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Healthy….
Dried fruit is very healthy. They contain a lot of fiber, which, among others improves digestive processes, regulates blood glucose and lowers cholesterol. You can learn more about the health benefits of fiber read in the article Fiber in the fight for a shapely figure. In addition to fiber, dried fruit also contains a lot of vitamins and ingredients minerals, which have a positive effect on our health. We wrote some time ago about prunes, which may reduce the risk of cancer. You can read about it in the article by Justyna Piechocka. Dried plums will reduce the risk of cancer?
And tasty …
However, dried fruit is not only healthy, but also very healthy tasty. Their intensely sweet taste makes them a great substitute for sweets. Apart from this is an interesting complement to many dishes. They can be added to salads, cocktails, cakes or meats. They really go well with many dishes.
The darker side
Despite their enormous amount of benefits, dried fruit can sometimes be harmful. However, this applies only to those fruits that contain added preservatives (v characters, incl. sulfur dioxide or potassium sorbate), large amounts of sugar or Palm oil.
- Preservatives
Sulfur Dioxide (E220) is a synthetic preservative it has fungicidal and bactericidal properties. It is highly poisonous. Dose safe for humans is 0,7 mg / kg, but it’s actually better completely to give it up. It is considered unfavorable to health even in doses safe. It can reduce the bioavailability of vitamins A, B12 and B1. In high concentrations, it can also cause headaches and system disorders digestive system and nausea. It is especially harmful to people suffering from you have asthma because it can make it difficult to breathe.
Potassium sorbate (E202) is a synthetic compound used as preservative. Considered safe, although in high concentrations it can cause allergies, skin irritations and asthma. The dose is considered to be safe 25 mg / kg bw – this amount, however, relates collectively to the consumption of sorbic acid and its salts, i.e. E200, E202 and E203.
- Huge amounts of sugar
It’s also worth paying attention to the high doses of sugar that you sometimes find can be in dried fruit. This is especially true of cranberries. It happens that the cranberry content in dried cranberries is only 50%. The rest is sugar and oil. Sugar is added to cranberries as they are quite tart and sour in taste, so it would be difficult to eat without the addition of a sweetener. However, we should try to look for cranberries with as little sugar as possible, and if we decide to buy cranberries without added sugar (because you can do that too found, although we have so far only found one company that would such cranberries in our offer), you can sweeten it yourself, e.g. with with honey or apple juice. It will be much healthier.
- Glucose-fructose syrup
Some dried fruits also contain syrup glucose-fructose. We have already written about its harmfulness as part of our campaign I buy without GF syrup. And you can read about the effect of syrup on our health in the article 8 times, not for GF syrup. How does the syrup affect our health? As a reminder, high consumption of syrup is related to, among others, with greater risk type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and hypertension.
What to look for on shopping?
- What to watch out for
When choosing to shop, we should pay attention to dried fruit has not been preserved, incl. substances such as dioxide sulfur and potassium sorbate. Therefore, avoid products containing: E200, E202, E203, E220, sulfur dioxide, potassium sorbate, sorbic acid, acid salts sorbic acid, sulfates, or sulfuric acid anhydride. Each of these terms indicates the use of unhealthy preservatives.
You should also avoid products with high sugar content (over 50% of the product content) and such, in which the manufacturer did not specify its precise quantity. Unfortunately no information available it is usually synonymous with lots of sugar. You should also opt out of products they contain syrup glucose-fructose.
Sometimes we can also come across fruits that contain Palm oil. One should also be toresign. You can read about how harmful this oil is to our health in the article In Poland, we have permission for a silent killer.
Better to give up buying fruit by weight as well, those placed in open containers. They may already be weathered, we never know the exact composition, and additionally, we do not know how many are there.
- What you do not need to fear
However, we do not have to worry about citric acid or oil sunflower or cottonseed oil.
It is worth checking the composition for substances additional and preservative content. This will help you choose the right product. You can also follow the color of the fruit. The fruit is always unsulfurized darker and less attractive than the preserved ones.
The price of healthy fruit dried
Unfortunately, a good composition, i.e. no preservatives and unnecessary additives, usually associated with a higher price of products. Most of the products whose composition can be recommended are BIO products. Their price is unfortunately much higher than the price of conventional products. If, however, good we will look, you can also find good quality products, the price of which is not is significantly higher.
Let’s take a look at, for example, raisins. We decided to check how their price is in one of the large hypermarkets (Tesco). They were the cheapest there raisins by weight. They cost about PLN 11 per kilogram. The composition was not what stated true, but it can be said with high probability that they did preservatives. In Tesco, however, you can also get packaged raisins, companies Tesco, which contains only raisins (99%) and cottonseed oil, a their price is only PLN 16,6 per kilogram. So the price is not that much higher.
But what to do if we happen to buy sulfurized fruit? In such a situation, we can home remedies to reduce the amount of sulfur in the product. Sulfur dissolves well in water, so it is enough to soak the dried fruit for about 2 hours. At the time water should be changed 2-3 times.
Photo: Photo credit: storem / Foter.com / CC BY-SA