Real fruit, fake fruit?.. What does that mean? ..[keep reading, and you'll find out!]
..mmm FRUIT!.. I love fresh fruit! It's healthy, right?..
It sure is. For the same reasons as we learned about vegetables. Take a look..
We get fiber from whole fruit. The least processed it is, the better. That is..
- Eating an orange is better than drinking orange juice.
- Eating an unpeeled apple is better than eating applesauce.
- Eating fresh strawberries is better than eating strawberry jam.
Like vegetables, fruit is loaded with [has a lot of] vitamins, minerals, and antioxidents. In particular, fruit is loaded with Vitamin C, which is a great thing especially during this time of year-- winter, when a lot of people get/are sick. Vitamin C helps us not get sick and, when we are, helps us get better faster. I love to eat oranges during the winter because not only are they high in Vitamin C but they're also in season, which means I can easily find them at the market, they're cheaper than off-season prices, and they're fresh, which means super delish.
Antioxidents work like Vitamin C. They're found in 'real' food, so if you think taking a supplement, or vitamin pill, will take care of everything, then you're sorely mistaken. There's still a lot in food that we don't know about so stick to the real stuff-- who wants to eat 'fake' food anyway?
So what is this 'real' food, 'fake' food business? ..umm, that's exactly what it is! A business. Food companies try to make their food product seem healthier by labeling or marketing their products as containing fruit. More often than not, however, these so-called 'fruit' products have hardly any fruit in them, if any at all. Instead, there can be a lot of unhealthy ingredients like...
Look at the third item on this list: 'Red No. 40, Yellow No. 6, Blue No. 1,2'.
We learned, again like vegetables, it's healthy to eat a RAINBOW of fruit. That means a lot of different colored fruit. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, black, and white. Yup, there's fruit that have each of these colors. So when food companies make their products they keep in mind that consumers [people who eat their products] want to see color to believe that there's fruit. We eat with all of our senses, including our eyes. We are very likely to eat something if it tastes good. Same: we are very likely to buy something if it looks good. And, of course, companies want us to buy.
But instead of seeing the color of 'real' fruit, we often see 'fake' colors added, or artificial food coloring like Numbers 40, 6, and 1,2. Who wants to eat chemicals??
Here's some examples of some of the cheap fakers we looked at:
Fruit's sweet too. I sometimes call it Nature's Candy-- the only candy I eat really.. In addition to ingredients lists, we also checked to see how many grams (g) of sugar were in these products on the Nutrition Facts label on the back of the packages.
Sometimes it's how foods are processed and packaged that can severely change how healthy something is too. Again, it's all about the ingredients. Take a look at these two cans of peaches. The difference can be found right on the front of the label.
But check out the back to see what this translates into..
Scary, huh? Two people can be eating canned peaches but depending on which can they came from one might be eating TWICE the amount of sugar and calories than the other.
Lesson to learned: READ LABELS!! There's no other way to get around it if you are going to eat processed, packaged foods-- which we all do. FRESH produce [fruits/vegetables] usually don't have labels. Nature-made is best, so choose them often, then you might not have to read so much. [grin].