Humans did not evolve to eat modern sugary fruit year round in abundance, Mangan notes, and even in the early modern era it wasn’t a large part of the diet:
In the 18th and 19th centuries, Americans did not eat very much in the way of fruits and vegetables. Meat was abundant, and even the poor ate plenty of it. Fruits and vegetables had a short growing season and were ripe for only a short period of time, and in the absence of refrigeration and transport, spoiled, as Nina Techolz writes:
Even in the warmer months, fruit and salad were avoided, for fear of cholera. (Only with the Civil War did the canning industry flourish, and then only for a handful of vegetables, the most common of which were sweet corn, tomatoes, and peas.)
So it would be “incorrect to describe Americans as great eaters of either [fruits or vegetables],” wrote the historians Waverly Root and Richard de Rochemont. Although a vegetarian movement did establish itself in the United States by 1870, the general mistrust of these fresh foods, which spoiled so easily and could carry disease, did not dissipate until after World War I, with the advent of the home refrigerator. By these accounts, for the first 250 years of American history, the entire nation would have earned a failing grade according to our modern mainstream nutritional advice.
What about apples — fruit, obviously — didn’t Americans eat them? Johnny Appleseed is famous for spreading apple trees around the country. But it turns out that much of the apple crop was turned into apple cider. Not only did cider provide alcohol, but it’s a way to preserve and concentrate apples in the absence of refrigeration and transport.
Fruits (and vegetables) are thought to be healthy due to the phytochemicals, namely polyphenols, that they contain:
However, coffee, tea, red wine, and chocolate all generally provide far more polyphenols than fruit. With the exception of chocolate, they have the added benefit of being entirely sugar-free, and even chocolate can be consumed without sugar or in low-sugar forms such as dark chocolate. So, if you want to consume polyphenols, and you consume coffee, etc., then fruit would be superfluous.