AMA #36: Fruits & vegetables—everything you need to know

**Peter Attia** (0:11)
Hey, everyone, welcome to a sneak peek, Ask Me Anything, or AMA episode of the Drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Attia. At the end of this short episode, I'll explain how you can access the AMA episodes in full, along with a ton of other membership benefits we've created. Or you can learn more now by going to peterattiamd.com forward slash subscribe. So without further delay, here's today's sneak peek of the Ask Me Anything episode.
Welcome to Ask Me Anything episode number 36 I'm once again joined by Nick Stenson. In today's episode, we talk about all things fruits and vegetables. We compiled some of you may recall a list of questions around this subject that came through the website, through social media and directly through the users.
And we've tried to organize this podcast around the themes of those questions because we literally received thousands of questions. Conversation basically goes as follows. We look at the idea of fruits and vegetables being uniform, which of course they're not. So we talk about how they're similar and how they're different in terms of many features of their nutritional value. We think about specifically the fiber, sugar and other nutrient content of fruits and vegetables as ways to assess their relative value. We comment on the difference between eating them or drinking them and how processing fruits and vegetables can change their properties. Talk about NAFLD and type 2 diabetes and ask the question of whether or not those specific diseases require a different nutrition strategy when it comes to fruits and vegetables.
We then get into some of the science around the good and the bad of phytochemicals, which we get asked a lot about. Talk about organic versus non-organic handling of food and if different preparation strategies can affect the nutrient value of fruits and vegetables.
We round out the discussion by talking about supplementing fruits and vegetables through things like multivitamins or green powder. So if you're not a subscriber, you'll only be able to listen to a sneak peek version of this episode, but you can learn more about our subscription via the website. One last thing to note is that based on the timing of when we recorded this, we weren't able to do it via video. So this will be an audio only episode, although the show notes will be very helpful because it includes a number of charts and graphics that we use in the episode. So without further delay, I hope you enjoy AMA number 36

**Nick Stenson** (2:27)
Peter, welcome to another AMA. How you doing?

**Peter Attia** (2:31)
I'm doing well. We just spent the last 15 minutes talking about why season four of Drive to Survive was not good. So I wish we could continue on that discussion, but I don't think anybody wants to hear us talk about Formula One anymore.

**Nick Stenson** (2:43)
Yeah, it will be interesting to see. I mean, on the positive front, we picked a topic for today that you're second most excited about in terms of right after Formula One, which is nutrition, and in particular fruits and vegetables. So I'm sure the excitement we had in our little intro on Formula One will be carried over to this one. What do you think?

**Peter Attia** (3:02)
I think it's hilarious that most people listening to this don't appreciate the sarcasm in your comment.

**Nick Stenson** (3:09)
That might be true. This one's not via video, so they can't see you smirking and smiling over there. So they might think we're being dead serious.

**Peter Attia** (3:15)
This is polar opposite discussion, all things Formula One, all things fruits and vegetables. I think just to completely show my hands to the audience, this is not a topic I'm particularly interested in diving into, but this is as close to taking one for the team as I've ever done in my life. The only reason we are having this discussion is because of you. You, meaning not you, Nick, you, the listeners. The subscribers have asked so many questions on this topic that I simply can't avoid this any longer. If we're gonna be true to our principles of trying to answer questions people have, we have to do this. I spent a little bit of time in therapy trying to understand why I don't wanna talk about this, and that's only slightly an exaggeration. I think here's what it comes down to. I think everybody kind of has this narrative that fruits and vegetables are like quote unquote good. Fruits and vegetables are good. Everybody should eat their fruits and vegetables. Have your five to six servings a day. It's all really good, good, good, good, good.
But the reality is we don't really know that much. It's true on average, and certainly all of the epidemiology would suggest that that is correct. People who eat more fruits and vegetables are healthier than people who don't. And as you'll see as we get into this discussion, I think there's plenty of evidence to suggest that that's the case. But if you really get into the details of this stuff, I think there's far less that's known than is represented as true. And I actually think that's a broader concept that applies to nutrition in general, which also speaks to why, of all the chapters I'm struggling with in trying to wrap up in my book, the nutrition chapter is the one that is hands down posing the greatest difficulty.