Should you be eating more fruit?

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "Should you be eating more fruit?"

Podcast: What's That Rash?
Host: ABC Australia
Date: April 21, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode tackles the perennial question: Should you be eating more fruit? Hosts unpack health myths, dietary guidelines, and food definitions while answering listener questions about fruit aversion, nutritional gaps, ancient vs. modern produce, and whether it’s necessary to stuff more fruit into your diet for longevity and wellbeing. The discussion is accessible, packed with evidence-based advice, and full of gentle banter.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Fruit Aversion & Nutritional Shortfalls

• Listener Question (Jamie): Jamie admits to eating very little fruit and wonders if missing out might actively harm their health—even confessing to never having tasted a banana.
  • "I really like watermelon, lychees, berries, and maybe an apple... Aside from that, I basically never consume any fruit in my diet and have never even tasted a banana." – (A, 02:23)
• Doctor’s Response:
  • Dr. Norman Swan says it’s not necessary to force yourself to eat fruit if you’re already eating a variety of vegetables.
  • Many nutrients found in fruit (vitamin C, potassium, antioxidants, fiber) are also abundant in vegetables.

Quote:
“By and large, we can't find very much at all that you get in fruit that you don't get from a good variety of vegetables.”
– Dr. Norman Swan, (B, 10:21)

2. What Counts as a “Fruit” Anyway?

• Botanical vs Cultural Definitions:
  • Many foods people think of as vegetables are botanically fruits (e.g., tomatoes, cucumber, capsicum).
  • In practice, sweetness often determines what gets called a “fruit” in daily life and in dietary guidelines. (A, 05:36)
• Practical note: Most people don’t meet national guidelines of five servings of vegetables and two servings of fruit per day; meeting veggie targets is harder.

Quote:
"Fruit, in our cultural perception… is often more portable. You can chuck an apple in your bag. I guess there’s nothing stopping you chucking a cucumber in..."
– Host (A), 06:28

3. The Science Behind Recommendations

• Epidemiological Evidence:
  • Diets high in fruits and vegetables (think DASH, Mediterranean, MIND diets) are linked to lower rates of coronary heart disease, cancer, lower mortality, and healthier aging.
  • Evidence is more robust for vegetables, but both contribute.

Quote:
"...Populations with high vegetable intake, low red meat intake, that is associated with lower rates of coronary heart disease... up to seven serves a day of fruit and vegetables gives you the highest risk reduction."
– Dr. Norman Swan, (B, 11:00)

• The Global Burden of Disease Study:
  • Suboptimal fruit and vegetable intake is linked to a higher proportion of premature deaths and disability (12:04).
  • Getting enough can lower age-related mortality by 35-40%.

4. Cooking Fruit and Vegetables

• Vegetables: Cooking (especially with olive oil or vinegar, e.g., Mediterranean style) can unlock even more bioactive compounds, aiding immunity and overall health.
• Fruit: Cooking may destroy some vitamin C but retains fiber and other micronutrients.
• No hard evidence that cooking fruit produces benefits exactly like with tomatoes (07:46-09:12).

Memorable moment:
"I don't even want to think about what stewed watermelon would taste like."
– Host (A), 09:12

5. Ancient Fruit vs Modern Varieties

• Listener Question (Jonathan): Should we seek out “ancient” or heritage fruit varieties with potentially different (lower) sugar content and nutrition?
• Expert Response:
  • Modern breeding focuses on yield, size, and shelf stability, often at the expense of sugar and flavor.
  • The “paleo fantasy” (A,15:22): There's little practical difference for modern eaters—what matters most is eating fruit/veg, not their ancientness.

Quote:
"You need to eat a plant-based diet or need to eat like people did in the olden days, it is harder to do because the kinds of plant that we have access to now are quite different."
– Host (A), 15:42

Conclusion:
Don’t overthink optimizing. Focus on eating a good array of fruit and veg, period.

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• "It’s scaring the crap out of me." (on the responsibility of influencing listeners’ diets) – Dr. Norman Swan, (B, 03:21)
• "Garlic and apples to protect you against doctors and vampires alike." – Host (A), 01:25
• "I find those sort of antique tomatoes...a bit mushy. The heritage breeds a bit mushy." – Dr. Norman Swan, (B, 16:32)
• “Some brilliant researcher in the US calls it paleo fantasy...which is why they died at 28.” – Dr. Norman Swan, (B, 15:38)
• "Just doing the exercise and not overthinking your fruit and vegetables, just eating them..." – Dr. Norman Swan, (B, 16:07)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:01] - Fruit aversion question introduction
• [03:15] - Host responsibility & humor on changing diets
• [04:02] - Explaining the DASH & MIND diets
• [05:03] - What's a fruit botanically vs culturally
• [06:28] - National recommendations and public compliance
• [07:01] - Cooking and the creation of bioactive compounds
• [09:12] - Cooking fruit & what’s lost or gained nutritionally
• [10:36] - Vegetables vs fruit: are you missing out?
• [11:00] - Epidemiological evidence for fruit and vegetable intake
• [12:04] - Links between low intake and early death/disability
• [13:20] - Microbiome & immune system impacts, summary for fruit avoiders
• [14:09] - Ancient vs modern fruit varieties; gene editing discussion
• [15:22] - Paleo fantasy and the myth of ancient diets
• [16:07] - Takeaway: just eat a range, don't over-optimize

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Takeaway for Listeners

• If you dislike or rarely eat fruit but consume a wide range of vegetables, you’re unlikely to suffer nutritionally.
• Most nutrients found in fruit are present in vegetables.
• Don't get bogged down in food labels or food “purity”; eat lots of diverse plants by whatever culinary definition.
• Modern vs. ancient varieties isn’t a huge deal—eat what you can access and enjoy.
• Adopt the balanced, “broad brushstrokes” approach to health and diet rather than chasing niche optimizations.

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(Listener inquiries about headaches and medical anecdotes were discussed in the final segment, but main dietary content ends at approximately [16:55].)

Transcript

[A]

Good sleep is everything. That's why Ollie's science bag support is made with a blend of melatonin and L theanine for both kiddos and grownups. So when your mind won't switch off, you've got something that can help your racing thoughts and restless nights won't stand a chance. Find Ollie Sleep solutions for the whole [e-mail] that's o l l y.com ABC Listen, podcasts, radio, news, music and more.

[B]

David I'm David Maher, host of Late Night Live on Radio national, where nothing's off limits.

[A]

You know, part of being an adult is dealing with discomfort.

[B]

We gather the sharpest minds around to hash over what's shaping this crazy world.

[A]

Both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party succumbed to big money.

[B]

Late Night Live. Four new shows a week on abc. Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.

[A]

Now, Norman, I have heard a rumour about doctors and I need you to tell me if it's true or not.

[B]

It's true.

[A]

You hate fruit.

[B]

I don't hate fruit. I just don't eat very much of it.

[A]

Well, I have brought along with me to ward you off today an apple. Because I heard that they help keep doctors away or something.

[B]

Yeah, doctor, that's right. Don't come near me with an apple. It's like the sign of the cross or daylight or something like that.

[A]

Garlic and apples to protect you against doctors and vampires alike. No, seriously?

[B]

Yeah, it's really weird. Yeah, I don't eat. I eat a lot a bit in summer, the storm fruit, but in winter, yeah, not that much.

[A]

Well, getting fruity is what we're all about today here on what's that Rash.

[B]

The podcast where we answer the health questions that simply everyone is asking.

[A]

So I don't know if everyone's ever asked this question, Norman, but Jamie certainly has. Jamie has a question for us today about fruit. Jamie says, my girlfriend and I love your podcast and always discuss the episodes after release. Various diets like the carnivore, Mediterranean, Ding ding, and keto are often discussed on your show. And I had a particular question around my own eating habits. Jamie says I often get made fun of for having an aversion to most fruit. I really like watermelon, light cheese, berries, and maybe an apple. Well, I've got my apple here, Jamie.

[B]

Well, that's a fair list, but I

[A]

almost never go out of my way to reach for one. Aside from that, I basically never consume any fruit in my diet and have never even tasted a banana.

[B]

You're kidding, Jamie.

[A]

Although Jamie does say that they love banana bread. Had never had a grape. Mandarin, kiwi, plum, cherry. I blame it on my brother for chewing and spitting out a banana in front of me as a child.

[B]

Yeah, I'm not sure we needed that detail, Jamie, but thank you.

[A]

I mean, at least we know where the source of the trauma is anyway. Jamie finishes, I often wonder what key nutrients that I can't get from vegetables that I may be missing if I continue with my habit. I could definitely be motivated to break my aversion if Dr. Norman Swan told me I am without doubt taking years off my life. Otherwise I don't have any pickiness and eat any vegetable. You have such an influence, Norman.

[B]

I know.

[A]

This person is going to change their entire diet just if you say they should.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

How does that level of responsibility make you feel?

[B]

It's scaring the crap out of me.

[A]

Speaking of fruit, as smoothly as it would if you were eating a high fiber diet.

[B]

Yeah. Can I just correct something I've said earlier because every morning I will have fresh Greek yogurt with blueberries or strawberries in it.

[A]

Delicious.

[B]

There you go. I do have some fruit, but in a sense that's functional. Which we might come back to later.

[A]

No, let's talk about it now. What do you mean functional?

[B]

Well, I'm taken by the mind diet. So there is evidence. We'll come back to this in a minute. I mean, I eat a lot of vegetables and we'll come back to whether or not I'm suffering because I don't eat a lot of fruit. And of course you're going to tell me what indeed is a fruit and what's a vegetable.

[A]

But nonetheless it's very much a state of mind.

[B]

There's a diet in America called the Dash diet, which is a diet designed to prevent high blood pressure and to prevent coronary heart disease, which is vegetables, not much red meat and so on. And that's been.

[A]

It's three Mediterranean diets in a trench coat. Honestly, like it's very. It's a pretty familiar pattern.

[B]

It's tres Mediterranean. And an advance on that is the, or if you call it an advance is the mind diet where the emphasize green leafy vegetables like kale and they emphasize berries in particularly strawberries, but also blueberries as well. So I've been, what the heck? What's the harm? I'll throw a few blueberries into my yogurt in the morning.

[A]

Interesting. So functional in the sense that you are intentionally selecting that.

[B]

I'm trying to help my brain, trying to Help my brain.

[A]

It's working. So, okay, so the question that you asked before, and this really is the heart of Jamie's question, is, is there anything that you can get from only fruit that you're missing out of if you don't eat fruit but you do eat vegetables? To which the answer is fruit actually is all around.

[B]

And Jamie is probably eating fruit and doesn't realise it.

[A]

And I think anyone who's gone past about year three in school knows that like a tomato is a fruit. Because there's always that one kid in the year three who's like, you know, tomato is actually a fruit, but like, so is cucumber and so it doesn't

[B]

have to grow in a tree.

[A]

No, like capsicum is a fruit. A fruit botanically is something that is, it comes from a plant that bears seeds and it's the ovaries of that seed bearing plant. So if it has seeds, it's a fruit generally. So yeah, apples, oranges.

[B]

So it doesn't have to be sweet is really the name of the game.

[A]

Exactly. And so when we divide things into fruit and vegetables. Cause I went and looked, I went down a bit of a rabbit hole. I looked at the Australian healthy eating guidelines, I looked at some research that looked at intake of fruit and vegetables and it's very much self reported and kind of like, it's like a cultural interpretation of what a fruit is in Australia based on the way we eat them. And effectively sweet equals fruit, savoury equals vegetable. That is the only way I can make sense of the way we categorize these things because half of the veggies that we eat in our diets are technically fruit.

[B]

I think the nutritional guidelines take a pragmatic view, is that we don't think of tomatoes as fruit because they're not sweet and therefore they lump them into the vegetable category because if they were to put it in the fruit catego, there would be this sort of dissonance. People say, what the hell are you talking about here? Rather than just getting on with it and eating tomatoes.

[A]

Going back to the Australian guidelines for healthy eating, we are recommended to have five serves of vegetables and two serves of fruit every day. Almost no one meets those guidelines. More people meet the fruit intake guidelines than the vegetable intake guidelines, which is probably a volume thing as much as anything else. Fruit, in our cultural perception of what a fruit is, is often a little bit more portable. You can chuck an apple in your bag, I guess there's nothing stopping you chucking a cucumber in your bag. And Nibbling on that throughout the day, but that's the recommendation.

[B]

What we tend to ignore in the nutritional guidelines is the fact that you cook vegetables. There's a cuisine attached to them. And it turns out that when you say this is work done in Melbourne, research done in Melbourne, if you take a raw tomato and you chop it and add olive oil, that starts to get some bioactive compounds being produced. If you add vinegar to that, in other words, a vinaigrette, even more. And if you heat it, in other words, if you cook the tomato, you get even more bioactive compounds being released. So you shouldn't necessarily think of vegetables as being raw, because in the cuisine, particularly the Mediterranean cuisine. Thank you. Probably just by accident through time, it produces very potent bioactive compounds which help your immune system, etc, etc.

[A]

I wanted to. I knew you were going to say that story. I knew you were going to talk about tomatoes with olive oil, because you always do. And I love that you're. I love that you're consistent.

[B]

In other words, the mind diet's not helping my mind because I'm repeating things and forgetting I told you this is

[A]

good, this is good stuff that bears repeating. But I was cooking some fruit on the weekend. I had some stone fruit that was gonna go off. I love stewed fruit. I have it on my yogurt in the morning or had it on my yogurt this morning. And I wondered whether there was anything similar in cooking fruit, because generally when you cook fruit for the purposes of. I'm not gonna put all the caveats around it again, when we cook what we usually think of as fruit in Australia, sweet, we'll often with a bit of sugar, a bit of vanilla, like you're cooking it to be a sweeter dish. You're still taking in all the fibre and presumably the antioxidants and whatever that's in that fruit. But is it providing a healthier edge in the same way as slow cooking tomato and olive oil might be doing?

[B]

I don't know if the studies have actually been done properly on that. But what you're likely to have done by cooking fruit, particularly if it's at a high heat for longer, is you're going to be destroying the vitamin C in it. So you're going to get less vitamin C in the fruit than you otherwise would have, but you're getting fibre and you're getting other micronutrients as well. I think that the evidence is stronger for vegetables, different coloured vegetables. But there is evidence, for example, that the redness in watermelon is pretty good for you and has bioactive compounds in that. And you don't often stew watermelon.

[A]

That's true. I don't even want to think about what stewed watermelon would taste like. So the heart of Jamie's question really was, is there anything that you get out of fruit that they can't get out of vegetables? And so we kind of went through this is not exhaustive. Things that we usually think of as getting from fruit, vitamin C, potassium, antioxidants, bioactive compounds, natural sugars, if that's something you want or not. Fiber is a big one. And for all of the things that you can get from fruits, so vitamin C, obviously we think of citrus fruit, strawberries, guavas, you can get that in spades from things like kale, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, basically every vegetable. We think about bananas as a source of potassium. You can get that from potatoes, sweet potatoes, baby spinach, antioxidants basically taste the rainbow, as you and Priya are always saying on the health report. Priya loves talking about eating rainbows. If you're having that variety of colours in the foods that we're eating, whether it's fruit or vegetables, that's good. And obviously fibre is in basically any plant food, but it's particularly high in all sorts of veggies, grains, beans, peas and lentils.

[B]

And a lot of it is soluble fibre. And it's possible that some sweet fruits have more soluble fibre than others like pears and so on, but by and large we can't find very much at all that you get in fruit that you don't get from a good variety of vegetables.

[A]

So what about just taking a step back and going, okay, we just take it as understood that fruit and vegetables are good for us. Where does that evidence actually come from? How do we know this?

[B]

We know it from broad epidemiological data. So we know from studying populations that populations with high vegetable intake, low red meat intake, that is associated with lower rates of coronary heart disease and there's also a relationship with cancer as well. We know that the DASH diet that I talked about earlier has been studied in quite a lot of detail in the United States and that also is associated with benefit. And there's a study done in Australia which actually made the comment that we don't know enough about cooking and the effects of cooking in that diet. That's a 10 year old study, again shows very strong correlation with fruit and vegetable consumption and your chances of dying of any cause. And that's following a group of people through where they several thousand people where they knew quite a lot about their habits, their dietary habits and their exercise habits. By the way, that study showed up to seven sours a day or fruit and vegetables gives you the highest risk reduction. But it's a good question to ask because people who are eating fruit and vegetables are more likely to exercise, they're less likely to smoke, they're less likely to drink. There's a lot of other things going on. But they did try to isolate that in this particular Australian study.

[A]

What about the other end of the spectrum? What do we know about what happens if you're not getting that intake?

[B]

Well, another very large study which is called the Global Burden of Disease Study. I need to make a declaration here. I was in it the beginning of this study with World Health Organization and the World bank which looks at something called Daly's disability adjusted life years. So not just death but also how many years you live with disability. It tried to look at the global burden of disease relative to fruit and vegetable intake. So the deaths and disease there. And they felt that a high proportion of premature mortality was attributable to suboptimal fruit and vegetable intake. And so if you did actually have adequate intake, you had a reduction in age related mortality. In other words, everybody's going to die, but your chances of dying at a given age went down between 35 and 40%. So a little bit less for fruit than vegetables, but basically the same.

[A]

Is it mostly cardiovascular disease that we're protecting against or is this catching a lot of big factors here?

[B]

Mostly they've measured cardiovascular disease. It's much easier to measure but when you're eating a high proportion of fruit and vegetables you tend not to put on as much weight and that's related to lower cancer incidence and it's also related to lower incidence of type 2 diabetes. So there are flow on effects from fruit and vegetables and they do affect your microbiome and the function of your immune system.

[A]

So basically the takeaway for Jamie is as long as you're eating veggies, don't stress too much about not eating fruit if you don't like it.

[B]

Correct. And I eat a mountain of vegetables. If you want some recommendations there, some

[A]

recommendations from Dr. Norman Swan and I'm

[B]

still around and you know I was born in the 19th century.

[A]

A surprise second question for you, Norman.

[B]

Oh really?

[A]

This one comes from Jonathan. Jonathan Said the Economist had an article about CRISPR gene editing for fruit that mentioned some of the changes to fruit over the Last few thousand years. And Jonathan's asking, should we actually be eating ancient fruit rather than modern varieties that have been bred to be higher in sugar? I love talking about ancient fruits and vegetables. I'm so excited to talk about this.

[B]

It's an interesting study. It's a Chinese study that identified two genes that put a break on sugar production in tomatoes during ripening. But I mean, this is a complicated story, but in fact, tomatoes in ancient times were smaller than they are today and probably sweeter. And the tomatoes today are less sweet because ashe granny they were much nicer in the older days. They were certainly much nicer in Scotland, I have to say, than they are in Australia. And that was associated with sweetness. So there may well be something about ancient varieties having a bit more sugar in them.

[A]

Well, the thing with modern fruit and vegetables is that often what they're bred to be good for is size, yield from a particular plant and shelf stability or being able to be transported. And it seems to me that if something's higher in sugar, it's perhaps more likely to go off more quickly than something that is lower in sugar and maybe a bit more shelf stable.

[B]

Yeah. And I think the bottom line of this work in China, if indeed it's borne out, is that the advantage would be that with this genetic modification it's not going to kill you with cancer or diabetes. It's probably just going to encourage you to eat more fruit in the form of tomatoes.

[A]

So really the question from Jonathan is should we be seeking out ancient varieties? And I think this sort of plays to this idea of. You and I have talked about it before, some brilliant researcher in the US calls it paleo fantasy, this idea that our ancient forebears had an inherently better

[B]

lifestyle than us, which is why they died at 28.

[A]

And it also kind of suggests that it's been a homogenous state across humanity for all of this time. We only started agriculture 10,000 years ago, which in the broad scheme of things is very recently in terms of our evolution. But to say that we. You need to eat a plant based diet or need to eat like people did in the olden days, it is harder to do because the sorts of plant that we have access to now are quite different to what our ancestors had.

[B]

And I think the key is it goes back to our previous what's that rash on exercise and what time of day is best? The time of day that's best is the time of day that you can do exercise. There might be some benefits of the morning or the evening for certain things, but actually just doing the exercise and not overthinking your fruit and vegetables, just eating them. And it's going to be better than not eating them.

[A]

Yeah, keep it broad, brushstrokes, not trying to optimise every single tiny aspect of our lives.

[B]

Yeah. And I find those sort of antique tomatoes that you get at the grocer's a bit mushy. The heritage breeds a bit mushy.

[A]

Oh really? That's because they haven't been bred for having a long shelf life like the ones that you get in the supermarket.

[B]

Yeah, I like the engineered ones. Give me those nice and crunchy. Small ones are better.

[A]

He's a man of science. Well, Jonathan and Jamie, thank you both so much for asking your questions. We love getting them. Our email address is thatrashbc.net au if you want to ask us a question. And it's also where you can send us some feedback.

[B]

And what's the feedback this week?

[A]

So a couple of headache related questions because we did a headache episode a couple of weeks ago, Martin says as a runner I can contribute my own N equals one observation about headaches and exercise. I get occasional tensiony headaches. Then I find an almost surefire way to relieve them is to go for a run. Yes, it's often the last thing that I feel like doing, but it can lift the headache really quickly. I didn't even appreciate that this was a novel observation. I mentioned it in passing to my GP a while back and her fairly desultory response was along the lines of oh yes, that would work.

[B]

I bet you the GP doesn't do it well just to finish, Martin says. So I imagine it was a known known. I don't know. I don't know if it is a known known actually. So we believe you there, Martin. And next time I have a tension headache I'm going to get out and try and run.

[A]

I don't know if I am, let's be real, but I'll think about it at least. And another email says I also get stabbing pains that last only a few seconds in the opposite side of I've always said someone has a voodoo doll and is sticking a pin in my head when it happens. You called them ice pick headaches. I had never heard of them, but happy to know it's not just me enduring this.

[B]

And there's a P.S. here from Anonymous. I should have said I'm one of those people that have a bur hole drilled in my skull. You need to listen to this episode. By the way. I tell an anecdote. Shall I tell the anecdote again?

[A]

Yeah, yeah, do it because it's so funny.

[B]

So we had a very eccentric neurosurgeon at the medical school I went to and he was giving us a lecture on what's called subdural hematoma. And this is where you have this bang to your head. And a few days later the blood clot grows and it's actually life threatening because of pressure inside your head. And he brought in a hand drill to the lecture and he said, it's safer to take the hand drill from your garage and dip it in cow shit and drill the hole than not drill it at all. So now I go. Now I go back to Anonymous, who says I should have said I'm one of those people who have a burr hole drilled in my skull. My life has been saved thanks to my neurosurgeon doing this and sucking out excess cerebral spinal fluid. Hopefully it wasn't covered in cow shit at the time. Thank you, Anonymous. You should have given us your name. At least we know who you are.

[A]

Also related, Peter says, G' day, as always, love the episode Small picky point. One of my tutors in medical school's advice for treating possible subdural haematoma was the Black Decker medium diameter drill bit applied at the appropriate side of the head. Peter goes on to say he didn't mention cow shit, and I suspect that if one was to go spend time looking for cow shit, in most circumstances the person would have expired before one found any. However, Peter says, and this really is a bit of a blow to your credentials as a doctor, Norman, the drill bit is applied to the skull, not the brain. As Norman accidentally said, true brain equals messy.

[B]

That's right. So just be careful how far the drill goes in. If you're ever in this situation in

[A]

the farmyard, if you are in this situation in the farmyard, I really, really want to hear the story that [e-mail]

[B]

See you next week.

[A]

See you.