How is dried fruit made?

Dehydrated dried fruit is processed after cleaning, slicing, and another pretreatment of fruit, and then using natural air drying, sun drying, low-temperature freeze-drying, frying and dehydration, and other processes to remove most of the water contained in it. Among them, natural air-drying and sun-drying are traditional methods, while low-temperature freeze-drying, frying, and dehydration are industrial methods.

Air-drying (sun-dried) and low-temperature freezing production processes are more natural, Just concentrating the fruit into dried fruit, and dehydrating the fried dried fruit will increase the oil content of the dried fruit, which is slightly unsuitable for health. Commonly dried strawberries, fried okra, and other dried fruits are freeze-dried, and the processing process is more complicated. The freeze-drying process not only retains the fresh fruit flavor but also becomes crispy in texture.

Therefore, dried fruit made by air-drying (sun-dried) and vacuum dehydration should be the first choice for health.

Although dried fruit concentrates some of the nutrients found in fresh fruits and vegetables (such as dietary fiber), it seems to be more nutritious and more refined. However, due to the processing technology of dried fruit, some heat-labile nutrients in fresh fruit, such as vitamin C, vitamin B1, and some polyphenols, will also be lost during processing.

In the case of strawberries in the above test, the vitamin C content of dried strawberries and strawberries is not much different, but the vitamin C content of dried strawberries is slightly higher than that of fresh strawberries. This is because freeze-drying technology preserves the vitamin C content intact without the use of high temperatures. Combined with mass loss and moisture loss, freeze-dried strawberries are enriched in vitamin C, so the content is higher than fresh.

However, the sugar test results show that the total sugar content of dried fruit products is generally higher than that of similar fresh fruits. Among them, the total sugar content of dried persimmons and jackfruit is more than 3 times that of similar fresh fruits, and the total sugar content of dried strawberries is 9 times that of fresh strawberries.

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