Environmental Nutrition: Tips for sweetening up your day with fruit
It's not news that fruits are an important part of a healthy diet. These delicious plant foods are full of fiber, vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals, in addition to being low in fat and sodium, and modest in calories. Fruit intake has been linked with many benefits, such as reduced risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, certain types of cancer, type 2 diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases. That's why the USDA recommends that women eat 1 1/2 cups of fruit every day and men eat 2 cups per day.
We're advised to limit our sugar intake, and since fruits naturally contain sugars, it's easy to lump them into the high-sugar foods category, along with highly processed foods like pastries, sweetened drinks and candy. However, recommendations to reduce sugar in the diet are limited to "added sugars"-- those that are added to foods, not those naturally found in foods.
There's a world of difference between six grams of sugar in a papaya and six grams in a candy bar. The sugar in fruit comes packaged with a variety of nutrients -- in particular fiber, which delays the absorption of natural sugars into the blood stream. The candy bar, on the other hand, contains sugar with no other redeeming nutritional qualities.
Check out these tips for sweetening up your day with fruit:
Drink your fruit. Not as juice, which lacks fiber and tends to be more concentrated, but in DIY smoothies. Frozen fruit, a little 100 percent fruit juice, and yogurt mixed in a blender make a delicious and nutritious drink.
Use fruit as a salad topping. Many fruits make a great addition to a salad. Try strawberries, blueberries, grapes, raisins, dried cranberries and more. Tuna and chicken salads are also great with grapes, apples, pineapple or dried fruit mixed in.
Start your day. Include fruit at breakfast by mixing it into plain non-fat yogurt, cold or hot cereal, and pancake or waffle batters.
(Environmental Nutrition is the award-winning independent newsletter written by nutrition experts dedicated to providing readers up-to-date, accurate information about health and nutrition in clear, concise English. For more information, visit www.environmentalnutrition.com.)
