All good parents want to do the right thing for their children: We try to make sure they have good friends, supervise their schoolwork and extracurricular activities, and make sure they eat a balanced diet.
But that doesn’t mean we don’t experience a variety of downsides, like not putting our kids to bed early, spending a little too much time in front of the TV or iPad, and, perhaps most commonly, prioritizing convenience over nutrition when it comes to meals.
Sometimes we even trick ourselves into thinking something that’s not so good is good, like when we choose fruit snacks as a “healthy” snack option.
What are fruit snacks?
Fruit snacks are gelatinous treats made with fruit flavors, purees, juices, concentrates, and a variety of other ingredients, and are sometimes molded to resemble the shapes of popular fruits such as oranges, strawberries, raspberries, and grapes.
“These are typically made by mixing fruit ingredients with sugar and other additives, then cooking, forming, and packaging them,” says Lisa Young, R.D., adjunct professor of nutrition at New York University and author of Finally Full, Finally Slim.
Some fruit snack brands have fewer ingredients, such as fruit purees or concentrates, ascorbic acid (to prevent discoloration), and added sweeteners, says Sherri Rael, a registered dietitian and nutritionist in Albuquerque, New Mexico. “But other brands have multiple ingredients, including thickeners like gelatin or starch, additional flavors, and dyes for color enhancement,” she explains.
Are fruit snacks healthy?
No matter how many ingredients your favorite fruit snack brand contains, calling it a “health food” is a stretch, says Barbara Olenski, M.D., associate professor of population and quantitative health sciences at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School. “Think of them as candy,” she says, because fruit snacks “usually don’t contain the moisture, natural fiber, vitamins, and minerals that real fruit does.” She adds that labeling them as healthy is “particularly a concern for kids, because they need the nutrients from whole fruit to grow and fight off illness and disease.”
That doesn’t mean some types of fruit snacks are less healthy than others: “Those labeled 100% fruit may be healthier, but it’s important to check the ingredients and nutrition facts label,” says Young. The same goes for fruit snack varieties that are fortified with vitamins and minerals.
But even in these cases, “processing these foods removes many of the beneficial fiber, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants from fruit snacks that are found in whole fruit,” says Uma Naidoo, M.D., a Harvard-trained nutritional psychiatrist and chief of nutrition and lifestyle psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital and the driving force behind Calm Your Mind with Food.
Rael agrees, saying that even the “healthiest” brands of fruit snacks “can be calorie dense without the nutrients found in whole fruit.” To illustrate this, consider that 15 strawberry fruit snacks contain only 90 calories, whereas it would take 40 strawberries to reach the same calorie count. Whole fruit is also rich in calcium, iron, vitamin B6, vitamin A, phosphorus, niacin, and vitamin C, folate, protein, and fiber.
“Fruit snacks are commonly perceived as healthy because the name suggests you’re consuming fruit in some form, but often the added fruit is sugar-filled fruit juice rather than whole fruit,” Naidoo says.
Do fruit snacks contain a lot of sugar?
In fact, some fruit snacks can be so high in sugar that one popular brand of fruit snack flavor reportedly contains 11 grams of sugar (3 teaspoons), nearly half of which is pure sugar in every bite. By comparison, one serving of gummy bears contains 14 grams of sugar.
Young points out that consuming too much sugar in the form of fruit snacks can lead to dental problems as the sticky sugar gets stuck in your teeth, as well as weight gain and low energy levels. “Excessive sugar intake affects everyone’s health, but it’s a particular concern for children, as they are more susceptible to tooth decay and may eat these snacks in large quantities,” she adds.
In fact, Naidoo warns that fruit snacks’ particularly high sugar content “is known to be addictive, so it’s easy to eat lots of fruit snacks and still crave them.” She adds that overeating also poses risks to your stomach’s microbiome: “Bad bacteria in your gut thrive on the sugar and many other artificial ingredients in fruit snacks.” Naidoo says this “can lead to a lot of inflammatory issues, including fatigue, mood swings, stress, depression and age-related cognitive decline.”
But like any other food, fruit snacks are about the amount you consume, so there’s no need to avoid them completely, say nutritionists. “Fruit snacks are acceptable on-the-go snacks if they’re made from 100 percent fruit, but they’re nothing more than fruit-flavored gummy snacks and candy with health claims or health labels,” says Rael. “Some people see the word ‘fruit’ and assume it’s healthy without looking into the details.”