Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Dried fruit

We prefer golden raisins to regular raisins, and sometimes I like to use craisins, dried cranberries.  So today I was reading up on the nutrition differences and similarities between raisins and craisins.  They are really pretty close, except for all the sugar that has to be added to cranberries to make them edible. I suppose craisins would be preferable to candy if you have a sweet tooth.  But then I noticed that golden raisins have sulfur dioxide added and regular raisins don't.  So I had to look that up, too.



"Sulfur dioxide might not sound good enough to eat, but this food preservative does make its way into a number of edibles, including dried fruits such as raisins, dried apricots and prunes. Sulfur dioxide is one type of sulfite, a preservative whose name might be more familiar. Even a small amount of sulfite can wreak health havoc if you're sensitive to it. If you have asthma, sulfite sensitivity or sulfite allergy, eating dried fruits might cause serious health problems, including breathing problems, life-threatening allergy-like symptoms or, in rare cases, death." 

You can buy organic dried fruit and freeze it to preserve it, because that's what sulfur dioxide is used for.

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