Tag: fruit

Watermelon Fruit Roll-Ups

We can’t believe it’s October already! Halloween is around the corner and that means A LOT of unhealthy snacks. But…we’ve got a recipe up our sleeve that will fulfil your kid’s sweet tooth like no other.

Our Watermelon Fruit Roll-Ups are an easy homemade snack. The first five ingredients in most popular store-bought fruit roll-ups are corn syrup, dried corn syrup, sugar, pear puree concentrate and palm oil.  In our case, we’ve ditched all the nasties and replaced it only with real fruit, coconut oil, and honey.

Why avoid corn syrup and palm oil?

  • Corn syrup is even more harmful than ordinary table sugar because of its high fructose content.
  • Palm oil is also a highly processed oil and is unhealthy for both us and the environment.

What about coconut oil? Is it good for you?

Coconut oil is often classified as a “superfood” because of its many benefits including:

  • Coconut oil is high in healthy saturated fats. These fats can boost fat burning and provide your body and brain with quick energy.
  • Coconut oil contains natural saturated fats that increase the good HDL cholesterol in your body.
  • Good for blood sugar and diabetes.
  • Aids in liver health.

So with just 4 simple ingredients, you’ll have the perfect healthy treat for your Halloween festivities! Happy trick or treating.

 

A delicious fruity treat

 

45 minutes prep + Up to 8 hours in the oven

INGREDIENTS

– 12 cups cubed and de-seeded watermelon

– juice of 1 lime

– 1 ½ tbsp honey

– 1 tsp coconut oil

METHOD

1. Preheat oven on the lowest temperature your oven will go with the fan setting on.

2. Chop and de-seed 12 cups worth of watermelon.

3. Blend watermelon until pureed.

4. Place a cheesecloth over a sieve and slowly pour the watermelon puree through both. You may have to stop halfway to stir gently with a spatula.

5. Keep stirring the watermelon puree until most of the water is drained and you’re left with a viscous watermelon mixture.

6. Line a sheet tray with baking paper and grease lightly with coconut oil.

7. Pour the watermelon mixture onto the sheet tray and spread with a spatula until it’s evenly spread and about 5mm thick.

8. Place in the oven and bake for up to 8 hours or until it’s dried and easy to peel off the baking paper.

9. Cut into strips with a pizza cutter or scissors and then roll up with a strip of baking paper.

Extra Tips

This recipe is fairly easy to make as it only involves blending, straining and then a long wait while it’s in the oven! However, de-seeding the watermelon takes some time so using fruit like strawberry or raspberry might be quicker. You can even put berries straight in the blender without worrying about the seeds.

Another thing to note is that if you have a dehydrator at home, it’s better to use that so your oven is not on for so long. It’s also safer to just leave on and go out for the day – the process is so slow and there’s little concern for overcooking. An hour either side won’t make much difference!

A Guide to Sugar

You may have heard the phase ‘but sugar is still sugar’, especially in the low carb and paleo communities. You may have also stumbled across evangelical fruitarians who eat nothing but fruit and claim amazing health benefits from doing so. As with most things related to nutrition, a balanced approach is what makes most sense.

What type of sugar is in fruit? 

The sugar in fruit is made up of a combination of sucrose, glucose and fructose. Each fruit contains slightly different combinations of these sugars. Although these sugars may sound ‘bad’, there are some critical points that make them different to how they appear in isolated forms:

  • The fibre and water in fruit increases satiety. This makes us much less likely to over consume fruit compared to say, cookies and chocolate. Fibre also feeds our healthy gut bacteria, helps to reduce inflammation, slow the absorption of simple sugars that will spike our insulin and even binds to toxins in the digestive tract.
  • Fruit is full of vitamins and is also a good source of minerals. Grapefruit, for example, contains Vitamin A, Vitamin B, Vitamin B2, Vitamin B6, Vitamin C and Folate (folic acid).
  • Fruits contain a wide range of phytochemicals that play many roles in keeping us healthy. These phytochemicals give fruit it’s distinctive colour and scent but also help to reduce inflammation, decrease DNA damage in white blood cells, help maintain elasticity of blood vessels and provide antioxidants.

Aside from consuming sugar in fruits, raw honey and maple syrup are also nutritious and delicious! Raw honey contains small amounts of vitamins A, B1, B6, B9, B12, C, D, and E, as well as calcium, sodium, phosphorus, magnesium, silicon, iron, manganese, and copper. Maple syrup contains small amounts of manganese and zinc.

The closer a sugar is to being in it’s natural form, the more likely it is to be nutritious. The more processed a sugar is, the more stripped of nutrients and the more likely your body will react to it negatively. Many of the processed foods we consume in the modern day are totally foreign to our body as they don’t appear anywhere in nature.

Examples of sugars that aren’t healthful:

  • White tables sugar, brown sugar and turbinado sugar contain almost no micronutrients and no fibre or water to slow down the inflammatory insulin response. This is why eating a cookie or chocolate bar is totally different to eating a piece of fruit, even though the sugar itself is also made from glucose and fructose.
  • High fructose corn syrup also contains no micronutrients, however, the way it affects our body’s is far more sinister than white table sugar. HFCS has been associated with a myriad of health problems such as fatty liver disease, increased LDL cholesterol and arterial damage. It has even been show to be contaminated with mercury. HFCS is often the sugar used in sodas which is dangerous because drinking sugar is far more harmful that eating it. Again, this relates to the lack of fibre and the fact that people don’t compensate by eating less despite drinking an extremely calorific and sweet drink. In fact, studies have shown that people are driven to consume even more food than they would if the sugary drink wasn’t consumed.
  • Artificial sweeteners and sugar alcohols such as aspartame, saccharin, sucralose, xylitol and sorbitol are often used by diabetic people because they are low on the glycemic index so have less affect on your insulin response. Many people report gastro distress upon consuming these sweeteners and studies show a negative affect on our microbiota. These sweeteners can (ironically) cause glucose intolerance, alter the hormones associated with appetite control, impair neurological function and cause metabolic changes in the baby of a pregnant mother. They have not even been proven to help weight loss (assumedly why many people consume them), so really have no upsides at all.

As with all nutrition advice, there’s no one size fits all answer. If you are someone suffering from diabetes or blood sugar dysregulation, even fruit may negatively impact you. In this case it’s best to choose low glycemic fruits such as blueberries and cranberries, rather than mangoes or peaches. There is actually a study on how blueberries can help increase insulin sensitivity! Click here to access the study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5187542/

People with candida may also want to limit fruit intake as sugar will only feed the yeast. The same goes for those suffering from dysbiosis. However, it’s clear that not all sugar is created equal and fruit is by far the most healthful way to consume sugar!