"I'm a Fruit Guy" Says Mike Tyson About His Unexpected High Snacking Habit

Mike Tyson has traded ice cream for fruit as his go-to snack when he gets high. He said it himself, on national television, with the kind of bluntness only he can pull off.

On a recent appearance on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live, Kimmel asked the former heavyweight champion what he eats these days. Tyson’s answer was four words long: “I’m a fruit guy.”

“If I’m high, I’m gonna eat a bunch of grapes, sumo oranges, and those big juicy apples,” he told Kimmel, before adding that he does “a lot of psychedelics.”

It is a funny line. It is also, quietly, one of the more interesting things a celebrity has said about food all year.

Why Reaching for Fruit Is the Part Worth Noticing

Strip away the psychedelics and the celebrity, and you are left with a person whose appetite, fully unfiltered, points him toward whole fruit. That is the detail I keep turning over.

Tyson is famous for excess. He has openly described eating ice cream by the quart, two pints in a sitting, during heavier years.

So when his cravings now land on grapes and oranges instead of a tub of something frozen, it reads less like discipline and more like a recalibrated palate. The body, given a few years of different habits, started asking for different things.

The Science Backs Up the Craving

Whole fruit is one of the few foods nutrition researchers almost never argue about. The benefits are consistent, well-documented, and surprisingly large.

A major review published in the International Journal of Epidemiology pooled 95 population studies and found that eating roughly 800 grams of fruit and vegetables a day, about ten servings, was linked to the lowest risk of early death.

The researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology estimated that if everyone hit even eight servings daily, around 7.8 million premature deaths worldwide might be avoided each year.

That is not a small claim, and it came from whole foods, not supplements.

Tyson’s specific picks hold up too. Apples are high in pectin, a fiber that supports gut health, while citrus like his beloved sumo oranges delivers vitamin C and a class of antioxidants called flavanones, according to Harvard Health.

Grapes bring their own polyphenols. The point is not that any single fruit is magic, but that variety is, which is exactly the spread Tyson reaches for.

Tyson’s Long, Complicated Relationship With Plant-Based Eating

This is not Tyson’s first chapter in the plant-based story. He followed a vegan diet for years, and his reasons were both ethical and physical.

In a 2019 interview with GQ, he put it in a way that stuck with a lot of people: “I don’t eat anything that has a mother and father.” He added, “That means I only eat vegetables and stuff.”

Tyson adopted a plant-based diet around 2010, after retirement, to deal with his weight and the fallout of an unhealthy stretch. He has credited that shift with helping him drop more than 100 pounds and steadying his health.

Then came the comeback. Training for his 2024 fight against Logan Paul, Tyson reintroduced meat, telling Joe Rogan in 2020 that kale and blueberries were “really poisonous” for him and that he had moved to elk and bison.

It was a sharp turn, and it disappointed a lot of his vegan fans.

Which makes his “fruit guy” comment now feel like the pendulum drifting back toward plants, even if he would never frame it that way.

What This Says About How Most of Us Actually Eat

Tyson’s zig-zag is more relatable than it looks. Almost nobody eats in a straight line, and the labels we give ourselves rarely match the day-to-day reality on the plate.

Research keeps finding this gap. One recent study found that far more people call themselves vegan than actually eat that way, a mismatch between identity and behavior that shows up across diets.

Tyson is the inverse case. He no longer calls himself vegan, yet his unguarded craving sends him straight to a fruit bowl.

Maybe that is the quieter lesson here. What you reach for when no one is watching, and when your guard is fully down, tends to tell the truth about where your habits have settled.

If you are curious which everyday snacks already fit a plant-based pattern, our roundup of 30 popular foods you didn’t realize are naturally vegan is a good place to start. Tyson is hardly the only famous name leaning plant-forward, as our list of celebrities who embraced a vegan lifestyle shows.

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The Bowl on the Counter

I find Tyson’s line oddly comforting. Here is someone who has lived at every extreme, and his honest, no-pressure craving is a handful of grapes.

You do not need a label or a comeback fight to do the same thing.

You can just keep a bowl of fruit on the counter and notice how often your hand goes to it.

If Tyson’s zig-zag makes you curious about eating more plants without the all-or-nothing pressure, our guide on how to start a vegan lifestyle without feeling overwhelmed walks you through it one easy swap at a time. Start with the fruit bowl. The rest can follow.