Looking for a refreshing and health-conscious dessert that bursts with flavor? This fruit salad is your perfect answer! Combining a colorful medley of papaya, blueberries, and raspberries, the dish is beautifully enhanced by a light and zesty ginger lemon syrup that transforms simple fruits into a taste sensation.
This recipe is not just a treat for your taste buds, but also a mindful choice for those watching their sugar intake . Whether served as a refreshing dessert or a quick, nutritious snack, this fruit salad promises to elevate your everyday eating experience.
Are all sugars equally bad?
Sugar is a controversial subject in the world of nutrition. For decades, fat has been the main focus of studies that relate diet to the incidence of disease, pushing research that focuses on the role of sugar to the side-lines. This has curiously led to food labels not including either a Recommended Daily Allowance or even an Upper Limit for sugar intake, whereas this is clearly included for fats.
We consume three different types of sugar in our regular diet: glucose, fructose and sucrose. Glucose is naturally present in many foods, particularly in the form of starch. Glucose is readily processed by every cell in your body and is essential for your body to function properly; your brain for example depends nearly exclusively on glucose for energy.
Fructose is the sugar naturally present in fruit and vegetables; sucrose (refined sugar) is made up of a 50-50 mix of glucose and fructose molecules. Whereas glucose can be processed by every cell, fructose can only be processed by your liver where it produces a number of by-products, including triglycerides (fat). Recently, research is linking the incidence of non-alcoholic fatty liver, diabetes and metabolic syndrome with extreme intakes of fructose.
Although this research is far from conclusive – there is evidence for example that pre-menopausal women and physically active males and females may be resistant to the adverse metabolic effects of fructose – it appears sound to limit our consumption of sugar. The easiest way to do this is not by avoiding fruit, which contains many important nutrients – but by cutting out added sugar (both in sucrose and fructose form) as much as possible: avoid fizzy drinks, sweetened juices and bakery products and limit your fructose and refined sugar intake to somewhere between 20-30 gr/day.
Vibrant Fruit Salad with Ginger Lemon Syrup
Ingredients
- 50 gr. sugar
- 50 ml. water
- Grated lemon peel
- 1 tsp. grated ginger
- 10 blueberries
- 10 raspberries
- 1/2 small papaya
- 1 tbsp. toasted oats
Instructions
- In a pan, dissolve the sugar in the water.
- Add the grated lemon peel and ginger and place on a medium heat.
- Allow to come to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for a few minutes (can be prepared ahead).
- Clean the berries and peel and slice the papaya.
- Heat a frying pan and toast the oats for a minute until slightly golden.
- Place the fruit and lemon-ginger syrup in a bowl, toss well and drain off the excess syrup.
- Serve in a bowl, topped with the toasted oats