Careful with dried fruit

A while ago I discovered dried fruit for myself. What a great idea I thought and started eating dried apples, figs, apricots etc. They were delicious. After a while I started using a website to control my calorie intake and had to notice that dried fruit are much higher in calories than I thought. In fact they added so many calories to my diet that I stopped eating them altogether.

At first this did not make sense to me since it was the same fruit just with less water. And this is exactly the thing about it. Since the water is taken out the fruit looses volume and fruit sugar is more concentrated.
While eating an apple takes a few minutes and will fill you up more, due to the water contained in the fresh fruit, eating the same amount of dried apple slices only takes seconds and leaves you less full. This results in you eating more and ending up with much more calories than you think or want.

I am not saying that dried fruit is a bad choice. It is full of vitamins and fibers and low in fat. I would just like to point out that when eating dried fruit portion size is the key. Eat just a little to get the benefits of it. Dried fruit can be a healthy choice and add good things to your diet.