Hidden Sugars in Dried Fruit

Dried fruit is a great snack—delivering fiber and important vitamins and minerals but there’s a catch: dried fruit can also deliver unnecessary added sugars and those added sugars can sometimes add an extra 50 calories to 1/2 cup of dried fruit. It’s difficult to know how much added sugar is in most processed foods because food manufacturers aren’t required to disclose the amount of natural versus added sugars in their products on the Nutrition Facts panel—when “sugars” are listed, the total number includes both naturally occurring and added sugars. To find out if there’s added sugar in your foods, look at the ingredient list for sugar and all its aliases: corn sweetener or syrup, high-fructose corn syrup, fruit juice concentrates, invert sugar, malt sugar, syrup and sugar molecules ending in “ose” (dextrose, fructose, glucose, lactose, maltose, sucrose).