Be Careful with These Fruits...

by Jari Love

Are the cookies, cake, or candy that is sitting somewhere in the kitchen or in your office break room tempting you? Are you trying desperately to fit back into your old pants, but craving something sweet? You’ve decided to skip the “treats”, but what do you reach for? A bit of fruit would be a good choice, but there are good choices and bad choices where fruits are concerned.

Realistically, there are no truly "bad" fruits. However, there are some fruits that have higher sugar content than others and should not be eaten in any substantial quantities. There are also ways that fruit can be prepared that can make them actually "fattening".

As an example, a fruit that is very high in sugar is the mango while a fruit very low in sugar is the raspberry. There are fruits in the "mid-range" where sugar content is concerned, such as the peach or the blueberry, and those "fairly" high such as the kiwi or the pineapple.

Eating these delicious sweets will not do your diet much harm if consumed in "moderation". That would mean one or two servings of any fruit during any given day. So, it would be safe to say that a banana at breakfast, and a cup of blueberries stirred into plain yogurt as a snack or dessert would be ideal. Any more than that and you are upping your carbohydrate intake and potentially sabotaging the diet.

Which fruits, then, are actually "bad"? As stated, it is the way that fruits are handled or processed that can make them bad for you. As an example, dried fruit is the same as saying "concentrated sugar" because of the processing of the fresh fruit. The simplest example is grape versus raisins or dried versus fresh dates. Either way, you are increasing the sugar and caloric intake by many times over. The same can be said of packaged fruit and fruit juices that are often sweetened and dramatically higher in calories and carbohydrates than fresh options.

Fruit itself is nutrient and fiber dense and good for you. Go with two to three servings of fresh fruit, at the most, every day and you won't have any trouble.