The newest fruit in the CrispyGreen line is Pear. The clean, subtle flavor of Crispy Pear is my favorite so far. Pineapple and Apricot are nice, and the favorites of my young children, but those flavors were a bit more pungent and punchy than the smooth Pear. Also available from CrispyGreen are Apples and Peaches.

The process to make CrispyGreen freeze dried fruit results in a reliable and consistent flavor and texture. There are none of the surprises of biting into a fresh piece of fruit. Is this one a delicious and juicy pear or a mealy and dry pear? Is this batch of grapes sweet and crisp or mushy and sour? With freeze dried fruit, you get the same texture, same flavor, and same color in each bag.

And since almost all the moisture is removed from the fruit, and moisture is the enemy of shelf stability, these snacks don’t require preservatives. The ingredient list is as simple as it gets – fruit.

But before you replace your 5 (to 9)-a-day of fresh fruits and veggies with these yummy snacks, you have to ask whether freeze-dried fruits are as good for you as whole fruit. Levels of fiber and minerals are most likely maintained. As for the more fragile vitamins and phytonutrients, the jury is still out. The CrispyGreen website and packaging maintains, however, that the dried fruits “retain nearly all the nutrients of fresh fruit.”

The downside is that you might be missing an important benefit of eating whole fruits and vegetables. When you eat several servings of fresh fruits and vegetables each day, you’re eating fairly large amounts of food. And if you agree with Barbara Rolls’ research that shows the volume of food impacts how much you eat, regardless of calories, small bits of dried fruit aren’t going to give you the same benefit of satiety as a piece of fresh fruit. One serving of CrispyGreen dried fruit (weighing a paltry 10 grams and about 40 calories) will be a nice sweet treat, but don’t count on it to curb your appetite.

Photo courtesy of Crispy Green’s Website

The F-Factor Diet, by Tanya Zuckerbrot, is based on that very concept. Specifically, the program uses high fiber foods and lean protein foods to help individuals lose weight, maintain weight loss, and reduce their risk for chronic disease.

As with any diet book thrown into that saturated market, the book boasts a program that is many things - easy, flexible, delicious, and, this is the most alluring part, instead of restricting foods, the plan “adds foods to your diet to help you lose weight.” While a high fiber diet is a healthy goal, The F-Factor Diet doesn’t necessarily deliver the on it’s promises to be full of choices and something different than a low-carb diet.

The F-Factor Diet Program

The F-Factor Diet program consists of three steps. Step one lasts for two weeks and is very low in carbohydrate, allowing only 30 grams of non-fiber carbohydrate each day. Step two allows an additional 45 grams (three small servings or one large serving) of carbohydrate and is to be followed until you reach your weight goal. Step three adds another 45 grams of carbohydrate and is the maintenance phase to be followed indefinitely for weight maintenance.

Throughout the entire program, fiber is maintained at 30-35 grams per day, which is enough to meet the DRI goal for most people. To help dieters implement the program, Ms. Zuckerbrot makes use of newly defined food groups and food exchange lists with carbohydrate and fiber content of foods. Past dieters will be familiar with this exchange group approach to dieting, although the F-Factor Diet has a few novel categorizations.

What’s Good About the Program

The book gets bonus points for allowing unlimited intake of non-starchy vegetables. Even though they do not, these vegetables are grouped as having 0 grams of non-fiber carbohydrate in order to fit into the diet plan. And in addition to sample menus for each step, she offers tips for eating out, reading food labels, exercising, and keeping food logs. Plus, there is a lengthy section with recipes.

The F-Factor Diet also goes into some depth to educate the reader about what fiber is and how it improves health. The book’s claims about fiber are true – from delivering a sense of satiety to help with weight loss and improving digestion to lowering the risk of diabetes, aiding heart health, and possible protecting against cancer. You will learn something about fiber reading this book.

Ms. Zuckerbrot has experience as a dietitian and touts a track record of helping clients lose weight and maintain weight loss. As the reviewer, I didn’t try to lose weight on the plan, but following the diet plan should lead to weight loss in overweight individuals.

Warnings

Be warned, though, that the diet is quite restrictive in carbohydrates. Other than a single piece of fruit allowed per day during step one, the only carbohydrate foods allowed are three specific brands of high fiber cereal are one specific brand of cracker. In fact, specific brands were used throughout the book, sometimes with reasoning that is suspect, giving a feeling of brand promotion and advertising.

Between Halloween and holiday treats, candy is aplenty at this time of year. Did you worry about how to deal with all the candy your kids brought home? As I listened to friends with young children discuss various schemes for limiting candy, I wondered if this is one example of worrying about the wrong things.

I’m a nutritionist, so people often ask me about how I handle Halloween treats, expecting me to have some clever strategy for keeping my young children from overindulging in the days and weeks after Halloween. The truth is, we do very little.

In fact, on the day after Halloween, my son’s preschool teacher smirked and asked if anyone ate candy for breakfast. My son was the only one who raised his hand. He even explained in detail – he had oatmeal and then a “butter cup” (the Reese’s variety).

It seems like a contradiction that a nutritionist would let her three-year-old eat candy at breakfast. But, if asked, I’d have a stash of reasons why I didn’t think it was a big deal.

1. That single peanut butter cup had about half as much sugar as most kids’ breakfast cereals.

2. That single peanut butter cup had a lot less added sugar than a pack of fruit snacks (the fruit-less, fruit-flavored kind). And, no artificial colors!

3. Why aren’t chocolate and peanut butter okay for breakfast? Would it be better if they were in the form of chocolate milk, peanut butter toast, or a chocolate chip bagel?

Sure, I try very hard to limit processed foods and, no, my kids don’t eat candy at breakfast everyday. But sometimes I think we judge foods by where they are in the grocery store instead of considering how the actual ingredients fit into a healthy diet.

We worry a lot about a few weeks of Halloween candy. But shouldn’t we spend more time thinking about what our kids eat everyday? Is a breakfast cereal that’s 40 percent table sugar really appropriate as a meal? Especially a meal your kids eat each day? Is serving fruit snacks with lunch everyday any different than serving Starburst?