Is freeze-dried fruit good for you? The panel, read out loud

Is freeze-dried fruit good for you? The answer is printed on the back of the bag, in a box the FDA regulates, and almost nobody reads it. So here it is, read out loud, for the sour freeze-dried blueberries this site sells, with the fresh-fruit figures from USDA FoodData Central beside it where they help. No adjectives. Numbers.

What freeze-drying does to a blueberry

A fresh blueberry is about 84 percent water, by USDA FoodData Central's figures. Freeze-drying freezes the berry solid, then pulls the ice straight out as vapor under vacuum, with the trays warmed gently so the cycle finishes in a day or two rather than a week. What is left is the other 16 percent: the sugars, the fiber, the minerals, the skin and the color, in the same shape at a fraction of the weight. The process adds nothing. So the question of whether freeze-dried fruit retains nutrients is really a question about which nutrients were dissolved in the water, and the answer is that almost none of them left with it.

People search "is freeze dried fruit healthy". Here is the panel.

The question arrives in several spellings, "is freeze dried fruit healthy", "are freeze dried fruits healthy", "is freeze dried fruit good for you", and the panel answers all of them the same way. Sour freeze-dried blueberries, 2 oz bag. The panel counts in 28-gram portions, and 28 grams is 55 to 57 blueberries:

• Calories: 110
• Total fat: 1 g, of which saturated fat 0 g and trans fat 0 g
• Cholesterol: 0 mg
• Sodium: 5 mg
• Total carbohydrate: 23 g
• Dietary fiber: 2 g
• Total sugars: 17 g, of which added sugars 9 g
• Protein: 1 g
• Vitamin D: 0 mcg. Calcium: 20 mg. Iron: 0 mg. Potassium: 120 mg

Ingredients: Blueberry, Sour Coating [sugar, maltose, glucose, apple juice concentrate, modified food starch, citric acid, malic acid, natural flavor].

Two of those 28-gram counts make the bag, so a bag is about 112 blueberries and 220 calories. About 30 of them is 60 calories, which is roughly what a hand picks up.

Reading it line by line

Calories. 110 for 56 berries works out to two calories a blueberry. A fresh blueberry runs under one: USDA lists 57 calories per 100 grams, and a berry weighs about a gram and a half. The sour adds the difference, and the difference is the sugar line below.

Sugar. 17 grams total, 9 of them added. The other 8 were in the blueberries. USDA puts fresh blueberries at about 10 grams of sugar per 100 grams, so by those figures 56 freeze-dried berries started as roughly 80 grams of fresh fruit, a small handful. Freeze-drying does not add sugar; it removes the water that was diluting it, so the fruit's own sugar reads higher per gram than fresh. The 9 grams that are added are the sour. They are on the label as added sugars because that is the rule, and because they are.

Fiber. 2 grams. Fiber does not leave with the water, so what the berry had, the berry keeps: USDA lists 2.4 grams per 100 grams of fresh blueberries, and 80 grams of fresh fruit gives you the 2 on the panel almost exactly.

Potassium, calcium, iron. 120 mg, 20 mg and 0 mg. Minerals do not evaporate either. They sit in the solids and ride through.

Fat, sodium, cholesterol. 1 gram, 5 milligrams and zero. A blueberry did not have much of any of them to begin with, and nothing in the sour contributes them.

Vitamin C. Not on this panel, because the FDA stopped requiring it in 2016, so it is the one line that cannot be read out. The published research covers it instead. A 2003 study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry compared fresh, freeze-dried and air-dried strawberries and marionberries and found freeze-drying kept most of the fruit's antioxidant content while air drying lost a large share of it. Vitamin C is the fragile one; heat and time are what break it, and freeze-drying uses little of either, which is the whole reason the method exists.

Does freeze-dried fruit retain nutrients?

Mostly, yes, and the panel above is the evidence. Ask whether freeze-dried fruit retains nutrients and the useful reply is: which ones. Fiber, minerals and the fruit's own sugar are solids; drying of any kind leaves them where they were. The heat-sensitive vitamins, C and some of the B group, are where methods part ways, and freeze-drying loses the least of them because the fruit is frozen rather than cooked. Studies of freeze-dried berries commonly report vitamin C retention in the 80 to 95 percent range, against losses of half or more for hot-air drying. Fresh fruit still wins by a little. Freeze-dried fruit's job is to be in the bag when the fresh fruit is not in the house.

What the panel does not say

It does not say fruit snack, because the first ingredient is a blueberry and the berries go in whole, skin and all, which is the pop. It does not list a dye, because there is none: the color is the blueberry's own, which is why the pieces are a dark blue rather than a bright one. And the word people searched for is not on it anywhere. A Nutrition Facts panel is not allowed to decide that for you. It gives you 110 calories, 17 grams of sugar, 2 grams of fiber, 120 milligrams of potassium and the word blueberry first, and leaves the verdict to the person holding the bag. Whether freeze-dried fruit is good for you is the panel's call, and it gives it in numbers rather than a word.

Every bag of REFRESH'D sour freeze-dried blueberries carries this panel on the back; the other four fruits in the Sour Freeze-Dried Fruit lineup carry their own, and the strawberry one reads 100 calories per 20 to 22 pieces with 22 grams of sugar, 14 of them added, which is a different answer to the same question. Read the one for the fruit you are holding.