what happens when you dry fruit that increases calories?

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Fresh fruit is not very high in calories (except bananas i guess). What happens on a chemical level when you dry fruit? Why are calories increasing? Why isn’t calorie level the same when all you do is let water evaporate?

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9 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

The total number of calories in it doesn’t change. It’s the calories per gram of food that does. Because you are simply removing the water weight. Dried fruit is pretty much chemically the exact same as fruit right of the vine minus the water

Anonymous 0 Comments

Calories are not increasing. But water itself has no calories.

So if we have grapes tha are 80% water, weigh 100 grams and contains 20 calories, then that means that we can remove the water which make up 80% of the grapes, and still be left with 20 calories. This means that 20g dry grapes contain as many calories as 100g non-dry grapes. Because its just the zero-calorie water thats been removed.

So if we then do this a couple more times so we end up with 100g dried grapes, those dried grapes contain 100 calories.

So whats actually happening is that 100g of dry fruit contains alot more fruit, than 100g of non-dried fruit. Therefor it looks like calories are increasing

Anonymous 0 Comments

If you take a piece of fruit and dry it, it is not gaining any calories.

1lb of dried fruit has more calories than 1lb of fresh fruit because you have removed a bunch of calorie-less water from the fruit. But you also have more fruit in that 1lb than you do in your 1lb of fresh fruit. For example, a pound of apples might be three apples but a pound of dried apples might have 9 apples in it. So you’ve just increased the calories in a pound by 3x.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Also in addition to what other people told you, do not think bananas are high in calories that much. A peach, grapes, melon or even an apple have more sugar content. They’re still good for you

Anonymous 0 Comments

The calories are most likely calculated by weight, so a 1/4 pound piece of fresh fruit that contains, say 10 grams of fructose, will still contain 10 grams of fructose when the fruit is dried, even though the fruit has lost all of its water weight and now only weighs 25 grams. It went from 40 grams of fructose per pound of fresh fruit, to 40 grams of fructose per 100 grams of dried fruit. It’s just the amount of sugar by weight, and all of the water weight is lost through drying, though the amount of sugar doesn’t change.

Anonymous 0 Comments

The calorie count doesn’t increase, the calorie *density* increases. If you eat 500g of grapes, much of that weight is calorie free water. If you eat 500g of raisins, you’re eating many more grapes, and there y many more calories.

Anonymous 0 Comments

There is a lot of water in fruits so when you are drying it you are removing that water from it. When this happens all the sugars intensify which is why it is also quite sweet and well bad for you when you have a lot. If you do have it you should mix it in with oats and like yogurt for a more balanced meal.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Water has weight. So when you remove 50 grams of water from a 100 gram apple, you are left with a 50 gram dried apple with the same calories as the original. No new calories are created.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Calories are increasing per gram, since you’re removing water which has no calories but adds weight.