1. Choose Fresh Fruit Over Dried
There are two good reasons to choose fresh fruit over dried when you are on a low-calorie diet. First, fresh fruit has lots of water contained within its fibers. This means you stay more hydrated and can feel full on fewer calories. For instance, a prune, which is a dried plum, is about the size of your thumb, whereas a fresh plum can be the size of a small fist. It's the same fruit, but the prune has had the water removed.
Secondly, dried fruit is more calorie-dense, since you will need to eat more of the dried fruit to get the same full feeling as the fresh fruit. The water in the fruit doesn't just hydrate you, but it will also help keep you satisfied. For people who are also conscious about preservatives, clean fresh fruit won't have any of the sulfites and other chemicals that dried fruit is treated with, making fresh fruit a guilt-free snack.
2. Choose Your Canned Fruits Carefully!
Any food packed in a can and set on a shelf is going to start to spoil. Therefore, processed food manufacturers treat canned food with preservatives to keep the food edible. These preservatives can be salt, vinegar, sugar or other additives. When you eat canned fruit, there is a good chance the fruit has been packed in some form of sugar syrup.
Sugar syrup, often made with high-fructose corn syrup, is high in calories and does not work well with a low-calorie diet. For instance, mandarin oranges are usually sold packed in "light syrup" that doubles the calories of the fruit if it were eaten alone! Even fruits packed in juice, which sound healthy, can be high in calories because of the addition of juice concentrate. If you are choosing packaged fruit, read the label to make sure you are not exceeding your appropriate caloric intake.
3. Avoid High-Calorie Fruit
While all fruits have vitamins and mineral contents that are far superior to your standard fast-food snack, not all fruit is low calorie. Figs, pineapples, bananas, cherries and avocados, while all nutritionally beneficial, are among the highest-calorie fruits. Choose apples, grapes, plums, pears, watermelon and other melons rather than the more exotic, high-calorie alternatives to keep your calories under control.
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