Are Fruit Snacks Healthy?
My kids love store-bought fruit snacks! It’s one of those kid snacks that is often given out because people believe if the food name has the word “fruit” in it, then it must be healthy, right? Not so much!
Although these wannabe healthy snacks may have zero fat, zero cholesterol and low in sodium, they are high in refined sugar, up to 5 teaspoons per tiny pouch. Now that is a lot of sugar in anyone’s book.
There’s also usually a few artificial colors and dyes used in store-bought fruit snacks. Some of these colors have had negative effects on children, such as hyperactivity and some behavioral issues. I definitely don’t want those kind of effects on my kids!
Homemade for the Win!
It just so happened that I had a huge, sweet watermelon in the fridge and was wondering what to do with it because I didn’t know if we would ever eat the whole thing! Cue these homemade watermelon fruit snacks! I was inspired by the Homemade Fruit Snacks recipe from Kalyn Brooke but adjusted the recipe to use watermelon as the fruit of choice. I also used apple juice in the recipe, since I had it in the fridge. That is the great part about this recipe: it is totally adaptable to what you have in the fridge.
Making your own fruit snacks means you can also control the quality of ingredients used. Other than the types and quality of fruit and juice used, you can also control the quality of the gelatin used.
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