berries?

“You mean I can eat other fruit, aside from berries?”, asked a new client, after seeing the menu plan I’d designed for her?

Surprised, I replied that of course she could eat other fruits.

She explained that her Cross Fit instructor had told her, under no uncertain terms, that the only fruit she should ever eat, if she were to eat fruit at all, would be berries, due to their high fiber content and low ranking on glycemic index.

While these characteristics are certainly true, and while berries, when in season and hopefully organic are an excellent choice to include in our regime, to assume we should never eat any other fruit would be quite limiting.

I do feel most people tend to eat too much fruit and not enough veggies, thus my recommendation to ‘eat lots of veggies… and some fruit’, rather than the other way around, but when we do add some of nature’s tasty sweets to our regime, we should aim for as much variety as we do with our veggies and proteins.

Go for the lower glycemic fruits, like said berries, as part of meal, such as sprinkled on a salad, and save those fruits higher in sugar, like ripe banana, for use after a workout.    

If we do our best to keep our energy levels balanced throughout the day by eating meals that have an overall low glycemic load, we won’t spike our blood sugar and end up on that awful roller coaster of peaks and valleys all day long.

Cherries, anyone?  Or some grapefruit?  With rankings of 22 and 25, respectively, these fruits are just two examples of good, low glycemic food choices.