Every good parent wants to do right by their children. We work to ensure they have good friends, supervise their schoolwork and extracurricular activities, and eat a balanced diet.
But that doesn’t mean we don’t encounter a number of shortcomings, like not putting them to bed early enough, not letting them spend too much time in front of the TV or their iPad, and perhaps most often, choosing convenience over nutrition in what they eat.
Sometimes we fool ourselves into thinking that we expect something less than good from them. isFor example, when we turn to fruit snacks as a “healthy” snack option.
What are fruit snacks?
Fruit snacks are a gelatinous treat made by adding fruit flavoring, puree, juice or concentrate, and sometimes a number of other ingredients combined to resemble the shapes of popular fruits such as oranges, strawberries, raspberries, or grapes.
“They are often produced by mixing fruit ingredients with sugar and other additives and then baked, shaped, and packaged,” says Lisa Young, RD, assistant professor of nutrition at New York University and author of “Finally Full, Finally Thin.”
Some fruit snacks contain fewer ingredients, such as fruit puree or concentrate and a little ascorbic acid (to keep the product from darkening), as well as added sweeteners, says Shelley Rael, a registered dietitian and nutritionist in Albuquerque, New Mexico. “But other brands contain multiple ingredients, such as thickeners like gelatin or starch, additional flavors, and dyes to make the color more noticeable,” she explains.
Are fruit snacks healthy?
No matter how many ingredients are in your favorite brand of fruit snacks, calling them “health foods” would be a stretch, says Barbara Olendzki, an associate professor of population and quantitative health sciences at the UMass Chan School of Medicine. “They should be thought of as candy,” she says, because fruit snacks “often don’t have the water, natural fiber, or vitamin and mineral content of real fruit.” Labeling them as healthy is “especially concerning for kids, because they’re whole fruit to grow and resist diseases and illnesses.”
This doesn’t mean that some varieties of fruit snacks aren’t healthier than others. Varieties labeled as “100% fruit” to be able to be “Go healthier, but it’s important to check the ingredients and nutrition labels,” Young says. The same goes for fruit snacks that are fortified with vitamins and minerals.
But even in these cases, “the processing of this food deprives fruit snacks of many of the beneficial fiber, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants found in whole fruits,” says Dr. Uma Naidoo, director of nutritional and lifestyle psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Harvard-trained nutritional psychiatrist behind the book “Calm Your Mind with Food.”
Rael agrees, saying that even among the “healthiest” fruit snack brands, this treat “can be a calorie-dense snack without the nutrients found in whole fruit.” To illustrate, consider that a fruit snack with just 15 strawberries contains 90 calories, while it would take 40 strawberries to reach the same calorie count — and the whole fruit option also provides calcium, iron, vitamin B6, vitamin A, phosphorus, niacin, and plenty of vitamin C, folate, protein, and fiber.
“Fruit snacks are often perceived as healthy because their name tricks people into thinking they are somehow consuming fruit,” says Naidoo. “But often the added fruit comes from sugar-laden fruit juice, not the whole fruit.”
Are fruit snacks high in sugar?
In fact, some fruit snacks are so high in sugar that one report noted that the 11 grams (3 teaspoons) of sugar found in a popular brand of fruit snack flavor means that nearly half of every bite eaten is pure sugar. In comparison, a serving of gummy bears has 14 grams of sugar.
The harms of consuming too much sugar in the form of fruit snacks can lead to dental problems, weight gain and low energy levels, as “sticky sugars get stuck on the teeth,” Young says. “Excessive sugar consumption can affect everyone’s overall health, but it’s a particular concern for children, who are more prone to cavities and may consume large amounts of these snacks,” she adds.
Indeed, Naidoo warns that the high sugar content of fruit snacks in particular is “known to be addictive, so it’s easy to eat too many fruit snacks and keep craving them.” He adds that eating too much also poses a risk to the gut microbiome, as “bad bacteria in the gut feed on the sugar and other artificial ingredients in fruit snacks.” This, he says, “can lead to a range of inflammatory issues with age, including fatigue, mood swings, stress, depression and cognitive decline.”
But like any food, amount It’s the quantity of fruit snacks consumed that matters, so it’s not necessary to avoid them altogether, nutritionists say. “Fruit snacks can be an acceptable on-the-go snack if they’re made from 100% fruit, but they can also be fruit-flavored snack gums that are nothing more than candy with a health halo or health label,” says Rael. “Sometimes people see the word ‘fruit’ and think it’s healthy without checking the details.”