Dried fruit?!
Dried fruit?
Is it as healthy a normal fresh fruit? Does it contain the same or more goodness?
Answers: Yes and no. Over all, fresh fruit is always better than dried, but this doesn't mean that dried fruit is bad for you. The two sources I have linked have some decent information about this. In summary, dried fruit is good if you want a specific thing, such as fiber, and you need a lot of it but do not want to eat large amounts of food. Where dried fruit falls short, however, is the lack of water (of course) which results in higher calories per serving. Not that eating a little bit of dried fruit is going to shoot your calories up high, but a hand full of raisins might give you the same amount as a whole branch of grapes, and yet you might over eat because the volume of the handful of raisins is deceivingly small. Dried fruits also sometimes lose some vitamin value and many companies add sugar to dried fruits to boost their flavor due to the fact that sometimes the drying process may dull the flavor on specific fruits. I would suggest finding all natural dried fruits when possible. I enjoy dried fruit and eat it regularly, but it isn't a substitute for fresh. Source(s):
http://nutrition.about.com/od/askyournut...
http://www.dietdetective.com/content/vie... it does contain the same nutrients EXCEPT for the natural water fresh fruit retains! hope this helps! Dried fruit is very good for you. Ounce for ounce, it has more vitamin and calories. Be careful of the varieties that use sulfites as preservative, because they can irritate your digestive system.