Fruit Snacks

The benefits of fruit in the diet is obvious to most people these days even if they fail to eat large amounts themselves. They supply almost all the food groups needed for full nutrition with little of the bad stuff that causes so much ill health.

Fruit contains small quantities of protein and fat with large amounts of complex carbohydrates and simple sugars. Then there is the fibre and carotenoids and flavonoids which along with antioxidants make some fruits super foods!

Sounds like a great little snack! Fruit Snacks.

Fresh and Tasty

Fruit generally comes in it's own packaging and tends to be in rather useful serving sizes. The few larger varieties (cantelope, water melon) are easily chopped up and stored in handy plastic containers.

Your choices in the fruit range is huge from apples to mangoes. The variety is enormous and modern super markets often have a complete supply. A few hours spent at your local farmers market will often reward you with locally grown super fresh produce, full of goodness.

Preserved Fruit

Fruit also has the ability to be a frozen. Berries are a very popular frozen fruit snacks. Blueberries and raspberries being two of the super foods loaded with vitamins and antioxidants.

Fruit has also been dry preserved in a number of different ways and two favourites are fruit leather and dried fruit. In both cases the fruit has simply had the water removed to varying degrees to produce a convenient and very tasty snack. If you have your own fruit trees excess fruit can be dried in the sun or in a baking tray in a oven. Nothing is nicer than your own dried fruit snacks.

Convenient Fruit Snacks

Sometimes it seems that the effort of peeling and cutting up a few pieces of fruit is just too much. So you grab that candy bar. You feel guilty but time is the issue!

Being prepared beforehand can stop this and you will find that suddenly you can not keep enough fruit in the fridge. Spend a little time cutting up the fruit and veges the evening or day before and place in small containers and the family will grab them leaving the chip packets alone!

Children particularly love fruit salads and you can get them involved in the preparation to really increase their interest. If you supply low fat yoghurt or even a little ice cream then the snack suddenly becomes highly desireable and particularly rich in the nutrition stakes.

Fruit Vegetables

A few of the traditional vegetables are in fact fruit and they can be added to your Fruit Snack menu.
Cherry tomatoes, peas and sugar snap peas can be grown very easily and are wonderful off the vine and children can be involved in the whole process.

Some smaller sweeter pepper varieties will grow in pots and can spice up a plain salad. Speaking of salads. A bean salad is rich in protein and fibre and low in calories - another example of a fruit snack that's quick and easy to prepare.