Personally, i’m just not the biggest fan of most fruits. Am i missing out on much?
Along with a good amount of vitamins, minerals, fiber, flavonoids etc, fruits feed specific kinds of bacteria that are beneficial to your gut microbiome (so they’re prebiotics). So yes there are plenty of benefits. Kiwis for instance have a specific digestive enzyme that helps break down protein. Berries are highly beneficial to my daughter’s autism. Bananas are great for replenishing electrolytes after a grueling workout. I could go on.
You will miss all of the phytonutrients that are available only in fruit. (More than 5000 phytonutrients have been identified - and many more that have not been identified.)
There are more to micros than simply vitamins and minerals. Resveratrol, isoflavones, bioflavonoids, etc.
I am the same. Eat lots of cooked veggies, love broccoli and sweet potatoes. Also eat lots of brown rice, wholegrain sourdough bread, etc. Not really into fruit. Sometimes I’ll eat a banana or berries. Have an occasional avocado toast. But a nice plate of cooked veggies is a winner any day of the week.
I’ve also thought I might be missing out on something by not eating a lot of fruit, but I see fruit as a dessert from nature. Eat it as a treat. I’d much rather treat myself to a roasted sweet potato - the Japanese ones.
As long as you eat a wide variety of vegetables (think of all the different colours) you should be fine. We should really be aiming for 8+ portions of vegetables a day.
Although fruit does contain lots of fibre and nutrients, it also contains fructose which causes spikes in blood sugar, it’s best to focus most of our intake on veg.
Not a dietician or nutritionist. You should eat what you like. If you don’t like fruit, don’t eat it. What are you missing? It’s my understanding it’s important to eat a variety of fruits and vegetables, emphasis on variety. Diversity in your diet encourages a diverse microbiome which is important to your health.
I don’t eat a lot of sweet fruits, but love cooked tomatoes, tomato sauce which helps protect skin from UV radiation. Also, avocadoes, and they have healthy fats. Apples, which have fiber & quercetin. People mentioned spinach, and cooking it will destroy the toxins it produces, plus I was told having calcium with it to bind to the oxalates. Long story short - if you eat a variety of vegetables of all different colors, like squash, broccoli, lettuces, you should be fine. I do like how people are cautioning against eating too much of the same thing. The cruciferous vegetables are supposed to help ward off cancer, but if you eat them all the time they can interfere with your thyroid.
I would look up the “important nutrients” from five common fruits, like bananas, citrus, grapes, apples and something else, and make sure you are getting - via supplement, perhaps - all of that.
A lot of people say that fruit is important, but to me, it’s just a bunch of sugar that I don’t need. Nature sugar, I understand, but still sugar.
Congratulations you’re doing what most people wish they prefer. Obviously I can’t make a generalized statement for EVERY fruit out there, but 9/10 times vegetables are gonna be the same thing minus the sugar. I recently SIGNIFICANTLY lessened the amount of fruit I put in my smoothies & now they primarily consist of spinach, kale, & what other veggies I happen to be feeling that day with a SMALL amount of blueberries to even the odds a little vs going with a 1:1 ratio like I used to.