Fresh fruit or dried -- which is better?

by Jacki Donaldson (Subscribe to Jacki Donaldson's posts)
Jun 1st 2008 7:00AM

If forced to choose between a snack of fresh or dried fruit, I'd go fresh. Mostly because I like fruit in its freshest state but also because I've always assumed it's the healthiest choice. But is it?

Yes, fresh fruit is healthier than dried fruit. Here's why.

When fruits are dried, they lose water and nutrients and acquire more calories and sugar. Consider apricots. One cup of the fresh stuff contains 75 calories. The dried variety: 313. Fresh apricots also have more fiber, more vitamin A and C, more beta-carotene, and more potassium.

Dried apricots not only have less of the good stuff -- they have added sweeteners too. So do dried cranberries -- often, refined sugar or corn syrup is added so look for cranberries sweetened with a natural sweetener, like apple juice, when shopping for this sweet treat.

For those of you who wish to dry your fruit at home, never fear. Home dehydrating involves nothing more than blowing warm air up through the fruit. This is not nearly as harsh on the nutrients and does not dry in the same manner as a commercial processor would do. Still, be careful of calories and sugars. Sometimes we eat more dehydrated apples, for example, than we would if we had a fresh, organic apple in hand.

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Comments (2)

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Gregory Moore 6-01-2008 @ 11:23PM

"When fruits are dried, they lose water and nutrients and acquire more calories and sugar."

Ok, so usually i don't let little things like this bother me, but since it involves information intended to influence someone elses decision regarding a healthy lifestyle, I feel the need to qualify the above statement. I want to point out that dehydrating fruit does not magically turn nutrients into sugar, but really just removes water. Since water makes up the major portion of fresh fruit this causes the volume of the fruit to reduce considerably. The above statement suggests that a dehydrated piece of fruit has more sugar and less nutrients than a fresh one, which is simply not true. In reality, dried fruits have considerably less volume and therefore you get many more pieces of fruit per measure. So whereas 1 cup of fresh apricots might only be 5 or 6 apricots, dried you might get 20 or so in the measurement.

Judy 6-02-2008 @ 11:10AM

That was worded poorly, wasn't it? Makes it sound like drying fruit infuses it with sugar!

I like dried fruit for keeping in the car for snacks. Sometimes we end up being out and about longer than we'd planned, and I don't want to have to stop and buy something. Dried fruit or good granola is great for tiding us over until we get home.