3. Dried fruit
At first, you might think, hang on Health Natural, fruit is healthy and good for us, why on earth have you included dried fruit, which is a healthy snack, on this list?! And we hear you, but bear with us. Fruit is healthy – it’s packed with fibre, vitamins and minerals. But it also contains a fair amount of fruit sugar, called fructose, which the body treats in the same way as standard sugar, or glucose. Too much, or more than we can burn off each day, and it’ll be stored as fat.
But a couple of portions of fruit a day is very healthy. The problems start when fruit is dehydrated to make dried fruit snacks, because we’re more likely to eat more than a standard fruit portion in one sitting, effectively consuming more sugar than we would from fresh fruit.
Also, the dehydration process means that a lot of the volume is removed from the fruit, in turn, making the fructose more highly concentrated, and therefore more calorific.
It’s best to stick to fresh fruit, so add a variety of bananas, soft fruits, berries and citrus fruits to your diet each week.
