Eli5: Why are raisins considered a healthy snack for toddlers if they’re mostly sugar?
In: Biology
Raisins are an excellent source of fiber and have vitamins and minerals that your body needs. If you are going to have some sugar in the diet this is far better than other alternatives like fruit snacks or even juice.
When a kid is a picky eater, a lot of the food that they will eat can cause constipation. High fiber foods that kids like are good to keep in the diet to just make sure things keep moving.
A couple of raisins are fine. The problem is that because they’re small and devoid of most water content, you won’t be satiated after eating a lot of them. At least not the same way you would if you ate grapes.
you’re getting the same vitamins, minerals, and fiber as eating a grape, just with less moisture. They do not add sugar to raisins, so they have exactly the same amount of sugar as eating fresh gapes.
Not the most healthy thing one could feed a child (easy to overindulge and consume too much sugar) but better than something with purely empty calories.
They’re not. People think they’re healthy because they’re made from whole fruit but they are still a very dense source of sugar and are unlikely to leave you feeling full/satisfied. I think raisins as a toddler snack are just a thing people do as a habit/tradition at this point.
My parents always gave me Cheerios and raisins as a snack as a toddler which in hindsight is not as good as just fresh fruit or vegetables. But back then the food pyramid was different! We were taught things like, “grains are the food you should eat the most of” and I think the recommended daily intake was 9-11 servings of grains and 5-7 of fruits/vegetables. That’s definitely not right anymore! Boomer generation parents had different info than we have now and a lot of the breakthroughs in food technology were focused on convenience, not nutrition.
Who says they are healthy? They are mostly sugar which makes it a bad idea to eat a lot of them. The local supermarket also markets apple (and other fruits) puree in brightly colored plastic squeeze packets for toddlers which is just as stupid.
I believe that it’s less of a healthy snack and more of a combination of “it’s a type of fruit that’s easier for the child to handle, and if the child throws it on the ground, it won’t really squish like a grape does”
It’s a marketing ploy to sell them.
Raisins, just like grapes and grape juice, are not healthy at all. They have more sugar than CocaCola. Sure, they have some vitamins, but those are easily acquired from far better sources.
Sugar from fruits is no different than sugar from sugarcane. It’s the same substance, with maybe a slightly different fructose to glucose ratio.
They are not healthy
Both my kids’ dentist and pediatrician said to stay away from dried fruit and those fruit roll ups. They are terrible for the teeth and have too much sugar for a kid.
It’s okay to have raisins once in a while but not as a daily snack.
Thank you for bringing this up. I suspect there are all kinds of foods like this.
The other day- I picked up a bag of darker lettuce. I was amazed at how little nutrition was listed on the back.
I’ve got another one. Canned red beets.
Grandma always had them on the table. No nutrition there, really. I’m not going to waste my time on them
in the future.
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