How to Read a Dried Fruit Ingredient List

A dried fruit label should be short. Look for three things: whether sugar was added, whether a sulphite was used to preserve the color, and whether a dye was used to fake it. All three are legal and all three have to appear on the label if they are present. The ingredient list runs heaviest first, so anything sitting above the fruit itself is doing more work than the fruit.

What should be on a dried fruit label?

Often just the fruit. Unsweetened dried mango can legitimately read "mango" and stop.

Most dried fruit sold in the US is not that. It is sweetened, and sometimes treated to hold its color or texture. None of that is hidden by default. Under FDA rules at 21 CFR 101.4, every ingredient has to be listed by its common name in descending order of weight. If a label runs longer than four or five items, the extras are worth understanding rather than fearing.

What does sulphur dioxide do in dried fruit?

It keeps the color bright and slows spoilage. Untreated dried apricots turn brown. Sulphured ones stay orange. The same applies to pineapple, mango, and papaya, which is why so much dried fruit looks more vivid than the fresh version ever did.

Sulphites matter for one specific group of people. A minority react to them, and the FDA regulates the disclosure accordingly. Under 21 CFR 101.100, sulphiting agents must be declared once they reach 10 parts per million in the finished food, and the label has to name the specific compound rather than saying "sulphites."

The names to look for: sulphur dioxide, sodium sulphite, sodium bisulphite, potassium bisulphite, sodium metabisulphite, potassium metabisulphite.

One gap worth knowing. Below 10 parts per million, with no technical effect in the finished food, sulphites do not have to be declared at all. So "no sulphites listed" is not the same as "zero sulphites." If you react badly to them, buy from someone who will tell you how their fruit is dried.

Is dried fruit dyed?

Some of it. Dried papaya and dried pineapple are the two most commonly colored, usually into a red, green, or unnaturally bright yellow that no fruit dries to on its own. Candied and glacé fruit sold for baking is very often dyed.

Color additives cannot hide. FDA rules require certified colors to be declared by their specific name, so you will see something like Red 40, Yellow 5, or Yellow 6 in the list. If you see one, the color you are looking at is not the fruit.

What about added sugar?

Here is where most articles on this subject get preachy, and we are not going to.

Some fruit needs sugar to dry well. Pineapple and papaya are watery and fibrous, and without any sugar most people find the result tough and sour rather than pleasant. Added sugar in dried fruit is a texture and taste decision, not a trick.

What matters is that the label says so. "Cane sugar" on an ingredient list is honest. What is worth questioning is a bag that reads as unsweetened on the front while carrying sugar or juice concentrate in the ingredient list. Check the back of the bag against the front of it.

What are citric acid and calcium chloride doing there?

Both are ordinary and both are named. Citric acid is the acid already in citrus and it brightens flavor while helping the fruit keep its color. Calcium chloride is a firming agent that keeps soft fruit like mango from collapsing into mush as it dries.

Neither one is a preservative in the sulphite sense and neither one is doing anything to your health. They are on the label because they belong on the label.

On a Sivaro label

Sivaro Snacks is a small-batch nut and dried fruit brand in Queens, New York, founded in 2021 and operated by Sano Nuts and Dry Fruit LLC. Every product is roasted in real New York maple syrup with no seed oils, and every ingredient is named on the label. Sivaro is MWBE, ACDBE, and NMSDC certified.

Our three dried fruits, in full.

Two ingredients on the papaya. Four on the mango, and the two extras are the firming and acid agents described above.

They are sweetened, and we say so first rather than last. No sulphites, no dyes, and the fruit is the color it dried to. Compare that list against the next bag you pick up.

If it doesn't belong in a home kitchen, it doesn't go in the bag.

Last reviewed: August 30, 2026