How many people log every fruit and vegetable they eat?

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Replies

  • cmtigger
    cmtigger Posts: 1,450 Member
    dfwesq wrote: »
    Fruit is nature's candy. It has some nutritional value, sure. But it's also very high in sugar and calories and not ideal to eat all the time. Sugar is sugar - whether it comes from a banana or a chocolate bar. You can get the same nutrients from vegetables without overloading on the sugar.

    Trying not to get too off-topic here, but... The amount of sugar in whole fruit is low compared with other sweet foods, and because it has fiber too, it's hard to mindlessly overeat. So if you want something sweet, fruit is a good choice. For most people it's fine to eat every day, several servings in fact without being in any danger of overeating sugar.

    And while fruits and vegetables are similar nutritionally, there are some differences when it comes to phytonutrients. Fruits are a better source of some of those than vegetables.

    Lol. I've overeaten fruit a few times, especially apricots and avocados. My mom and brother have too.
  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,371 Member
    cmtigger wrote: »
    dfwesq wrote: »
    Fruit is nature's candy. It has some nutritional value, sure. But it's also very high in sugar and calories and not ideal to eat all the time. Sugar is sugar - whether it comes from a banana or a chocolate bar. You can get the same nutrients from vegetables without overloading on the sugar.

    Trying not to get too off-topic here, but... The amount of sugar in whole fruit is low compared with other sweet foods, and because it has fiber too, it's hard to mindlessly overeat. So if you want something sweet, fruit is a good choice. For most people it's fine to eat every day, several servings in fact without being in any danger of overeating sugar.

    And while fruits and vegetables are similar nutritionally, there are some differences when it comes to phytonutrients. Fruits are a better source of some of those than vegetables.

    Lol. I've overeaten fruit a few times, especially apricots and avocados. My mom and brother have too.

    Plums for me, lol.

    But you'd log a 100 calorie chocolate bar. Why wouldn't you log a 100 calorie banana?
  • cmtigger
    cmtigger Posts: 1,450 Member
    Francl27 wrote: »
    cmtigger wrote: »
    dfwesq wrote: »
    Fruit is nature's candy. It has some nutritional value, sure. But it's also very high in sugar and calories and not ideal to eat all the time. Sugar is sugar - whether it comes from a banana or a chocolate bar. You can get the same nutrients from vegetables without overloading on the sugar.

    Trying not to get too off-topic here, but... The amount of sugar in whole fruit is low compared with other sweet foods, and because it has fiber too, it's hard to mindlessly overeat. So if you want something sweet, fruit is a good choice. For most people it's fine to eat every day, several servings in fact without being in any danger of overeating sugar.

    And while fruits and vegetables are similar nutritionally, there are some differences when it comes to phytonutrients. Fruits are a better source of some of those than vegetables.

    Lol. I've overeaten fruit a few times, especially apricots and avocados. My mom and brother have too.

    Plums for me, lol.

    But you'd log a 100 calorie chocolate bar. Why wouldn't you log a 100 calorie banana?

    I've probably done it with plums too. My great aunt had a mini orchard and she'd bring us boxes of plums and apricots that were just perfect ripe. My mom let us eat as much as we wanted so they didn't spoil. Mmmm.
  • RoxieDawn
    RoxieDawn Posts: 15,488 Member
    edited May 2017
    I definitely log fruit and veggies. I think for me pineapple and cantaloupe are the two highest calorie fruits I eat. I log veggies too.. why not, they have calories as well..

    Now I did just eat 78 grams of celery and almost did not log it.. it was 13 calories, it had a gram of fiber, need to see if I am reaching my fiber goals..
  • dfwesq
    dfwesq Posts: 592 Member
    edited May 2017
    cmtigger wrote: »
    Lol. I've overeaten fruit a few times, especially apricots and avocados. My mom and brother have too.
    Not sure if this is what you're getting at, but it's easy to mindlessly overeat sugary foods like candy or sodas. Someone might mindlessly drink a 12-ounce can of Coca-cola, or two, or three. But to get the same amount of sugar as there is in 12 ounces of Coke, you'd have to eat over 400g of apricots, or about 2 1/2 cups. You could do it, but it probably isn't something you could do without noticing. Unlike drinking the Coke, it would take a long time and you'd feel full afterwards.

    Btw, I wouldn't count avocado as a fruit for purposes of someone who wants to reduce sugar intake. It has almost no sugar.

    ETA: I would log those foods, btw. My reason for posting was responding to the suggestion that fruit is very high in sugar and should be avoided. Didn't mean to get too off-topic there! :)

  • dmsx3
    dmsx3 Posts: 20 Member
    I do unless it's just a slice to tomato or piece of onion for a burger or something along those lines.
  • rseneca724
    rseneca724 Posts: 46 Member
    I don't log lettuce or cucumbers. I log all my other veggies though. And EVERY piece of fruit.
  • serenityfrye
    serenityfrye Posts: 360 Member
    No, but my coach has me counting macros not calories and the numbers he gives us are purposely see a couple hundred calories low so we can skip logging what's on his "freebie" veggie list (most veggies with under 10 Cal/carb per serving) just to keep things simple.
  • lucypstacy
    lucypstacy Posts: 178 Member
    I try to log everything - fruit, vegetable, whatever. It just gives me a better idea of what I'm eating.
  • cmtigger
    cmtigger Posts: 1,450 Member
    dfwesq wrote: »
    cmtigger wrote: »
    Lol. I've overeaten fruit a few times, especially apricots and avocados. My mom and brother have too.
    Not sure if this is what you're getting at, but it's easy to mindlessly overeat sugary foods like candy or sodas. Someone might mindlessly drink a 12-ounce can of Coca-cola, or two, or three. But to get the same amount of sugar as there is in 12 ounces of Coke, you'd have to eat over 400g of apricots, or about 2 1/2 cups. You could do it, but it probably isn't something you could do without noticing. Unlike drinking the Coke, it would take a long time and you'd feel full afterwards.

    Btw, I wouldn't count avocado as a fruit for purposes of someone who wants to reduce sugar intake. It has almost no sugar.

    ETA: I would log those foods, btw. My reason for posting was responding to the suggestion that fruit is very high in sugar and should be avoided. Didn't mean to get too off-topic there! :)

    Actually it can be not crazy hard to eat a bunch of perfectly ripe fruits, or especially dried fruits. And while avocados aren't high in sugar, they are still high in calories because of the fat. I think my brother once ate a pound of dried fruit without my parents noticing.

    But yes, both are not "bad" for you because they have a lot of other nutrients we need.
  • jwcsanders
    jwcsanders Posts: 50 Member
    I do, mainly because I eat more veggies during the day than anything else. But, I am also watching my carbs so I log them to keep up with that as well.
  • VioletRojo
    VioletRojo Posts: 597 Member
    When I was losing I had a very small deficit of only 250 calories. It would be very easy to 250 calories worth of vegetables in one meal and blow my whole deficit, so I logged every thing that passed my lips.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    dfwesq wrote: »
    cmtigger wrote: »
    Lol. I've overeaten fruit a few times, especially apricots and avocados. My mom and brother have too.
    Not sure if this is what you're getting at, but it's easy to mindlessly overeat sugary foods like candy or sodas. Someone might mindlessly drink a 12-ounce can of Coca-cola, or two, or three. But to get the same amount of sugar as there is in 12 ounces of Coke, you'd have to eat over 400g of apricots, or about 2 1/2 cups. You could do it, but it probably isn't something you could do without noticing. Unlike drinking the Coke, it would take a long time and you'd feel full afterwards.

    Btw, I wouldn't count avocado as a fruit for purposes of someone who wants to reduce sugar intake. It has almost no sugar.

    ETA: I would log those foods, btw. My reason for posting was responding to the suggestion that fruit is very high in sugar and should be avoided. Didn't mean to get too off-topic there! :)

    I can mindlessly overeat fruit, did as a kid all the time (when visiting my grandparents in the summer, they grew lots of fruit). At Christmas time I ate an INSANE amount of clementines, too, since I was visiting my parents and not logging or anything and they had a big box of them.

    As for whether this matters, I've never personally found that eating lots of fruit caused me to gain weight. I was never overweight as a kid, didn't gain weight from the clementines at Christmas (when I wasn't logging). I find fruit reasonably satiating, although not everyone does.

    However, Coke isn't a great comparison, maybe a cookie. There's about the same amount of sugar in a cookie (a homemade, 200 calorie one) as in an apple or peach, and there's more in a banana or pineapple, of course. Could I easily eat 5 peaches -- honestly, probably not these days, I'd eat maybe 2. Could I easily eat 5 cookies? Sometimes, yeah, and absolutely nothing to do with hunger. More significantly, and why the focus on sugar is the wrong one, eating 3 peaches would have a lot fewer calories than 3 cookies, even if they were equal in sugar amounts.

    All that aside, I think EbonyDahlia accidentally posted in the wrong thread and none of this relates to the thread topic, so I will drop it now! ;-)
  • ruqayyahsmum
    ruqayyahsmum Posts: 1,513 Member
    bbell1985 wrote: »
    but I remember years ago when I was in Weight Watchers my instructor said "nobody has even become overweight by eating too many apples"

    This kinda makes sense if you follow this:

    But you should eat the fruit and vegies before filling your cals up with other things, not the other way around.

    If I've hit my calories for the day and then eat unlimited fruit and veggies then yeah, i would gain weight. It really depends which way you look at it. If the only things i ate day in day out were fruit and veggies, then no i probably wouldn't put on weight because of them.

    If you've hit your calories for the day and then (try to) eat unlimited celery and cucumber, would you still gain weight? :)

    Point is, it depends on the kind of veggies. Use common sense.


    100 calories is a surplus. It's not hard to eat 100-250 calories worth of veggies. Use common sense.

    A 301 gram cucumber is 47 calories. Do most people eat more than 5 to get over 250? That's assuming you know exactly the amount you burn that day to consider it "surplus".

    Just eat 2 cucumbers and walk a pet. :)

    My fish dont appreciate a gòod walk
  • Unforgiven67
    Unforgiven67 Posts: 2 Member
    Doesn't matter what it is....if it goes in your mouth you need to track it, there is no point in not recording everything your only cheating yourself.
    Some fruits might surprise you how many calories are in there.
  • beaglady
    beaglady Posts: 1,362 Member
    I log fruits, and starchy vegetables. I log other veggies too, but worry less about precise weights for ones like cauliflower, broccoli and green beans. If I have a salad with added cabbage, radish, or similar low cal veggies, I usually log 'iceberg mix' rather than bother listing individually. My margins of error aren't going to be effected by a few slices of celery.
  • nissarayna
    nissarayna Posts: 70 Member
    Yes, I log it all, it's become a habit to log it all now.
  • Merrysix
    Merrysix Posts: 336 Member
    I log all my fruits and vegetables (and weigh them too) -- just a way to be honest with myself about what I'm eating (making sure I'm not under or over).
  • perkymommy
    perkymommy Posts: 1,642 Member
    Yes. They have calories and sodium.
  • dfwesq
    dfwesq Posts: 592 Member
    edited May 2017
    cmtigger wrote: »
    Actually it can be not crazy hard to eat a bunch of perfectly ripe fruits, or especially dried fruits.
    Agreed. Or fruit juices, or fruit concentrates. I think you're talking about something different from what I'm talking about, though. I agree fruit is tasty and someone can eat a lot of it. I agree that dried fruit, fruit juices, and fruit concentrates are easy to overeat (that's why I was talking about whole fruits).

    But I was responding to someone who warned that you could overdose on sugar by eating fruit, and you shouldn't eat it very often. You'd find it hard to accidentally eat too much sugar from most whole fresh fruits. People can and do mindlessly drink several servings of soda or polish off a bowl of jelly beans while without noticing and without getting full. Maybe you could eat a kilogram of fresh fruit, but you'd be aware of what you were doing. It isn't something you'd be likely to do unconsciously. And if you did eat that much, you'd know you'd eaten something and you'd be full.
  • Jthanmyfitnesspal
    Jthanmyfitnesspal Posts: 3,522 Member
    This is what I do as best practice, but I often just eyeball the portions if I'm not at home:

    Whole apple, pear, nectarine, orange: Log as whole fruit; might pick small or large

    strawberries, blueberries, cherries, grapes: cup measure or count and log

    Most vegetables: Log with portion by eyeball

    Butternut squash, sweet potato, white potato: cup measure or weigh and log

    Avocado, banana: weigh and log

    Green salad veg, including salad greens, cucumber, onion, bell pepper, celery, carrot etc.: Don't log (just log the dressing)
  • AgidGirl
    AgidGirl Posts: 138 Member
    I log everything I eat. If I eat 2 fishy crackers I log them. If I eat a few cucumbers I log them. ETC
  • endlessfall16
    endlessfall16 Posts: 932 Member
    dfwesq wrote: »
    cmtigger wrote: »
    Lol. I've overeaten fruit a few times, especially apricots and avocados. My mom and brother have too.
    Not sure if this is what you're getting at, but it's easy to mindlessly overeat sugary foods like candy or sodas. Someone might mindlessly drink a 12-ounce can of Coca-cola, or two, or three. But to get the same amount of sugar as there is in 12 ounces of Coke, you'd have to eat over 400g of apricots, or about 2 1/2 cups. You could do it, but it probably isn't something you could do without noticing. Unlike drinking the Coke, it would take a long time and you'd feel full afterwards.


    This is my kind of thinking also. It'd take some conscious action to down 300, 500 calorie worth of veggies or hard fruits or fruits with skin and seed. And let's be honest most people don't get overweight mainly by overeating vegetables.

    That said, many people still need to count vegetable, fruit calories due to their behavior. Methinks that this group of people always wants to eat to the brim of their allowance and all the time, leaving no margin to account for a few calories from cucumber.

    Bottom line is, we all need to find the happy balance for work and reward. I was taught to not sweat the small stuff, not count the pennies but focus on the big picture. That works for me.