Organic dried mango — chewy strips of fruit with the water taken out and nothing else done to them.
Why it is brown rather than orange
This is the thing worth knowing when you buy dried fruit, and it applies to mango more visibly than to anything else.
The bright, almost fluorescent orange dried mango sold in most shops gets its colour from sulphur dioxide (E220), a preservative that stops fruit browning as it dries. It is legal and safe for most people, but it is not permitted in organic production, and it triggers reactions in some people with asthma.
Without it, mango oxidises as it dries — exactly as a cut apple does — and turns amber, dark orange or brown. So the duller colour is the signature of unsulphured organic fruit rather than a sign of poor quality or age. Bright orange dried mango is almost always sulphured, and very often sweetened as well.
The flavour of unsulphured mango is also more concentrated and jammier, because nothing is competing with it.
What is in it
Mango. That is the intention with good dried fruit: no added sugar, no sulphites, no oil, no glucose syrup. Mango is sweet enough on its own that adding sugar is a way of using cheaper fruit.
Using it
As a snack, chopped into granola or porridge, in a trail mix with nuts and dark chocolate, or soaked in warm water for twenty minutes and blitzed into a purée for yoghurt or a smoothie. It also works in savoury cooking — chopped small into a curry or a rice salad, where the sweetness plays against chilli.
Honestly, on sugar and teeth
Drying removes water and concentrates everything else, sugar included — dried fruit is roughly four to five times as sugary by weight as the fresh fruit. It is also sticky, and it clings to teeth in a way fresh fruit does not, which dentists care about more than the sugar itself. Eat it with a meal rather than grazing on it through the afternoon, and a portion is about 30 g.
treatfuls
treatfuls
treatfuls
