Fruit is a good source of nutrients, such as fiber and potassium, that many people lack in their diet. It also contains bioactive nutrients that provide extra health benefits, including polyphenols and carotenoids.
Research suggests that eating fruit is associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and type 2 diabetes.
However, only about 24% of females and 14% of males in the U.S. eat the recommended daily amount of fruit, according to the National Cancer Institute.
Several factors might contribute to people’s low intake of fresh fruit, including limited availability, high cost, and perishability.
Recommending that people eat more dried fruit could be one solution.
Dried fruit offers several advantages over fresh fruit in terms of cost, availability, and ease of storage and transport. It could also replace more unhealthful snack food that is high in sugar, salt, and saturated fat.
At the same time, however, there are concerns about overconsumption leading to excess calorie intake because dried fruit is such an “energy dense” form of fruit.
Previous observational studies have found that eating dried fruit is associated with health benefits. However, the evidence is inconclusive because people who eat more dried fruit may tend to have a more healthful diet and lifestyle overall.
The new study by researchers at Pennsylvania (Penn) State University in University Park aimed to get around this difficulty by comparing days when particular participants reported eating dried fruit with days when they ate none.
They found that people tended to consume more key nutrients on the days they ate dried fruit, including dietary fiber and potassium. However, they also consumed more calories.
“Dried fruit can be a great choice for a nutritious snack, but consumers might want to be sure they’re choosing unsweetened versions without added sugar,” says Valerie Sullivan of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, MD, who was a grad student at Penn State when she led the study.
“Portion sizes can also be tricky because a serving of dried fruit is smaller than a serving of fresh since the water has been taken out. But the positive is that dried fruit can help people potentially consume more fruit because it’s portable, it’s shelf-stable, and can even be cheaper.”
The research appears in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
For their analysis, the scientists drew on survey responses from 25,590 individuals who took part in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2007–2016.
The respondents provided information about the food they had consumed in the past 24 hours (called “dietary recalls”).
Dried fruit accounted for only 3.7% of all the fruit consumed. However, a total of 1,233 participants reported consuming dried fruit on one out of two dietary recalls, allowing the scientists to compare their intake on these days.
Data were also available on the participants’ health, including their body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, and seated resting blood pressure.
Even after adjusting for demographic and lifestyle factors, the participants who ate significant amounts of dried fruit tended to have better diets, a lower BMI, a smaller waist circumference, and lower systolic blood pressure compared with those who did not.
When the researchers compared the days when a participant ate dried fruit with those when they did not, they found that the average intake of total carbohydrate, dietary fiber, potassium, and polyunsaturated fat was greater on the days they ate dried fruit.
