To think dried fruit and nuts in moderation are healthy?

[sandrabedminster]

Something like this with just dried figs and walnuts. As long as you don't overdo your calories and snack on them and keep getting the sticky sugar on your teeth , healthy right?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTSy4XzqTi0

lougle I see what you mean if it is only worth 4 g protein.

I like those 45 bags of mixed nuts (no dried fruit) like they have in cafes which are about 300 calories 9 g protein, then am not hungry for hours.

No sugar spike/insulin surge without the dried fruit. But on a hike, like the OP goes on, that might be nice.

MiddleClassProblem I don't normally eat high fat food, so yes, eating a whole cheeseburger makes me feel bloated. Maybe other people are used to it, but I feel sick when I eat more than a little. Nothing to do with any issues.

manicinsomniac - I'm of the same view as you. I really don't get the people that compare nuts fruit to a bar of galaxy purely due to the calories. A bar of galaxy is just empty calories where as nuts a fruit contain many good things. We do actually need calories / fat. I remember in ww a doughnut was seen as healthier than an avocado

No its not mine sadly.

curren Mon 02-May-16 12:42:41

"Healthy for who?

'Healthy' doesn't mean anything really"

This. It all depends on how much energy you burn and whether you are the kind of person who will then go and eat a full meal "because I've only had a tiny snack" or the kind of person who will eat less next time because you feel less hungry.

I remember in ww a doughnut was seen as healthier than an avocado

There is no hope for some.

There was a programme on TV a while back where someone ate a lot of nuts everyday for several weeks. They hardly put any weight on at all. The reason seemed to be that the body doesn't actually absorb all of the calories in the nuts as they erm.... pass through you (so to speak).
This probably only applies to whole nuts that you chew rather than ground nuts but I thought it was interesting.

No food is healthy or unhealthy In itself . this is the same thinking as the infantile naughty food concept.

Nuts are very good for you and contain many useful nutrients.

dried fruit is high in soluble fibre but is also very high in sugar and often contains sulphur dioxide which makes you parpy.

But once this recipe has been split into 10, are you really getting plenty of nutrients? Or is the good stuff in such small amounts, the nutrients to absorb is neither here nor there.

As a I said before 'healthy' isn't one thing and depends on you, your whole diet, your activity levels and your goals. No one food is healthy or unhealthy.

Dried fruit that has not had sugar added doesn't have any more sugar than the equivilent piece of fresh fruit. So if you eat 20 dried apricots and 20 fresh apricots you are consuming the same amount of sugar. The problem is that you cannot pack 20 fresh apricots into a small packet where you can easily fit 20 dried ones. Also you can physically consume 20 dried apricots with little effort as they are smaller so you are putting more peices of actual fruit to get the same volume of food. You would struggle to eat 20 fresh apricots as it would be considerably more per volume, you would most likely feel full or fed up after the first 3. This is why dried fruit carries a risk with over consuming sugar, because it contains more sugar per volume.

When eating dried fruit it's worth imagining the fresh fruit quanity and thinking about it. By doing this you can sometimes trick yourself into feeling full or fed up on less dried fruit.

You can get a lot of dried fruit that hasn't been preserved with sulphar, such as sun dried fruits. But it doesn't look as nice. It is usually brown, so brown apricots, sun dried dates etc are a good choice.

No food is healthy or unhealthy In itself . this is the same thinking as the infantile naughty food concept.

I do not think this is at all true.Some is virtually poison in anything over a tiny amount.

Nuts are very healthy! Only a handful a day is needed (I've been told between 12-15 nuts) because they are high in calories. They've been linked to all kinds of good health benefits.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/behindtheheadlines/news/2015-06-12-half-a-handful-of-nuts-a-day-reduces-early-death-risk/

I'd probably just carry round a few nuts and bits of dried fruit in a little tub rather than going to the bother of mushing them up together into balls, which seems like a recipe for a sticky mess really.

But YANBU to say that dried fruit and nuts are healthy in moderation and taking energy requirements into account. I often take them with me while hiking and find them perfectly easy to eat on the go.

Entirely agree Backpfeifengesicht.

Thanks I think nuts are healthy too. Unless they are cashews my body knows when it has had enough!

No wonder the uk has such problems with some of the attitude to high fat and calorie but healthy natural foods.

No wonder the uk has such problems with some of the attitude to high fat and calorie but healthy natural foods.

I don't get what you mean?

No one has said nuts are bad. But weather a snack is healthy or not depends on the whole diet and or context.

That's the problem with these 'natural snacks'. People often Over indulge assuming that because it's natural. It must be ok to eat a few.

The other issue is how satisfying they are. Do they fill you up? Or are you going to be reaching for another in half hour or reaching for something else. Will 20g of walnuts give you lots of nutrients? Or is there a better snack?

Even natural food, can make you put weight on. But again, maintaining or putting on weight might be your goal. Or maybe you don't care about weight at all.

You should only really be snacking if you are hungry or eat more small meals. Snacking has become something we do wether we need it or not. If you need a snack it's not a bad choice. But it's not necessarily the best either for everyone.

It was more about the doughnuts healthier than avacado and comparing the calories in something nutrient dense to a shit like a bar of galaxy.

I know what you mean and you can overeat on something like nuts and dates together. But I do think its less likley as they are filling and you need to chew them a lot.

I know we're all different but having been MFPing since last July I'm fairly aware of what I find filling and what I don't, and while they're obviously far better than a bar of chocolate, I don't find nuts and dried fruit filling at all. I ate 400 kcals of dried apricots as a snack to get me through a lecture the other day, they were gone in five minutes.

...They also took me over my advised sugar intake for the day.

Dried fruit in large quantities is just a lot of sugar. It may be better than white sugar because of fibre and minerals, but it will still have a sugar effect. One effect is to make a person very hungry all the time.

People who have reasonable quantities of nuts (not nuts and dried fruit) are said to
not put on weight compared to people who have biscuits and chocolates as snacks.

The old weight watchers diets used to think that "a calorie is a calorie" - an avocado is the same as a chocolate bar sort of thinking. But they have entirely different metabolic effects.

To be fair the energy balls recipe does say they are for busy active days when you need the energy.

I don't imagine anyone will eat 200g of nuts and dried fruit in a sitting.

Tail - is that now in the past with ww? Are calories counted differently?

sandrabedminster
Yes, I thought that was fair enough for a hike. Though if possible the protein content could do with being higher.

Tail - is that now in the past with ww? Are calories counted differently?

I was very aware of what young girls were saying a few years back..
"oo don't have ab avocado..an egg ...they are full of fat" Meanwhile they ate cupcakes and chocolate bars!

I saw a weight watchers success story on the thelevision say 'a calorie is a calorie... and apple is to much if it takes you over the calorie limit'.
I would say the apple was fine but the slice of bad white bread she had instead was not.

Then a friend did weight watchers and I was quite involved and saw, for example, that a plain full yogurt might have more points in than another one full of sugar.

Meanwhile, I was personally aware of new ideas showing how sugar affects the metabolism differently by causing surges of insulin which make the body store everything as fat.

Nuts have fat and potentially fattening if you eat loads, but they will not cause an insulin surge. Whereas the sugar does and it also then crashes about twenty minutes later and a person can feel hungry again and want to eat more - possibly even feel ravenous.

With nuts, because they are full of protein the body feels as though it has eaten and is more likely to feel satiety and with no sugar there is no crash.
With a diet with adequate protein the body is less likely to lose muscle and gain fat.

I think I heard that weight watchers has no given more points to sugar than they used to.

I think this man Dr Lustig is speaking here about the effects of sugar.

Kinddog- I agree. I try to avoid sugar as much as I can, which is easy as I don't have a sweet tooth but it's hidden sugars I have to look out for. I eat an avocado every day and a handful (12-15) of nuts and poached or scramble eggs several times a week. Honestly I've never felt healthier (proved by my annual check-up with blood sugar and cholesterol check). Even better than nuts, avocado's are anti-inflammatory and lower bad cholesterol. It's still funny to accept that healthy fats are good for us after a childhood of low fat everything and flora margarine...

Yes, Backpfelfengesicht it was those two decades of the idea that fat was a bad thing and that piles of pasta and bread were good, and sugar would do no harm that was misleading.(i.e The Food Pyramid). So it is difficult to believe that certain fats are essential and will do good and difficult to believe you will not end up fat if you eat them.

The adding of sugar to all sorts of foods is so difficult too. In baked beans and tomato sauce you expect it as that is the recipe, but now it's in things where you wouldn't expect it.

I eat like you probably. I too feel very well. I did not know quite how good avocados were though. I do have a very little sugar, but like to know it is there. I do eat whole fruit, sometimes a bit of honey- a teaspoon, say, and some dark chocolate. Eating a little bit often, there are few sugar cravings.

At least with these balls the OP is choosing the dried fruit herself.