Healthy Dried Fruit Recipes

 One of the most popular items on health food store shelves is dried fruit and nuts - touted as one of the best ways to get fruit into your body on a regular basis, especially when fresh fruit isn't available. But, as one of the highest sugar ingredients, and often made with extra preserving sweeteners, is it really healthy?

 Well, isn't moderation the key to any successful healthy eating plan? From time to time most things are acceptable and easily digested by the body - so a few organic sultanas, apricots or cranberries now and again can only be of benefit.

Issues could start to arise if you choose brands that have add any extras added, such as vegetable oil, sugar or preservatives. These are unnecessary and unhealthy, and dried fruit of good quality will keep for a long time anyway. So, seek out companies that aim to deliver a high quality and safe packed product. Avoid anything candied, which is a different process, but can look similar.

Freeze dried fruit is another alternative - strawberries and raspberries taste particularly lovely once freeze dried and used in muesli, porridge or other hot cereal breakfasts.

You can of course, use a dehydrator at home to make your own dried fruit - you might need to add a little lemon juice to stop it from browning too much or going bad, and to keep it's flavour a little more. The ideal length of time to dry out your fruit is overnight - but keep checking on it, just in case it needs a few more or less hours to dry.

Dried Fruit Breakfast Bars

One of these bars should be sufficient to keep you going in the morning, and you can easily slip a bar into your work bag before heading on your daily commute.

Try out any of these recipes to find a family favorite:
♥ Baseball Trail Mix Bars
♥ Raw Blackberry and Coconut Snack
♥ Gluten Free Fig Bars
♥ Primal Dried Fruit Breakfast

Morning Trail Mix

With lots of nuts and seeds, all you'll need to accompany this simple food is a thirst-quenching drink. Or, snack on it during the day, to keep you energised and ready-to-go.

1. Go crazy with all your favorite nuts, seeds and fruits - putting together interesting combinations that you would never be able to purchase in store. Try out these for starters:

• Dried papaya, pecan, sultana, almonds and coconut chips
• Cranberry, sunflower seeds, dark chocolate chips, walnut and dates
• Banana chips, dried cherry, pumpkin seeds, cashews and ginger

NOTE: If you'd rather buy your own trail mix, beware that most nuts in these mixes will have gone rancid. Nuts need to be stored in the fridge or freezer (or cool dark pantry) in order to stop the natural oils from going off.

Learn to bulk buy dried fruit - as it's one pantry ingredient that will keep lasting for many months, and can easily be thrown into a handful of recipes. Sprinkle raisins on top of soup or salad, use cranberries in smoothies for their great ayurvedic properties, use dried apricots in burgers for extra vitamins or chop prunes into your homemade bread recipes.

Sometimes it might be necessary to rehydrate the dried fruit before you use it in desserts or for cake recipes, this gives an extra moistness to the final goodies.

Remember that whilst dried fruit is low fat, it certainly isn't low calorie - a portion of dried fruit is just a small handful (with pineapples being one of the highest, and prunes being one of the lowest). If you're in doubt about it's natural goodness, then look to times past when our ancestor's gave particular dried fruits special names - prunes, raisins and sultanas come to mind. Can it be bad for your health if it's been around for thousands of years and developed it's own name?