Dried fruit and sugar

frugalafterfifty
frugalafterfifty Posts: 240 Member
in Food and Nutrition
For my morning snack I brought in a dried fruit mixture with chia seeds and almond milk (unsweetened). After logging it I saw that the dried fruit almost used up my sugar allowance for the day.

Is it best just to avoid dried fruit? Wouldn't the natural sugar in dried fruit be better than just regular white sugar?

I'd like to work around this. I dehydrate my own fruit and enjoy it as a snack.

Replies

  • crazybookworm
    crazybookworm Posts: 779 Member
    You would use up a lot of your Sugar intake with Natural Sugar(from fruit and veggies) as well. MFP doesn't separate natural sugar from processed sugar. I go over my Sugar intake pretty much every day because I eat a lot of fruit!

    It's good to monitor all sugars, but if most of yours are coming from Fruits and Veggies then you'll be fine!
  • Maelyn717
    Maelyn717 Posts: 1 Member
    I also love dried fruit and am unwilling to give it up. I am instead eating it in only small amounts, such as 1/4 cup. It is a lot of sugar, but it seems like even that small amount is quite a filler. I compensate a lot by only using stevia at home instead of sugar.
  • soopaang
    soopaang Posts: 27 Member
    I've wondered the same thing. I mostly only have sugar from fruits and this puts me over my daily goal. I understand it isn't process but I hate seeing that number turn red on my chart!
  • missigus
    missigus Posts: 207 Member
    I don't really think it is bad for you, but I only eat a little dried fruit mixed with nuts in greek yogurt cuz it's so high in calories. I think it's way better than eating other sugary stuff though. You said you dehydrate your own fruits? I have a question for you, can you dehydrate bananas? I like banana chips, but it's the same story, too many calories and fried. Just wondering if dehydrating those work or do they get gross and brown?
  • Pandorian
    Pandorian Posts: 2,055 Member
    The sugar in a piece of fruit comes with all the micro and phytonutrients that in combination I'll take those over ... say a brownie which is just plain ol' sugar (yes perhaps the same "sugar" as in the fruit but it's been stripped of everything else besides sugar) and whatever else makes up the brownie.

    If "sugar is sugar" how come the FDA has 50+ approved names for sugar on ingredient labels for food... mostly because if sugar had to be called sugar there'd be a LOT more processed food items that would have "sugar" as the main ingredient. But with 50 different names to choose from for sugar they can go "whole wheat flour, sugar, dextrose, lactose, fructose..." sorted by order of most used items... and because they used mroe flour than they did sugar... and more sugar than they did dextrose (still a sugar) which was more than the lactose (still a sugar)

    It's games... as much as the crazy serving sizes are... serving sizes aren't "regulated" while the label requirements are... is your muffin one of the ones offering 1/10th of the muffin? they divided it into that many pieces so they could claim 0 fat content (less than 0.5 grams for a serving can be labelled as 0) so you've got up to 4.9 grams of fat in that muffin that they can mark as 0 because of games with the serving size to meet the less than 0.5grams = 0 for label needs
  • Acg67
    Acg67 Posts: 12,142 Member
    You would use up a lot of your Sugar intake with Natural Sugar(from fruit and veggies) as well. MFP doesn't separate natural sugar from processed sugar. I go over my Sugar intake pretty much every day because I eat a lot of fruit!

    It's good to monitor all sugars, but if most of yours are coming from Fruits and Veggies then you'll be fine!

    too bad, since metabolically refined vs natural sugars like table sugar vs sucrose from an apple are so different

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