Is Dried Fruit as Good as Fresh?

Fruit can be a difficult snack to pack in a dance bag—one wrong squish and juice gets all over your pointe shoes.

For many dancers, their solution is to bring dried fruit to the studio. But is the dried version as healthy? The New York Times recently tackled that very question. Apparently, fresh, dried and frozen berries have been shown to have the same amounts of antioxidants. But because the drying process removes water, it raises sugar and calorie content as measured by weight or volume:

“A cup of fresh or frozen blueberries has about 85 calories and 14 grams of sugar. One half cup of dried blueberries, on the other hand, has roughly 270 calories and 25 grams of sugar.”

Their advice? Stick to one serving of dried fruit a day, and remember that it will be more calorie-heavy than its fresh counterpart.