Is Canned Fruit Healthier Than Fresh Fruit?

By Author: Bill Scott
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Canned and fresh fruit are both very nutritious. Fresh fruit contains more fibre than canned fruit. Canned fruit often contains added sugars. These additives assist in not only preserving the fruit's texture and freshness, but enhancing the fruit's flavours so that the canned equivalent can more readily compare with its more expensive fresh counterparts - even in the off season months.

What Is With The Added Sugars?

Canned fruits contain added sugars. If these sugars were not added, the quality of the fruit would not be compromised, in terms of nutrition. The texture would be softer and the natural colours would fade. Companies tend to market what people want to buy -- people buy canned fruit as it requires little preparation, tastes sweet, and looks presentable. Without sugar, none of these criteria would be met.

If you are on a diet that suggests as little added sugar as possible, I would recommend buying fresh fruit.

What Happened To My Fibres?

Fruit out of a can will always contain fewer fibres than fresh fruit. This is because the skin is taken off the fruit before being ...
... canned, in order to allow for the fruit to be preserved for longer. Fibres are a type of carbohydrate that cannot be digested by our bodies. They lower your chances of symptoms including but not limited to: heart disease, diabetes, and gastrointestinal maladies. If you have got a higher chance than the average of getting the diseases listed above, fresh produce would be more beneficial to you, but that does not mean to say that canned fruit would harm you.

Get On With It! How Fresh Is My Fruit?

A lot of nutritional value is lost if the fruit you consume is not fresh. I am pretty certain that what I am about to tell you will come as a surprise. Canned fruit, despite being older in age, is on a general basis fresher than "fresh" fruit. Canned fruit is picked when at its ripest, and packaged shortly thereafter.

This in theory makes canned fruit more fresh than fresh produce, but fresh produce in most circumstances contains more nutritional value (canned fruit is processed). When you next visit the store, keep an eye out for cans of fruit that are preserved in their own juices and water. This is a much healthier alternative, when compared with fruit preserved in high fructose corn syrup.

Fresh or canned, fruit is healthy. Which is most healthy is relative to your dieting needs. A firm answer cannot be given to answer the presented question, so I will leave it in your hands to make an informed decision.

About the Author:

You now know enough to decide whether you should be eating canned or fresh fruit, but do you yet know what types of fruit you should be eating? Head on over to fruit nutrition facts and we'll tell you.

Learn all about the healthiest available fruits over at http://www.fruitnutritionfacts.net, I'd love to keep that surprised look on your face.