Chapter 1: Why is fruit important for a balanced diet?
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Now, Norman, I have heard a rumour about doctors and I need you to tell me if it's true or not. It's true. You hate fruit.
I don't hate fruit. I just don't eat very much of it.
Well, I have brought along with me to ward you off today an apple because I heard that they help keep doctors away or something.
Yeah, don't come near me with an apple. It's like the sign of the cross.
LAUGHTER
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Chapter 2: What are the health implications of not eating fruit?
I'm not sure we needed that detail, Jamie, but thank you.
I mean, at least we know where the source of the trauma is. Anyway, Jamie finishes, I often wonder what key nutrients that I can't get from vegetables that I may be missing if I continue with my habit. I could definitely be motivated to break my aversion if Dr. Norman Swan told me I am without doubt taking years off my life. Otherwise, I don't have any pickiness and eat anything. any vegetable.
You have such an influence, Norman.
I know.
This person is going to change their entire diet just if you say they should.
Yeah.
How does that level of responsibility make you feel?
It's scaring the crap out of me.
As smoothly as it would if you were eating a high fiber diet.
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Chapter 3: What nutrients are found in fruit that vegetables might lack?
And it's possible that some sweet fruits have more soluble fiber than others, like pears and so on. But by and large, we can't find very much at all that you get in fruit that you don't get from a good variety of vegetables.
So what about just taking a step back and going, okay, we just take it as understood that fruit and vegetables are good for us. Where does that evidence actually come from? How do we know this?
We know it from broad epidemiological data. So we know from studying populations that populations with high vegetable intake, low red meat intake, that is associated with lower rates of coronary heart disease. And there's also a relationship with cancer as well.
We know that the DASH diet that I talked about earlier has been studied in quite a lot of detail in the United States, and that also is associated with benefit. And there's a study done in Australia, which actually made the comment that we don't know enough about cooking and the effects of cooking in that diet. That's a 10-year-old study. Again, shows...
Very strong correlation with fruit and vegetable consumption and your chances of dying of any cause. And that's following a group of people through where they, several thousand people, where they knew quite a lot about their habits, their dietary habits and their exercise habits. By the way, that study showed up to seven serves a day of fruit and vegetables gives you the highest risk reduction.
But it's a good question to ask because people who are eating fruit and vegetables are more likely to exercise, they're less likely to smoke, they're less likely to drink. There's a lot of other things going on, but they did try to isolate that in this particular Australian study.
What about the other end of the spectrum? What do we know about what happens if you're not getting that intake?
Well, another very large study, which is called the Global Burden of Disease Study. I need to make a declaration here. I was in the beginning of this study with World Health Organization and the World Bank, which looks at something called DALYs, Disability Adjusted Life Years. So not just death, but also how many years you live with disability.
It tried to look at the global burden of disease relative to fruit and vegetable intake. So the deaths and disease there. And they felt that a high proportion of premature mortality was attributable to suboptimal fruit and vegetable intake. And so if you did actually have adequate intake, you had a reduction in age-related mortality.
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Chapter 4: How do fruit and vegetable classifications differ?
So we had a very eccentric neurosurgeon at the medical school I went to, and he was giving us a lecture on what's called subdural hematoma. And this is where you have this bang to your head, and a few days later, the blood clot grows, and it's actually life-threatening because of pressure inside your head.
And he brought in a hand drill to the lecture, and he said, it's safer to take the hand drill from your garage and dip it in cow shit... and drill the hole than not drill it at all. So now I go back to Anonymous who says, I should have said that I'm one of those people who have a burr hole drilled in my skull.
My life has been saved thanks to my neurosurgeon doing this and sucking out excess cerebral spinal fluid. Hopefully it wasn't covered in cow shit at the time. Thank you. Anonymous, you should have given us your name at least so we know who you are.
Also related, Peter says, G'day, as always, love the episode. Small picky point. One of my tutors in medical school's advice for treating possible subdural hematoma was the Black & Decker medium diameter drill bit applied at the appropriate side of the head. Peter goes on to say...
He didn't mention cow shit, and I suspect that if one was to go spend time looking for cow shit, in most circumstances, the person would have expired before one found any. However, Peter says, and this really is a bit of a blow to your credentials as a Dr. Norman, the drill bit is applied to the skull, not the brain, as Norman accidentally said.
True.
Brain equals messy. That's right.
So just be careful how far the drill goes in if you're ever in this situation in the farmyard.
If you are in this situation in the farmyard, I really, really want to hear the story. That rash at abc.net.au.
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