All good parents want to do the right thing for their children: We try to make sure they have good friends, supervise their schoolwork and extracurricular activities, and make sure they eat a balanced diet.
But that doesn’t mean we don’t experience a variety of downsides, like not putting our kids to bed early, spending a little too much time in front of the TV or iPad, and, perhaps most commonly, prioritizing convenience over nutrition when it comes to meals.
Sometimes, even if you don’t get anything great out of them, teethFor example, when we choose fruit snacks as a “healthy” snack option.
What are fruit snacks?
Fruit snacks are gelatinous treats made with fruit flavors, purees, juices, concentrates, and a variety of other ingredients, and are sometimes molded to resemble the shapes of popular fruits such as oranges, strawberries, raspberries, and grapes.
“These are typically made by mixing fruit ingredients with sugar and other additives, then cooking, shaping and packaging.” Lisa YoungShe is a registered dietitian, adjunct professor of nutrition at New York University, and author of Finally Full, Finally Slim.
Some fruit snack brands have fewer ingredients, such as fruit purees or concentrates, ascorbic acid (to prevent discoloration), and added sweeteners, says Sherri Rael, a registered dietitian and nutritionist in Albuquerque, New Mexico. “But other brands have multiple ingredients, including thickeners like gelatin or starch, additional flavors, and dyes for color enhancement,” she explains.
Are fruit snacks healthy?
No matter how many ingredients your favorite fruit snack brand contains, calling it a “health food” is a stretch, says Barbara Olenski, M.D., associate professor of population and quantitative health sciences at Massachusetts Chan Medical School. “Think of them as candy,” she says, because fruit snacks “usually don’t contain the moisture, natural fiber, vitamins, and minerals that real fruit does.” She adds that labeling them as healthy is “particularly a concern for kids, because kids need the nutrients from fruit.” Whole Fruit It helps to grow and resists illness and disease.”
That doesn’t mean some types of fruit snacks are less healthy than others. “Varieties labeled as 100% fruit are not healthy,” she says. can “They’re healthier, but it’s important to check the ingredients and nutritional labels,” says Young. The same goes for fruit snacks that are fortified with vitamins and minerals.
But even in those cases, “this food processing removes much of the beneficial fiber, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants that are found in whole fruit from fruit snacks,” says Uma Naidoo, M.D., director of nutrition and lifestyle psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital and a Harvard-trained nutritional psychiatrist.Calming the mind with food“
Rael agrees, saying that even the “healthiest” fruit snack brands can be “calorie dense without the nutrients found in the fruit itself.” To illustrate this, take 15 strawberry fruit snacks: 90 calories,it takes time 40 strawberries To reach the same calorie count, opting for whole fruit will provide you with calcium, iron, vitamin B6, vitamin A, phosphorus and niacin, as well as vitamin C, folate, protein and dietary fiber.
“Fruit snacks are commonly perceived as healthy because the name suggests you’re consuming fruit in some form, but often the added fruit is sugar-filled fruit juice rather than whole fruit,” Naidoo says.
Do fruit snacks contain a lot of sugar?
In fact, some fruit snacks are very high in sugar. 1 report They point out that one popular brand of fruit snack flavor contains 11 grams (three teaspoons) of sugar, meaning that almost half of what you eat with every bite is pure sugar. 1 serving Each gummy bear contains 14 grams of sugar.
Young points out that consuming too much sugar in the form of fruit snacks can lead to dental problems as the sticky sugar gets stuck in your teeth, as well as weight gain and low energy levels. “Excessive sugar intake affects everyone’s health, but it’s a particular concern for children, as they are more susceptible to tooth decay and may eat these snacks in large quantities,” she adds.
In fact, Naidoo warns that fruit snacks’ particularly high sugar content “is known to be addictive, so it’s easy to eat lots of fruit snacks and still crave them.” She adds that overeating also poses risks to your stomach’s microbiome: “Bad bacteria in your gut thrive on the sugar and many other artificial ingredients in fruit snacks.” Naidoo says this “can lead to a lot of inflammatory issues, including fatigue, mood swings, stress, depression and age-related cognitive decline.”
But like any other food, amount It’s the portion size that matters, so there’s no need to avoid fruit snacks altogether, nutritionists say. “Fruit snacks are acceptable on-the-go snacks if they’re made from 100 percent fruit, but they’re nothing more than fruit-flavored snack gummies and candy with health claims or health labels,” Rael says. “Some people see the word ‘fruit’ and assume it’s healthy without looking into the details.”
