There are a variety of healthier fruit and nut bars on the market now that boast dried fruit as a primary ingredient. Dried fruit is calorically dense, though. Should we be concerned that eating such bars may make us fat?
You may have noticed in the conclusion of the fig study I covered in Best Dried Fruit for Cholesterol that adding 14 figs to people’s daily diets did not lead to significant weight gain.
Wait a second.
That’s 300 calories of figs a day. Over 5 weeks that’s 10,000 calories. How did 10,000 calories disappear into thin air? Figs are so satiating and packed with fiber that even without trying people just end up eating less of other foods throughout the day. I get full just thinking about eating 14 figs!
Was that study just a fluke? Let’s look at the other new studies I covered. What about adding three quarters of a cup of dried apples to our diet every day for a year? Two hundred extra calories a day, but no significant change in weight. Two hundred extra calories of prunes a day for a year? No significant change in weight and same thing with a month of a daily 300 calorie load of dates.
In general, the 5-10% of Americans that average a tablespoon or more of dried fruit a day tend to be less overweight, less obese, and have a slimmer waist with less abdominal obesity. They tended to eat more, but weighed less. Similar findings were found for those that eat nuts and nut butters, lower body mass index, slimmer waist, and significantly less excess weight and obesity. See my video Nuts and Obesity: The Weight of Evidence. The various mechanisms are summarized in Solving the Mystery of the Missing Calories and explored further in a four-video series:
- Testing the Pistachio Principle
- Testing the Dietary Compensation Theory
- Testing the Fat Burning Theory
- Fat Burning Via Arginine
What if you put dried fruit and nuts together? What would be the effect of adding daily fruit and nut bars on top of one’s regular diet for two months? Researchers took about a hundred folks who were overweight and randomized them into two groups. Half ate their regular diet, and the other half ate their regular diet plus two fruit and nut bars a day, totaling an extra 340 calories. But these weren’t candy calories; these were largely whole plant food calories, dried fruits and nuts.
Two daily fruit and nut bars for two months did not cause weight gain. And they had additional sugar in them (they were KIND brand bars). Maybe that may be why the participants’ cholesterol didn’t get better despite the nuts, which should have helped. I highlight some brands in my 3-min video Do Fruit & Nut Bars Cause Weight Gain? with no added sugar, but it’s even cheaper to just concoct one’s own trail mix and eat dried fruits and nuts on their own.
-Michael Greger, M.D.
PS: If you haven’t yet, you can subscribe to my videos for free by clicking here and watch my full 2012 – 2015 presentations Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death, More than an Apple a Day, From Table to Able, and Food as Medicine.
4 responses to “The Best Nutrition Bar”
Comment Etiquette
On NutritionFacts.org, you'll find a vibrant community of nutrition enthusiasts, health professionals, and many knowledgeable users seeking to discover the healthiest diet to eat for themselves and their families. As always, our goal is to foster conversations that are insightful, engaging, and most of all, helpful – from the nutrition beginners to the experts in our community.
To do this we need your help, so here are some basic guidelines to get you started.
The Short List
To help maintain and foster a welcoming atmosphere in our comments, please refrain from rude comments, name-calling, and responding to posts that break the rules (see our full Community Guidelines for more details). We will remove any posts in violation of our rules when we see it, which will, unfortunately, include any nicer comments that may have been made in response.
Be respectful and help out our staff and volunteer health supporters by actively not replying to comments that are breaking the rules. Instead, please flag or report them by submitting a ticket to our help desk. NutritionFacts.org is made up of an incredible staff and many dedicated volunteers that work hard to ensure that the comments section runs smoothly and we spend a great deal of time reading comments from our community members.
Have a correction or suggestion for video or blog? Please contact us to let us know. Submitting a correction this way will result in a quicker fix than commenting on a thread with a suggestion or correction.
View the Full Community Guidelines
I’m hoping prominent nutritional biochemist Bruce Ames releases his nutrient dense CHORI-bar in a vegan formulation. The CHORI-bar was designed by the Ames lab and USDA food scientists to ameliorate nutritional deficiencies in children at risk, and has some novel innovations, but alas the current formulations use whey protein as a binding agent.
The story of the CHORI-bar
The research
The patent
Another great article, but I have an editing suggestion on this sentence: ” Maybe that may be why the …” Instead try, “That could be the reason why the…”
:)
Try “That could be why…”
What is the recipe for the best nutrition bar?