I eat blueberries which have been frozen, and they have the nutrition information on the bag. Compared to some other types of fruits, blueberries have less sugar. I have diabetes so have a daily carb level that I aim not to exceed so judge portions accordingly.

Which ancestors? How far back are we going and which continent?

I cant say that fruit today is sweeter than fruit used to be. Most of it is bred for shipping which is not going to be sweet. Sweet corn is sweeter but apples? Some of them. Oranges aren't. Bananas? I once went to s specialist Banana grower and tasted other bananas-plus ate bananas in my yard in the Philippines and the bananas in the store are not as sweet. Plums? No nor peaches. They are all picked too soon and bred to be packed and moved. I dont think this is true but am open to evidence that I am wrong. Grapes are probably sweeter.

I have no idea. I eat lots of fresh fruit, 3 or more servings a day. Same with vegetables. No foods today are like they once were. World trade and larger populations have caused the changes. They have to travel farther and feed so many more. Just my thoughts anyway.

I would think any extra sweetness in fruit is offset by the nutrients, fiber, etc. that one gets from them. I also did some googling, and this idea that modern fruit is overly sweet seems to come from the "carbs are bad for you" crowd.

In recent months, my dietitian colleagues and I have been encountering more and more people making claims like “fruit is bad for you” or “fruit is toxic.” “What is going ON?” one of them posted on a dietitian Internet mailing list. What’s going on is that the current crop of fad diets, such as paleo, keto, carnivore and pegan — have convinced a lot of people that fruit is a dietary no-no. https://wapo.st/3DgruLI

I think a lot depends on the alternative. If you are choosing fruit over cakes and cookies, it's better for you regardless of how sweet the fruit is.

The DASH diet is considered a good one and suggests 4 fruit servings a day. https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/in-depth/dash-diet/art-20050989

Let's start with the understanding that "healthy" is a relative term, in part because there is nothing that is 100% "healthy"......potatoes are probably the closest. Every food has pros and cons that can be pointed out - too much fat, too little protein, too much sugar, too little fibre, too much starch, too little vitamin A, too much salt......whatever. And what combination of foods you eat affects the nutrients you get out of that food, so (for instance) you'll get more nutrients out of a salad if you eat it with some fat, than if you eat the salad veggies alone without any fat.

That being said, it's true that fruit has fewer of many nutrients than it used to - but even if today's orange has less vitamin C than an orange of 50 years ago, it doesn't make today's orange "bad", or "worse".

Since everything (including fruit) has pros and cons: All things in moderation.

I don't know but the fruit I occsionally buy here in the stores is horrible. Half the time it is rotten. Most of the time it is just unripe and never going to get ripe. I haven't bought an orange in a long time because they are pale and dry, every single time.

I do buy cherries occasionally. The ones that I can sometimes get in good condition. I now grow my own raspberries, strawberries, and persimmons. I have one persimmon on the tree this year. There were 5 but the rest dropped long ago. It's only their second year so I wasn't expecting anything this year at all. I also planted two cherry trees and one peach that didn't need a pollinator.

Next year will add some columnar peaches and if I live to retirement, I am considering getting a small greenhouse that I can heat and grown dwarf citrus fruit in.

"If you are choosing fruit over cakes and cookies, it's better for you regardless of how sweet the fruit is."

This is my personal philosophy and I'm sticking with it!! Honestly, I prefer fruit to baked goods or candy or ice cream (although I do like a good fruity sorbet) and I often finish off my evening meal with a piece of fruit or a handful of grapes. And lunch or a midday snack is frequently fruit and cheese. I eat a lot of fruit.......but not too much.

Based on my consumption over my lifetime of foods that were supposedly "bad" for you, I should have died years ago!!

"All things in moderation" Indeed!!

I can't remember the last time that I saw Kathie Lee on anything. But I'm sure that she'll be popping up all over for me now!

To be clear, I do not think that all fruit is bad for you, but you can't deny that a lot of the varieties you find in the stores these days have VERY high sugar content.

fruits may have sugar but they also have water, fiber, vitamins…i think it has to be considered within the context of the rest of ones di et.

I'm with the "all things in moderation" crowd. I believe that today's food is not the same nutritionally as the foods of 100 years ago. We (first world countries) shifted from small family farms, to corporate-owned farming. Storage and transportation systems have changed. Animals are treated with antibiotics, confined to small spaces; fields are fertilized, pesticided, herbicided. So many chemicals, such un-natural living conditions.

Whether those changes are a net improvement to human health, or an overall negative -- that I don't know. Unless I grow it myself I can't control it, so I choose not to worry too much. Instead I chose the freshest, most local options reasonable and eat a variety of food. *sigh*.

This week I purchased red grapes.....but no pastries or cakes or cheese cake....

Last week I was on a yogurt and lime juice binge.

I don't have sugar highs or lows. I'm aerobically active...have lots of energy....fruits are part of a balanced diet.

I'm with Nickel, Not concerned about fruit sweetness, but everyone should question what pesticides, herbicides, & fungicides are used on the fruits and their remaining residues in the food chain. The same goes for the veggies. Besides my love of gardening I know what has been sprayed (or not) on my homegrown produce.

We have bred up the sugar in a lot of veggies too, like corn, carrots, tomatoes, peas, sweet potatoes, and squashes/pumpkins. A lot less than we have with a lot of fruits, but we still like our produce sweeter if we can breed it that way.

There is some argument about how different sugars impact our health, but if you do it in moderation modern fruits shouldn't be too much of a problem. I think something to be considered as well is if one is eating fresh or fresh frozen fruit vs other preparations of fruit that can seriously change the content.

My experience doesn't bear this out at all. The apples I grow are much more flavorful--and don't seem to be at all less sweet--than anything I buy in the store. And my apples are mostly old varieties, produced by old trees. The peaches and plums we grew (until the trees died) were sweeter than store-bought.

I don't see the motivation for commercial growers trying to breed sweeter fruit. I'm thinking the ability to ship well and resist diseases would be more important.

When I saw the OP's question I thought the thread was going to be about pesticides. For me, even though I've been sugar- and carb-conscious for decades, that's a more important issue.

You can't judge the sugar level by the taste. Look at apples. The Wickson Crab has a brix level of up to 25. The Jonagold has a brix level of 12.2. The Wickson crab won't taste anywhere as sweet as the Jonagold because it has high tannins and pectins which hide the sweetness. But your body will still get twice the sugar level from the Wickson apple.

The sugar level,, brix, will vary wildly depending on the orchard, the year, and if it's picked ripe. Some apples will also get sweeter in storage because the starches convert to sugar. There's another link to the WSU Cider program which gives levels for multiple years, if you scroll to the bottom of the page.

"What foods have the most Roundup?

According to The Guardian, other foods with high contamination levels include almonds, beets, beet sugar, canola oil, carrots, corn and corn oil, quinoa, soy products, sweet potatoes, and vegetable oil."

https://www.greenmatters.com/p/what-foods-have-glyphosate

And fruits: A staggering 95.9% of cherry fruit/juice and 90.8% of apple fruit/juice tested positive for pesticides. As for grape fruit/juice and raisins, 92.8% of samples were found to be contaminated, while 92.5% of strawberries were also tainted.

https://www.mygenefood.com/blog/why-glyphosate-is-dangerous-and-how-to-avoid-eating-it/#:~:text=A%20staggering%2095.9%25%20of%20cherry,of%20strawberries%20were%20also%20tainted.

People who are on glycemic index diets need to watch out for sure. But for most people, eating wide varieties of fruits and in moderation wouldn’t be a problem. And rinse or wash them before eating to remove contamination/dirts and reduce pesticides.

"it's true that fruit has fewer of many nutrients than it used to"

Based on what evidence?

I grow cherimoya, dragon fruit, white sapote, ice cream bananas, and Fuji apples. Some of these are extremely sweet, but I don't get enough of them for me to be concerned, although I do get a lot of apples, but they are the least sweet.

I also grow a lot of citrus, and they are mostly tart, except for the oranges.

In Coachella Valley (where I am now), a lot of dates are grown, which I love, and they are extremely sweet, and so I do not eat many of them. I used to grow figs, and they were also extremely sweet, but I never ate more than about three at a time because otherwise they would upset my stomach. They would probably be good for someone who gets constipated, but I am not that person.

I also used to have a mango tree, and I love mangoes.

I get very sweet papaya grown in Mexico here. I put lime juice on it to cut the sweetness.

Lars, you grow all my favorite fruits! I used to grow cerise acerola and longan in pots which must be moved inside before winter. Now I grow kaffir lime and kumquat trees in pots.

I meant to say columnar apples not peaches. It won't let me fix it.

I also grow kaffir lime, but I've not grown acerola or longan - I only have so much room, which is why I did not plant a fig or mango tree after my last move.

Lars I ate a couple of dried pitted dates the other day and they reminded me of Sugar Babies candy, similar in texture too. Way too sweet even for me, I should have avoided the 3rd one, nyuk.. Wish I could grow much of what you listed, esp the oranges, mangoes, and bananas.

I'm certainly not going to be concerned about fruit being too sweet. Sweetness is one of the reasons to grow and eat it.

Kathsgrdn, columnar peach really caught my eye. Too bad, I could make use of one. I have had four different columnar apples, all from Starks. Three succumbed to fireblight and also had cedar-apple rust. I do not recall what kind the survivor is (Maybe "Crimson Spire"), but it produces pretty good looking red apples that I can never harvest because birds and squirrels take them earlier than I would. I did find with all the columnars that they still need pruning to keep them in bounds and they grew taller than the seller advised. The surviving one also gets a jungle of sprouts off of its root stock.

Perennialfan, can you give us a few examples of varieties of fruits our ancestors ate that are less sweet than what we usually eat today. Or, might you be speaking of fruits from before recorded history? I'm growing aronia and cornel cherries. Those are not sweet fruits, nor are most of the native plums I grow, but in days before sugar cane or beet sugar, I imagine they were sweetened with honey.

"can you give us a few examples of varieties of fruits our ancestors ate that are less sweet than what we usually eat today."

Probably all of them, from apples to tomatoes. Here's a nice clip from a too-brief NPR interview about genetically modifying fruit (and veg), mostly via low-tech crossbreeding

"GARCIA-NAVARRO: I didn't think this was going to go so immediately to the sex life of plants. But, apparently, that's where we're headed. I mean, why, though, has modern fruit become as sugary as it has?

KAUFMAN: Well, one of the main dates to remember here is 1930, which is when the United States passes the Plant Patent Act. And from that point forward, the idea is we're trying to encourage farmers to actually manipulate those plants and to make them sweeter and to make them fatter and also to make them seedless" https://www.npr.org/2018/10/07/655345630/how-fruit-became-so-sugary

We breed fruit for taste and longevity before turning brown...where are the studies that say we have hybridized for sugar content?

The fruit is likely healthier if it comes from outside the U.S. It seems there may be a more stringent test of things coming in than we have with domestic produce.

Just a thought,

Lots of fruits and vegetables are definitely bred for taste - which can translate to sweetness. Humans do like sweet, for sure.

I eat lots of fruit, and lots of veggies too. I rarely ever eat candy, and never drink sodas, and I can't recall the last time I had fruit juice - unless it was in a home made popsicle. I rarely consume sweetened beverages. I am not very worried about consuming too much sugar. I know I consume less than the standard American diet.

Thinking about 'used to', and how vague that is - is 'used to' 100 years ago? 1,000? 10,000?

IMPE, a lot of conventionally grown fruits in the supermarket today seem to have less, not more, sweetness. I buy organic fruits and they tend to be sweeter - again, IMPE.

We breed fruit for taste

Exactly - which also includes sugar content, which often improves flavour.

I think commercial plant breeding has done more with trying to improve fruits/veggies concerning disease resistance, shelf life and holding up to transportation than with flavor. That why so-called heirloom varieties and home-grown produce are considered superior to what's available in stores.

You don't hear people complain that store-bought tomatoes are firm but you do hear, and with good reason, that they're not flavorful. Same with many other fruits and veggies.

An example is apricots. The Blenheim variety once was the most common. They're delicious (I used to have a tree). But they're small, bruise easily, and don't last long after they ripen. Most of the country saw ones grown in my area only in the form of dried apricots. The varieties now found in stores are larger, firmer, and less flavorful. Blenheims are still available around here from boutique growers but they're getting harder to find.

" That why so-called heirloom varieties and home-grown produce are considered superior to what's available in stores. "

Well, it's sold as if it's superior, but I don't think it is......I think it's a marketing scheme. Heirloom strains are rarer, but I'm not sure they're better. I have rarely had a flavourful tomato in the last 10 years, even buying it straight from the farmer, or even from my sister's back yard :(

I think keen home gardeners would disagree with you, perhaps unanimously so. The ones I know certainly would.

Just recalled something else I've seen in more than one nutritional/health news article: eating more fresh fruit can help reduce cravings for sweets and desserts. Forgive me if that's been mentioned already. I don't remember seeing it up there...