At least a few times a month people ask me whether or not they should be eating dried fruit.  “I heard it’s not good because it’s high in sugar,” they usually say.

 

There are a number of ways to approach this issue.  I
could ask if your great-great-grandparents ate dried fruit, if they were
familiar with it, if they would have recognized it as food. 
And, of course, the answer to this question would be yes.  “Is an invention of the 20th century?,” I could ask. 
And, of the course, the answer would be no.  As long as there have been vines and bushes, trees and sunshine, there has been dried fruit. 

 

So which is it?  Is dried fruit high in sugar, or not? 
Yes.  But that’s not the whole story.

To dry fruit is to dehydrate it.  The process of dehydration removes water, but not fiber. And not sugar either.  This means that the sugar with which the
apple, or peach, or grape, or plum started out remains constant.  The same amount of sugar in a smaller amount of water means that the fruit sugar
becomes more concentrated as the amount of water decreases.  So yes, it’s true: fruit contains a lot of sugar.  BUT.

But it
remains trapped within its fiber matrix, and that affects the rate at which the
sugar is released. 

 

If you compare dried fruit (especially pineapple, which is
already very high in sugar) to hard boiled eggs, or almonds, or turkey
jerky, the answer is yes, it’s high in sugar.  But if you compare it to a
fruit yogurt sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup, or to candy, or even to a store-bought bran muffin, then no, it’s not high in sugar.

 

If you have an issue with sugar (such as 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 problem, then you can likely eat dried apple slices just as well.  If you drink a glass of water with your dried fruit, that’s pretty close to simply eating fresh fruit in the first place. 

If you’re still concerned about how dried fruit affects your blood sugars, check your blood sugars about an hour after eating your snack.  If they’re higher than you want, then you could decrease the total amount you eat, or you could try it with some peanut butter, or dark chocolate, for example, to cut the absorption rate.  And remember that some dried fruits, just like fresh fruits, have more sugar than others.

 

Reach for dried fruit when you want a snack, and I think
you’ll be perfectly satisfied, especially if you choose it to replace some processed white flour-, corn-syrup-, or sugar-containing item like breakfast cereal, cereal bars, granola bars, or sweetened yogurt, none of which contains a fiber matrix. 
Sugar inside a fiber matrix is entirely different than sugar on its own.

 

You can read more on how fruit fits into the big picture at Hierarchy of Carbohydrates.

 

Follow Dr Sukol on Twitter @RoxanneSukolMD and on Facebook at Roxanne Breines Sukol.