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Dried fruit for snacks- are they really healthy or not?

We’ve seen a number of children at Time Dental recently who have active dental decay as young as 4 years old and this is a major concern. When asking the well-meaning parents about what their child has to eat the response is often that they have a healthy diet and they only snack on dried fruits like raisens, dried apricots and mangos. This type of diet will result in rapid tooth decay.

Now dont get me wrong, eating fruit is an excellent source of vitimins, minerals and all the good stuff but when children and adults snack throughout the day on things like dried fruit because they feels its healthy- that is the problem.

It’s the frequency of intake throughout the day that will result in rapid holes in the teeth. Especially for children as their primary teeth are much small than adult teeth.

Should I stop giving my kids fruit then? As a parent I completely understand the difficulty in trying to get children to eat a balanced healthy diet. What I advise is to give them a small bowl of dried fruit to eat all in one go or even better give a piece of fresh fruit as a snack or to try something savoury instead. Again it’s all about moderation. If you constantly give your kids dried fruit throughout the day they will get tooth decay. FACT.

The thing to remember is the removal of water in dried fruit it is not as filling as fresh fruit, also the dried fruit is not properly digested as it needs to use water from your body when the fruit reaches the stomach which may in turn dehydrate you.

There are also several things added to dried fruit, either during the drying process or after. They are sugar, dextrose, glucose syrup, fruit juice, colouring derived from fruit, glycerin, sorbic acid , sulphur dioxide, paraffin, edible fats, and oils. Oil is sometimes marked on the ingredients.