Add easy, lazy fruit options to your rotation, if nothing else
An ode to the instant gratification of apples, and other minimum-effort, healthy snacks
Aside from maybe your goth phase in high school, chances are, at least part of your drive in life has been to “fit in.” That doesn’t mean you’re some POSEUR in every case — ideally, you’d want to avoid fitting in with Nazis, though I unfortunately can’t speak for everyone there — but gaining acceptance from various communities is part of what makes us human, and what perpetuates the whole dern thing.
Well, if there’s one area where you might want to embrace your inner rebel — or, maybe it would be more realistic to shoot for “jock who cares about what they eat and is nice to the nerds” — then follow my suggestion and avoid eating fruits and vegetables like the average person. If you’re barely eating a single fruit and/or vegetable per day, you’ll be a lot like poor Donnie from “The Big Lebowski.” Nutritionally, you’d be like a child who walks into the middle of a movie and wants to know what happened.
(Imagine Walter, working for the CDC, asking if anyone give’s a s**t about the rules about the daily guidelines for fruits and vegetables.)
Search through a variety of stats about how many fruits and vegetables the average person (often American, as that’s where the research sometimes is pointed), and you’ll amass a big pile of NOT GOOD.
Check the bottom of this post for more minute details about average consumption levels. But note that roughly 9 out of 10 people don’t reach their recommended intake of fruits and vegetables. If you want to battle it out because of certain subcategories where they hit, say, 13%, roughly call it an 85/15 split, or be super-generous at 2 out of 10 people eating a better proportion.
Either way, it’s really bad!
But I found one set of statistics fascinating, and a special catalyst for this specific post about FINDING FRUITS YOU LIKE THAT REQUIRE LITTLE-TO-NO EFFORT.
Seemingly, almost everyone (about 95%) consumes at least one vegetable every day, while as many as a third of people surveyed don’t get a single fruit in their diet. Here’s a screengrab from the CDC post about a study conducted from 2015-18:
My assumption is simple: people generally fall out of the habit of getting fruit in their diet, or never develop the habit at all.
If someone looks at this Heart Association graphic regarding the suggested intake of fruits and vegetables per day, that might all feel daunting.
That’s especially daunting since you should essentially disregard fruit juice, which struggles to clear the bar of being “healthier than soda.” (I’d also caution against vegetable juice, really, as the most popular versions of it tend to be loaded with added sodium. Fruit juice is a more prolific trap, though, seemingly.)
Chances are, if you’re not eating healthy, you probably feel like bigger changes are too much of a hassle. Such thoughts explain why I try to hype up ways to get a lot of healthy stuff in single meals that are basically as easy as you want them to be.
I’d imagine I lap the general population just with a frozen fruit and other stuff packed smoothie —
And similarly get bang for the buck with vegetable-packed salads. (To be clear: you’d be eating something very healthy if you merely grabbed some quality mixed greens and didn’t put anything too bad on it; the big salad I suggest in the post below is merely if you want to really go for it.)
But allow me this chance to pump up the sort of fruits that you can eat with almost no effort at all. Because, frankly, having a healthy thing be as easy (or almost as easy) to prepare as grabbing a snack could be as big a lifestyle change as shooting higher for things that require prep time.
Apple a day really is a nice resolution for 2023 — and you don’t need to stop at one if you find ones you enjoy
For far too long, I fell somewhere between being bored by apples to sneering at their flavors. My hypothesis is straightforward: I wasn’t experimenting enough to find ones I like, but in the worst (and most common) form of self-sabotage, the many marketed candies and treats rendered apples less interesting.
As much as I applaud Reese’s efforts to be candy’s answer to the turducken by packing Reese’s cups with other Reese’s products (or, like potato chips), I’d hope that you could cut down on the sugar-loaded sweets. Otherwise, apples and other fruits do indeed face an uphill battle.
Nonetheless, I encourage you to give many different fruits the old college try. Perhaps you assume you don’t like apples, but maybe that’s because you haven’t found the right one. Or, maybe you don’t enjoy fruit/vegetable X, yet there’s a version of that thing you would enjoy — you may have only consumed something prepared the wrong way. (At least, the wrong way for you.)
So, a request the next time you get groceries, or get them delivered. Try out a few different varieties of apples, or other minimal-effort fruits; think of the stuff you liked when you were a kid, but stopped eating. It could be as simple as tracking what’s in season to get the best version of a thing you can find (here’s a Canadian list, not sure if it would differ much from the U.S.) or as experimental as going to a farmer’s market to see what’s there.
Anyway, I started to get in a better apple groove when I found red delicious apples that actually fit there name. So far, I’ve tried other varieties, with honeycrisp being my favorite. Once you find a fit or a few, you can buy them in larger quantities to really save money, and aggressively shoot for that whole “apple a day keeping the doctor away” thing. (Again, no shame in eating more than one per day).
Take a gander at some of the benefits of apples here.
For me, one of the biggest ones is ease of use. When I’m in one of those spots where snacking is common (think midnight snack territory), I simply wash one off and chomp away. It doesn’t get much easier than that.
That said, I’ve spoken with others who simply don’t like to eat them that way. Chopping them up and plating them with peanut butter or some other healthy thing gets even more healthy stuff in your system, and either tastes even better or masks the taste if you don’t dig the apple.
Such a strategy is valid, yet if you find ones you like, I say go the fastest and easiest way. If those are at eye level where snacks once were, you could be swapping a negative in salty and/or sugary snacks in for a healthy fruit.
I’ve lost count of the times I’ve felt “meh” and solved those feelings with some mix of more water, an apple, or some of the teas I’ve recommended.
Oh, do note something if you chop up apples: make sure to eat the skin, too. Lots of the good stuff is there. Don’t let Mac scare you.
Bananas can be (cough, sorry) appealing; oranges too
For whatever reason, I haven’t gotten in the groove of peeling various oranges/clementines as a quick fruit the same way I’ve embraced apples. Perhaps I simply need to find the citrus answer to honeycrisps? Strangely, bananas sometimes slip my mind, as well.
But both can be great options either alongside apples, or if apples simply don’t work for you.
You’ve probably heard some people balk at bananas, possibly because 90% of their calories come from carbohydrates. Here’s an opinion: the fixation on eliminating carbs is one of the worst influences of America and the world’s obsession with diets that smell of get-rich/skinny-quick schemes. Every sign points to good sources of carbs being a crucial part of a healthy diet.
But maybe you’d want to be more strategic with your banana munching, gearing that toward the earlier or midday? That gets into optimization in a way that’s out of my comfort zone, as a newb. Seems sensible enough.
Yet, circling back, this is assuming you struggle to regularly get fruit in your diet. (Actually, struggle might be the wrong word, as you may simply be oblivious or indifferent about it — don’t feel attacked, I’ve been in that club for far too long, as well.)
If that’s the case, maybe start off by asking fewer questions, and just eating more fruit, even if it means going with the really easy stuff?
Prunes should be for you, not just old people and poopin’
Ideally, you’d be eating approximately 25-30 grams of fiber per day. Some recommendations call for more. According to at least one source, the average American gets only about 15g per day. (That almost feels optimistic, honestly.)
One estimate put it about 16% of Americans suffer from constipation. Like with those numbers about fruit and vegetable intake, specifics can vary. To paraphrase Thoreau, there could be even more people living in quiet not being able to poop right desperation.
So, really, should we giggle at old folks for trying to get more fiber in their guts by way of prunes?
In my quest to eat healthier but also account for weaker moments where I’d otherwise snack, I’ve turned to prunes and dates and … that whole “nature’s candy” gimmick is right-on.
Personally, a juicy prune reminds me of my childhood drinking Oceanspray “CranGrape.” They’re delicious, arguably shockingly so, and it’s a real shame that they’re largely ignored because of silly associations.
(Eventually, you’ll learn that I feel the same way about beans. We really gotta get smarter about poots and poops.)
Check out the benefits of plums and dried plums (a.k.a. prunes), and you’ll see more than just helping your gut. About the only thing to note is to not go on some sort of PRUNE FRENZY, especially if your belly rarely gets the fiber it needs.
Dried fruits — just watch for sugar added
Continuing the “nature’s candy” theme, dried fruits can be a tasty way to eat healthy, and also scratch that itch of snacking. Just be careful to make sure there’s no sugar added. (To be clear: there usually is some sugar added.)
So far, I’ve found some nice luck with dried apricots and figs (along with prunes and dates).
Find your faves, but variety can spice up your fruit options
I’m a hardcore snacker, there’s no doubt about it. Even at a better stage in my dietary decisions, I still have bad habits I need to tweak. Give me too much access to a delicious nut butter (stop giggling), and I’ll nom it down.
Regardless, I’m making big strides, and that doesn’t always mean that I’m “working hard.” A lot of times I’m merely eating an apple or a banana where I’d normally mess up with some dark dive down the chip vortex of guilt.
Know thyself, and gradually put together a rotation of healthier alternatives to your vices. Personally, I was surprised how quickly I took to apples and fruits as snacks alongside nuts. (My glorious wife would probably note my lack of a sweet tooth, yet I’m on the fence about that, because my biggest blunders happen without witnesses, and they often happened with a jar of Nutella.)
By merely adding an apple or other easy fruit every day to your diet, you’d easily get a step closer to being in that “elite” 10% of people who reach their suggested intake of the good stuff.
I think it’s important to break down “healthy” to specifics. Being healthier often means looking better, and feeling better. I’m not sure why anyone would resist the idea of those life improvements. You could do worse than to use this advice for your first steps. Even the easiest steps can be important ones, and your body isn’t going to grade the nutrients you give it based on the difficulty level of preparing and eating it.
So join me in transforming harmful laziness to beneficial laziness!
Those specific stats I promised earlier …
If you plug in different variables such as gender or income level,* you’d get slightly different results. But you could roughly say that 90% of Americans don’t eat enough fruits or vegetables. (If you want to be pedantic or optimistic, maybe the split is occasionally 85-15?)
I imagine if you ask a lot of people if they eat fruits or vegetables every day, they might feel tempted to lie and embellish their “stats.” But you aren’t an outlier if you struggle to clear even pretty modest bars.
Here are some of the 2015 results, via the CDC, if you want to drill down to more specific segments:
Recent data show adults continue to consume too few fruits and vegetables; overall, 12.2% met fruit intake recommendations and 9.3% met vegetable intake recommendations during 2015. Consumption was lower among men, young adults, and adults with greater poverty, and varied by state. Among subgroups, the largest disparities in meeting the recommendation for fruit intake was by sex (15.1% among women compared with 9.2% among men), while the largest disparities in meeting the recommendation for vegetable intake was by poverty (11.4% among adults in the highest household income category compared with 7.0% among adults below or close to the poverty level).
