Everything you ever wanted to know about food but were afraid to ask.

On the surface, groups such as carbohydrates, fats, fiber, and even protein may all seem pretty straightforward. But scratch below the surface and these terms are often misunderstood or used in the wrong context.

Our first example is “fruitsandvegetables.” This isn’t a typo; it’s written that way because people often refer to them as if they were the same thing. Fruit gets people into trouble because of its high sugar content, even more so when it’s been dried out. For anyone looking to follow the ketogenic diet, it may help to think fruit as watery bags of sugar. That “organic” fruit juice doesn’t fare much better which is essentially a form of liquid sugar.

In most western diets, fruits are typically over-consumed and vegetables are under-consumed. This wasn’t how our ancestors ate, back then, eating fruit out of season, would have seen you stoned as a witch, and rightly so.

Today we think nothing of picking up a carton of ripe strawberries in the dead of winter. Which loops back nicely to people eating too much fruit. To be clear, fruit can spike your sugar and kick you out of ketosis faster than a speeding ticket. Yes, berries are lower on the glycemic table, but it doesn’t take too many to put you back on the sugar train. Chew-chew (sorry, bad joke).