Cranberries

[Cooking4Fun]

I have read that 1 cup of raw cranberries contains about 5g of sugar. While Oceanspray's dry cranberries (Craisins) contain 29g of sugar in 1/4 cups. I know cranberries are bitter, but can that much sugar possibly be necessary? The daily recommended sugar is like 22g incidentally.

 

[dragnlaw]

If you read some of the recommendations of eating dried sweetened cranberries, you will notice that it is certainly NOT recommended to eat a large amount of them, especially alone.

Health benefits of cranberries are amazing but like most things must be in moderation.

They are sweetened because ... take a (small) handful of unsweetened dried cranberries - chew on them. Enjoyable? Take the edge off your snack craving?

But I'm not sure how much sugar is actually added as some charts show that Dry Unsweetened Cranberries have 25 g of sugar as compared to only 4 g raw fresh.

Dried fruit has concentrated sugars just due to the nature of removing all the waters.

 

[dragnlaw]

Does natural sugar count towards daily intake?

the following is copied from a post in 2014

By sugar, WHO means all forms that are added to food (such as dextrose, glucose and fructose), as well as table sugar (sucrose) and the sugar naturally present in honey, syrups, fruit juices and fruit concentrates.
Sugar that occurs naturally in whole fruit, however, does not count toward the 25 grams.

I'm assuming by that statement they are referring to fresh fruit.

 

[GotGarlic]

The recommendation refers to added sugar, not sugar that occurs naturally. Btw, lots of vegetables contain sugar, too.

 

[Andy M.]

A plain fresh cranberry is not a pleasant taste. The added sugar is a necessity.

Typically, you don't eat all that many dried cranberries (I don't care what Ocean Spray says, they are not Craisins). A muffin would contain a lot less than ¼ cup.

P.S.: Hey, Sunkist! They're called prunes.