People frequently mention that they are unsure about whether they should eat dried fruit. They are usually worried about the amount of sugar. The bottom line is that it’s not a big problem.
There are a number of ways to approach this issue. One would be to ask yourself if your great-grand ancestors ate dried fruit, if they would have considered it food. The answer to this question would, of course, be yes. You could also ask yourself if dried fruit was invented in the 20th century. And the answer would, of course, be no.
As long as there have been bushes and vines, sunshine, trees, and rain, there has been dried fruit. But is dried fruit high in sugar, or not? The short answer is yes. But there is more to consider.
To dry fruit is to dehydrate it. The process of dehydration removes water, but not fiber. And not sugar either. This means that the amount of sugar in an apple, peach, grape, or plum remains constant. But a constant amount of sugar in a smaller amount of water means that the fruit sugar becomes more concentrated as the amount of water decreases. So then, yes, it is true that when fruit dries, a pound of dried apricots contains more sugar than a pound of fresh apricots. But one dried apricot contains the same amount of fruit as one fresh apricot.
Another important thing to know is that fruit sugar is trapped within a fiber matrix. When you eat a piece of fruit, fresh or dry, it takes work to break apart that matrix and get the sugar out. This markedly slows the rate at which sugar is released into the blood stream.
Dried fruits are higher in sugar than foods like hard-boiled eggs, almonds, and turkey jerky. But if you compare dried apricots or raisins with candy bars, yogurt with high-fructose corn syrup, or even a store-bought bran muffin, then dried fruit is not nearly as high in sugar.
If you have a medical condition related to sugar metabolism (e.g., hypoglycemia, diabetes, or pre-diabetes), then you may not tolerate dried fruit any better than you tolerate fresh fruit. But if you can eat an apple without any problems, then you likely can eat dried apple slices just as well. If you drink a glass of water with your slices of dried apple, that’s pretty close to simply eating a fresh apple in the first place.
If you’re concerned about how dried fruit affects your blood sugars, you can check your blood sugars about an hour after your snack. If they’re higher than you would like, there are several options. For one thing, you could reduce the amount you eat. Or you could eat it with some peanut butter or dark chocolate, to cut the rate of absorption. Or you could avoid the highest sugar-containing dried fruits, like pineapple, in favor of fruits with less sugar, like apple.
When you want a snack, try reaching for some dried fruit, maybe with nuts or seeds, instead of ultraprocessed breakfast cereals, cereal bars, granola bars, and sweetened yogurt. Sugar within a fiber matrix is different than sugar without one. Ultraprocessed items don’t contain a fiber matrix.