4 pieces of dried fruit = half a bowl of rice! Hidden fats and refined sugars are all eaten

We have to eat snacks when we have nothing to do at work, especially when we feel hungry after skipping breakfast or feel sleepy in the afternoon. If we don’t eat something quickly, we will be lack of energy for the whole day. Therefore, we must stockpile some snacks on our desks and drawers so that we can easily put them in our mouths. However, although we are greedy, we are still afraid of getting fat. Therefore, many people who love beauty will choose dried mangoes, dried guavas, and dried bananas that seem healthy and burden-free, and even regard them as edible beauty products and eat them every day. But are dried fruits the same as dried fruits? Is it as healthy as eating fruit?

Crispy dried fruits have more calories than you think

Everyone knows that fruit is an excellent healthy snack, but it is not easy to wash and cut fresh fruit when bringing it to the office. The cut fruit cannot be kept for a long time as it is easy to breed microorganisms at room temperature. Therefore, many people choose to process it by frying, pickling or baking to extend the shelf life and increase the convenience of consumption.

Traditionally, dried fruits and vegetables are dried in the sun and baked to evaporate the moisture in the fruits. However, if the drying process is the only process, the dried fruits will not have a crispy texture, but will be softer like dried persimmons. Therefore, most of them are fried. However, fruits and vegetables absorb oil very easily. When you eat the seemingly refreshing dried bananas and jackfruits one bite at a time, you are actually eating invisible fat.

Pickled dried fruits, candied fruits, and canned foods are sweet in the mouth but also filling the stomach

In addition to crispy dried fruits, soft, chewy dried mangoes, sweet and sour candied fruits, and moist canned pineapples and peaches also have their own supporters. Although these types of processed fruit products do not require frying, they do require a large amount of sugar and salt to be pickled, forcing out moisture to make it difficult for microorganisms to survive and extending the shelf life. However, this also allows consumers to ingest a lot of extra refined sugar and sodium, and the calories double.

But my dried pineapple doesn’t taste sweet at all! It shouldn’t be as exaggerated as the nutritionist said, right? The reason why many processed fruit products do not taste very sweet is that most manufacturers choose to process relatively sour and less ripe fruits, and then use sugar from the pickling process to neutralize the taste. So even if it doesn’t taste that sweet in your mouth, you have actually consumed a lot of sugar!

However, as long as you grasp this principle, you can eat dried fruits without burden!

Low temperature and room temperature drying reduce the burden of traditional dried fruits and eat 2 pieces

In addition to traditional pickled and fried dried fruits, there are now low-temperature and room-temperature drying technologies that can retain most of the nutrients in the fruit without adding additional oil or sugar, and the calories are much lower. If you want to eat dried fruits but are afraid of the burden, you can try it.

Although traditional dried fruits are high in calories, 4 pieces (35 grams) of chewy dried fruits like dried mango and guava are almost as caloric as half a bowl of rice. But that doesn't mean you can't eat them at all. Just be careful to control the portion, take out 2 pieces from the package at a time, and quickly seal the rest. Out of sight, out of mind, and you won't accidentally eat too much!