Fruit salads: beneficial properties, cooking tips

Fruits are high in fiber and have a low glycemic load. Thanks to this, they have little effect on blood sugar levels and have a positive effect on the digestion process. Dietary fruit salads are an excellent low-calorie and healthy option.

In this article we will look at the importance of fruits for weight loss, options for easy dressings with yogurt and other ingredients, tasty and healthy recipes. Expert opinions will help you gain a deeper understanding of the topic of fruit salads.

Where to begin

From determining the components expected for the salad. Each fruit has a unique vitamin composition and is saturated with microelements to varying degrees. Main components in 100 gr. fruits are as follows.

By combining fruits and adding various dressings, you can create salads that will fully replace one or more daily meals.

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Ingredients and choosing the right yogurt

The ingredients can be any fruit in your family. In addition to them, you can also add raisins, candied fruits, chocolate, cookies, marmalade, and chia seeds.

We choose the right yogurt so that it is not only tasty, but also as healthy as possible:

• “Live”, which contains living bacteria. Active yoghurts will help improve digestion and restore comfort in the intestines. The packaging must contain O or “Bifidus and Lactobacillus acidophilus”.
• No sugar and no additives. Curdled milk with flavorings, aromas, and sugar is not natural.
• Take products only in cardboard packaging - it allows you to preserve the beneficial properties of the product.
• Yogurt with dyes and flavors is harmful. Also a sign of an unnatural product is starch in the composition.
• Check the expiration date carefully.

Cooking recommendations

In order for a fruit salad to bring only health benefits, when preparing it, you need to think about the compatibility of the fruit components. They are conventionally divided into three groups: sour, sweet and semi-sour. Sweets include:

• bananas
• persimmon
• dates

Their combination is considered ideal. It is also recommended to combine them in dishes with semi-acidic fruits and berries (apple, apricot, mango, raspberry, strawberry).

Sour fruits (citrus fruits, kiwi, lime) go well with semi-sour ones and poorly with each other. In fruit salads, the presence of nuts, herbs, and starchy vegetables (root vegetables and large grains) is possible. However, components should be added with caution, as they can cause fermentation in the stomach and intestines.

Professionals do not recommend using more than five or six components to prepare one salad. Then their taste will be brighter and more expressive.

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Perfect breakfast

Anyone who cares about their figure and adheres to the principles of healthy eating knows: breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Drinking a cup of coffee in the morning or leaving the house hungry, soon a person begins to feel tired. Therefore, you should always have breakfast, even if you have no appetite.

A fruit dish is ideal for the first meal. This salad is prepared very quickly, but is loaded with vitamins and nutrients. It is filling, light and delicious.

Many people want to eat a chocolate croissant for breakfast, washed down with coffee with cream, but a lone apple seems not at all appetizing to them. Sweets are delicious, but they only cause harm. They don't contain essential nutrients, just empty calories that don't fill you up. After having breakfast with sweets, after half an hour the body will ask for food again. He will lack energy, so he will feel hungry.

There are a number of arguments in favor of eating fruit salads for breakfast. In the morning the stomach is empty. The last time he received food was more than 8 hours ago. You can’t immediately eat fatty and high-calorie donuts, cakes, and fried cutlets. Such food is difficult to digest and does not satiate or provide energy, since it does not contain vital substances. With such a breakfast, a person will actually remain hungry, and will also put a lot of strain on digestion. As a result, drowsiness and heaviness in the stomach will occur.

The benefits of fruit salads also include a large amount of fructose. This is sugar that is easily absorbed, unlike that found in high-calorie desserts. Fructose is extremely important for the functioning of the brain, which consumes 20% of the energy entering the body. This is the fuel that powers it. By eating a fruit salad for breakfast, you will help your body and brain wake up, and your stomach will quickly and efficiently digest food.

Recipe options

A classic option is fruit salad with yogurt. This is the easiest salad that you can whip up.

You can use different fruits and yoghurts with different flavors. The main thing is to ensure harmony between sour and sweet notes. To add expressiveness to the taste, you can add berries.

You can serve the salad in an original way at:

• halves of fresh pineapple (after removing the pulp from them)
• salad bowls, garnished with a mint leaf
• mango halves, using the pulp extracted in advance as a salad component

Many people prefer the following combination of fruits: two apples, kiwi, banana, 3 tangerines. As a dressing – 100 gr. any yogurt.

Fruits should not be cut into pieces that are not too small, as this may result in a porridge-like mass. The dressing can be prepared from yogurt with sour cream.

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Useful tips

1. If you want to prepare a dietary dessert, it is enough to take up to 5 different fruits.
2. You should not buy out-of-season fruits and berries, as they contain few vitamins.
3. For a dietary dish, it is advisable to take pineapples, grapefruits, apples and kiwis, as they have the ability to burn fat.
4. In summer you can prepare a delicious salad with watermelon or melon. They remove toxins from the body well.
5. To add an unusual taste, experienced chefs use peanuts, cashews, hazelnuts, almonds, hazelnuts, raisins and dried apricots. For sweetness, you can add honey, powdered sugar or sugar.
6. To prevent the salad from turning dark due to the bananas and apples it contains, I advise you to sprinkle it with freshly squeezed lemon juice.

Autumn fruit salad

Within 15 minutes you can prepare an autumn fruit salad using:

• 2 pears
• 2 apples
• 100 gr. white and dark grapes
• 2 tbsp. l. liquid honey, lemon juice
• 2 tbsp. l. cinnamon
• some pomegranate seeds

This salad has a bright sweet-sour and slightly bitter taste and is valued for the availability of ingredients. You can put star anise on top.

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What you need to know

• You need to prepare such a salad from fruits that are not too juicy so that they do not have the opportunity to flow and make it watery.
• Prepare an additional aromatic dressing with herbs and honey. The combination of citrus juice with fresh, fragrant herbs and honey will add a very pleasant sweet and sour flavor to the dish. For a hint of flavor, it is recommended to use basil (not regular, but lemon), mint, tarragon or lemon balm.
• Fry the fruit a little. Try it and you will be amazed at how tasty and unusual it will turn out. Grilling ingredients will open up a new palette of flavors and help create an unusual dessert.
• Give your salad more texture and calories. Add light grains (such as rolled oats), nuts or seeds. Add poppy seeds or pre-cooked wheat.
• Fruits from tropical latitudes harmonize well with their more southern neighbors, and for berries the best combination will be fruits from northern latitudes.
• The more fruit you put in, the tastier your dish will be.
• The dressing should have a contrasting taste: sweet and sour for a sweet salad and vice versa.
• Add alcohol. Dressing with liqueur, sweet white wine or champagne will complement the palette of tastes.
• Fresh salad has a large amount of vitamins and beneficial microelements, so it is necessary for consumption in the cold season to increase immunity and the body’s resistance to various diseases.
• Serve the dish beautifully, having first carefully cut all the ingredients into even slices - this will increase your appetite and allow you to enjoy the process of eating the product.

New Year's fruit salad in an orange basket

Peel 2 oranges, 1 banana, 1 kiwi. Chop and mix with half of one mango. If desired, you can add mixed berries.

For dressing use the juice of one lemon mixed with 2 tbsp. l. liquid honey.

The highlight of the salad is in the way it is served. After cutting the orange into equal 2 parts, remove the pulp from them and add to the salad as one of the ingredients. Mix the juice with honey with a whisk.

Place the salad in orange bowls and drizzle with the prepared dressing. This simple fruit salad is fun to serve for kids.

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Calorie content

A simple fruit salad made from seasonal ingredients. Typically these include:

Calorie content per 100 grams:

• Banana – 90 kcal.
• Kiwi – 60 kcal.
• Mandarin – 33 kcal.
• Apple – 53 kcal.

Please note that its natural types are not as high in calories as products with various additives. Therefore, if you are preparing a dietary salad, it is best to use Greek.

Calorie content of various yoghurts per 100 grams:

• Greek – 60 kcal.
• Children – 80 kcal.
• Natural – 70 kcal.
• Fruit – 85 kcal.

Fruit salad "Rainbow"

Many chefs prefer not to mix salad ingredients, but to lay them out in layers. A striking example is the Rainbow salad. Bright, positive, life-affirming.

The components are peeled, cut into small, approximately equal cubes and laid in layers. Use fresh pineapple, strawberries, kiwi, bananas, oranges, grapes, blueberries. The quantity depends on the size of the fruit. The main thing is that the height of the layers is approximately the same.

The original taste will be complemented by the dressing. The following components are used for its preparation:

• half a cup of orange juice (preferably freshly squeezed)
• a little less lemon juice
• pinch of brown sugar
• half a teaspoon of lemon zest
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract

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Children's

Children's recipe:

• strawberries, pomegranate, bananas 300 - 400 grams.
• Chocolate – 50 grams.
• Marmalade – 40 grams.
• Nuts – 30 grams.
• Yogurt dressing – 200 grams.

Cooking instructions:

1. Cut the fruit.
2. Grate the chocolate.
3. Cut the marmalade into cubes. You can use children's marmalade in the form of toys or animals.
4. Chop the nuts.
5. Mix everything and season the salad with baby yogurt.

Fruit salad and ice cream

You can get double the pleasure from a fruit salad with ice cream.

For it you will need:

• 200 gr. ice cream
• 2 oranges, tangerines, bananas, kiwis
• 4 apples

Wash the fruits, dry them with a napkin, remove the peels and, if possible, remove the seeds. Cut into cubes. Place in a salad bowl and mix. Place scoops of ice cream on top. Serve in separate bowls or wine glasses immediately after preparation so that the ice cream does not melt.

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Expert opinions on the benefits and harms of fruits

Svetlana Fus, nutritionist, nutrition consultant (link)

People who consume a lot of vegetables and fruits containing anthocyanins have good health and are less likely to suffer from diseases of the cardiovascular system and malignant neoplasms.

Anthocyanins are extremely beneficial bioflavonoids that are of great importance for human health and give fruits a purple hue. One of the available sources of anthocyanins are plums - they are allowed on the diet and go well with other ingredients in fruit salad recipes. Plums are also a source of vitamin C for immunity, carotene and dietary fiber. A special advantage of such fruits is the preservation of beneficial properties even after prolonged processing.

Elena Tolokonnikova, experienced doctor, specialist in dietology and proper nutrition (link)

You should not include in your daily and dietary menu fruits that were grown in greenhouses or brought from distant regions. They can be a source of dangerous nitrates.

Foreign chemical additives not only reduce the total vitamin content in fruits, they can cause food poisoning and other disturbances in the natural functioning of the gastrointestinal tract. At the same time, the fruits themselves become practically useless in terms of nutritional characteristics in comparison with seasonal fruits. That is, when buying exotic products in winter, you will not only get a tasteless “dummy”, but can also harm your health.

Andrey Bobrovsky, nutritionist, nutrition consultant (link)

The danger with some supermarket fruits is the presence of preservatives. Such substances are added to fresh fruits that require long-term transportation. Chemicals help preserve the presentation and taste characteristics.

However, excessive consumption of preservative components in foods can cause unpleasant consequences even in a healthy person. They manifest themselves in the form of weakness or mild food poisoning, which the buyer can attribute to other factors. However, preservatives not only worsen overall health, they can accumulate in the body and lead to serious chronic liver and gastrointestinal diseases.

Preservatives can get to the fruits when rubbed with special wax, gas treatment or other types of chemical exposure. For example, in a store you can easily distinguish processed apples brought from abroad; they have a uniform shade without any dots and an unnatural shine to the peel.

conclusions

By adding fruit salads to your diet, you can correct minor figure flaws in a few weeks. And if you take the issue seriously and include salads in your daily menu, then you will not only see a transformation in your appearance, but also a significant improvement in your health!

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Dietary

Ingredients:

• Apples, apricots, pineapple, grapefruit – 300 grams.
• Natural yogurt – 100 ml.
• Celery – 50 grams.

Cooking technology:

1. Cut the fruit.
2. Peel, chop the celery, mix everything.
3. Pour in yogurt and mix thoroughly.

This salad has a very low calorie content, 100-200 kcal. (depending on the fruit you choose). Celery saturates the body with nutrients and gives it energy for the whole day. It contains potassium, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, and iron in large quantities.

It is recommended to consume celery while on a diet; at this time the body is in great need of vitamins and usually lacks them.

Sweet

To prepare a sweet fruit salad, you will need to add a few more ingredients to its standard composition (fruits, yogurt). This could be your favorite jam or honey. Before adding it, it is better to melt the honey and pour it over the finished salad.

Ingredients:

• Strawberries, cherries, blueberries, raspberries - 300 grams.
• Yogurt – 150 ml.
• Honey – 50 grams.
• Topping for decoration.

Cooking technology:

1. Cut the fruit.
2. Add yogurt, stir.
3. Pour honey on top and stir again.
4. Drizzle with topping before serving.