Fruit and Triglycerides, Fatty Liver and Diabetes with Dr Rick Dina

Fruit and Triglycerides, Fatty Liver, and Diabetes… Let’s Talk Properly

There is a lot of poor information out there about fruit and what it does inside the body. Dr. Rick Dina and I sit down to clear up some of the most persistent and damaging myths, including fruit and triglycerides, fatty liver, and diabetes.

If you have ever been questioned by a doctor, a family member, or someone online about eating too much fruit, this conversation is your resource. Dr. Rick Dina has been on the raw food path for over 35 years, holds a Doctorate, and has worked clinically with hundreds of high fruit eaters, reviewing their actual lab work over many years. What he has seen again and again runs completely counter to what most people have been told.

Watch the full conversation above and read on for the key takeaways.

The Truth About Fruit and Triglycerides

Triglycerides is just a fancy word for blood fats. The common claim goes like this: fructose from fruit turns to fat in the liver, raises your triglycerides, and therefore fruit is dangerous for cardiovascular health. It sounds plausible on the surface, which is why it gets repeated so often.

Dr. Rick explains that this is a significant oversimplification of how fructose is actually metabolised in the body. What happens to fructose depends heavily on the metabolic conditions at the time, whether you are consuming an appropriate amount of calories or overeating, whether you are insulin sensitive or insulin resistant, and what else is going on in the diet overall.

More importantly, Dr. Rick has actually ordered and reviewed the lab work of around 100 high fruit eaters over the years, people getting 50, 60, 70, even 80 percent of their calories from fruit. Over 90 percent of the time their triglyceride levels are in excellent range, typically well below 100 milligrams per deciliter, which is better than the medical reference range of below 150. Not elevated. Not concerning. Excellent.

He has yet to see a single case of fatty liver in a high fruit eater eating a genuinely low fat raw food diet. You would know if it were present because you would see elevated liver enzymes, high triglycerides, and markers of insulin resistance. Those simply are not showing up in the people living this lifestyle properly.

Does Fruit Cause Diabetes?

This one comes up constantly and it is just as misunderstood. The basic fear is that fruit contains sugar, sugar makes your body produce insulin, insulin stores fat, therefore fruit causes diabetes. People have been saying this for years and it simply does not hold up to scrutiny.

The real driver of type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance is not fruit. It is too much fat, particularly saturated fat from animal products and processed junk food, which interferes with insulin’s ability to do its job at the cellular level. When your cells become resistant to insulin, your body keeps pumping out more and more of it trying to compensate. Add refined carbohydrates to that picture and things get worse fast. But fruit is not refined carbohydrates. Not even close.

What Dr. Rick has seen clinically, and what has been shown over many years of research, is that people who shift to a high healthy carbohydrate diet centred around fruit and vegetables actually see their blood sugar levels improve. Their body becomes more insulin sensitive, not less. They lose body fat, their blood pressure normalises, their cholesterol improves, and many get off medications entirely.

As Dr. Rick put it so clearly, high fructose corn syrup from a soft drink and eating a couple of ripe mangoes are not the same thing. The fibre content, water content, nutrient density, and metabolic context are completely different. Lumping them together as “sugar is sugar” is the kind of oversimplification that leads people away from some of the most health promoting foods on the planet.

The Information Age Paradox

One of the most important points Dr. Rick raises in this conversation is what he calls the information age paradox. There is more information available now than ever before, but the percentage of it that is accurate and well founded is lower than ever. People say provocative things online because controversy drives attention, whether what they are saying is grounded in evidence or not.

The antidote is education. Real education from people who have been living this way for decades, who have clinical experience, who have reviewed the science, and who have seen what actually happens to real people following this diet long term. That kind of grounded, experience backed knowledge gives you the discernment to see through the trends and the noise and make choices that genuinely support your health for life.

This is exactly what I value so much about Dr. Rick and Dr. Karin Dina’s work. I took their course myself and learned an enormous amount, even after being on this path for over 15 years at the time. If you are serious about your raw food journey and want to feel genuinely confident in what you are doing and why, I cannot recommend their work highly enough.

If you want to go deep on raw food nutrition science, check out the Mastering Raw Food Nutrition course with Dr. Rick and Karin Dina here.

The course is a year long deep dive into whole food plant based nutrition from a fruit and vegetable forward perspective. It runs annually starting late August and includes pre-recorded educational videos each week alongside live conference sessions. Around 20 percent of students are already coaches, educators, or influencers in the health space, and many come in already knowledgeable and still leave having learned a huge amount. I am one of them.

To speak with Dr. Rick and Karin about whether the course is a good fit for you, you can book a call with them here.

Check out my video on an Introduction to the Benefits of Raw Food Nutrition that I did as part of the Mastering Raw Food Nutrition curriculum.

Enjoy this video Can a Raw Vegan Diet be Unhealthy with Dr. Rick Dina.

Enjoy this video on Fasting and Blood Tests with Dr. Rick Dina.

As Always

Wishing You Much

PeaceLovenSeasonalFruit ck