Yes!

by Carolina Smith

     Many people cannot resist the calling of sweet, decadent desserts, whether it be after a meal or intermittently throughout the day. One of the most underrated forms of dessert comes in the mixture of sugary sweet flavors and refreshing fruit accents. This brilliant combo receives much backlash, as some perceive the concept as “not real dessert” or “a sorry excuse for the vegans to participate.” These unprecedented biases are keeping the masses from enjoying one of the simple yet delicious tiers of dessert categories: fruit-associated sweets.

Some well-known mixtures include strawberry shortcake, trifles, various fruit cakes and pies, and even fruit pizza. With each of these, a burst of freshness awaits in every bite, and the two competing flavors of fruit and sugar balance each other flawlessly. Incorporating only saccharine flavors like chocolate or caramel can often overwhelm the senses with rich taste, making it hard to distinguish the flavors. Fruit is the perfect factor to combine both palates into one dish.

Even adding a sprinkle of cocoa powder or a dollop of whipped cream to a fruit salad can be a delicious healthy alternative for those aspiring to be more nutritious. Even the trendy açaí bowl can be adapted into something sweet. It may surprise you just how satisfying fruit with a touch of sugar can be, even when you’re craving a classic dessert. Other examples of adding sweet to a fruit base include chocolate-covered strawberries and caramel apples, but the options are endless. Eating these desserts will make you feel better after eating them rather than something overly decadent like chocolate cake.

Dessert is a beautiful concept. All forms of it can and should be enjoyed, but especially the underestimated fruit theme. God created the different fruits for us to enjoy and incorporate into unique forms, and there are countless types available. So, go out there and eat some fruit.

No!

by Ryan Howell

We’ve all seen the food pyramid. It shows us how much of each food group we should eat. On the very bottom of that pyramid are fruits and vegetables, the really healthy and nutritious stuff. That’s what you should have the most of. On the top, the smallest section is the sweets, desserts, and other fatty foods that we should only consume in infrequent, small portions. Things such as grains and dairy products fill in the middle, and we have ourselves a nice little pyramid. It’s logical. It makes sense… Then come in the health fanatics.

It started small. STRAWBERRY-flavored ice cream. BLUEBERRY pie. LEMON cupcakes. People started switching fruit, foods at the bottom of the pyramid, with desserts, the top of the pyramid. That in-and-of itself is not a bad thing, it offers a wider variety of flavors and textures in the dessert section. What blew things out of proportion was the tendency to call fruits themselves dessert. Instead of just taking pieces from the bottom and sticking them on top, people lopped off the bottom half of the pyramid and crammed it on the top. People started eating lone fruit after meals and calling it dessert. What they were really doing was switching their dessert for a healthier snack. There’s nothing wrong with that, other than the fact that they were deceiving themselves, causing themselves to believe that they were, in fact, eating dessert. This belief penetrated the minds of those all around, until most people reached a consensus on the matter: fruit and dessert are one and the same.

The truth is, no matter when you eat a fruit or how you dress it up, it’s a fruit. Whether it’s engulfed in a dessert, accenting the top, or fully taking the place of a dessert, it is still a fruit: a separate section of the food pyramid. Despite what commercials and movies may tell you, fruit is NOT a dessert. Anyone who says otherwise is not only lying to you, they are lying to themselves.