How to Read a Dried Fruit Label Properly
Per-100g figures make dried fruit look alarming. Here's how to interpret them without either panicking or being misled.
A customer emailed us last month, concerned: our dried apple showed 58g of sugar per 100g. Was this really a no-added-sugar product? It was a completely fair question, and the answer is a useful lesson in reading labels.
Removing water concentrates everything
Fresh apple is roughly 85% water. Take that water away and you are left with about 15g of solids from every 100g of fruit — and all of the sugar, fibre, vitamins and minerals that were dissolved in it are now packed into that 15g.
So 100g of dried apple is not 100g of apple. It is closer to 650g of fresh apple. The sugar figure is high because the fruit is concentrated, not because anything was added.
Why fibre changes the picture
Sugar bound up in an intact fibre matrix behaves very differently in the body from the same amount of free sugar in a soft drink. The fibre slows gastric emptying and blunts the rise in blood glucose. Dried fruit keeps its fibre; fruit juice does not.
- Dried apple: ~58g sugar, ~6g fibre per 100g, eaten in ~30g portions
- Fruit juice: ~10g sugar, ~0g fibre per 100ml, drunk in 250ml servings
- The juice looks better per 100g and is considerably worse in practice
Portion is the real control
A sensible portion of dried fruit is 25–40g — a small handful, or roughly six to eight apple rings. At that size you are eating around 17g of sugar alongside meaningful fibre and potassium. That is a reasonable snack, not a health emergency.
“Dried fruit is concentrated fruit. Treat the portion accordingly and the maths works out fine.”
Keep reading
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