We love fruit. I buy fresh fruit like apples, oranges and bananas pretty regularly, but most other fruits definitely have a season when they are best. For example, I just don't buy strawberries in January, they don't taste very nice and are super expensive. Peaches, other berries and even apples have times of the year when they just are not right, and other times of the year when they are fabulous. So we also take advantage of canned and frozen fruit. The vitamin C and other beneficial nutrients degrade as fresh fruit is stored, meaning that by the time it arrives at your store, it has lost some of its nutritional value. Canned and frozen fruits are picked at their prime and processed right away so they do not lose their nutritional value as fresh fruit does, making frozen and canned fruits a viable resource for a healthy diet.
Canned fruit comes packed in three different kinds of liquid, fruit juice, light syrup and heavy syrup. When available I buy the fruits packed in fruit juice, they make the most economical sense to me. We don't get extra sugar we don't need, and someone here always wants to drink the juice that is drained off and it doesn't just go down the sink. If your only choices are fruits packed in light or heavy syrup, second best is the light syrup, it has less sugar than the heavy, but even if your only choice is heavy syrup, you can drain the fruit and give it a rinse to get rid of some of the extra sugar.
We often have canned peaches for breakfast with yogurt or oatmeal. We also love to eat canned pineapple as a side dish for lunch, as well as canned pears. Canned fruit cocktail I use as a base for fruit salad and then add in any fresh fruit we have around, it is a great way to use up single pieces of fruit. By using canned fruit, I am able to add healthy variety to our diet and by having some extra cans in the cupboard I can feel confident that in an emergency I can still lay out a healthy meal.
Do you have a favorite way of using canned fruit?
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