Thursday, September 17, 2009

Not much vitamin C left in dried fruit

I loved dried fruit. Dried apricots, grapes, currents, bananas, apples, pears are all so yummy. The concentration of the both the sugars and the flavors yield scummy food. However vitamin C is no well preserved in these fruits. The graph below shows the loss in vitamin C with increasing drying temperature. What is disturbing is that the lowest drying temperature only preserves 40% of the vitamin C. If the highest temperature is used only a quarter of the vitamin C is preserved.
I don't eat the dried fruit of its nutrition - I eat it cause is tastes yummy. However it is another example about how processed food looses its nutrients.

Reference: Banga and Singh Optimization of Air Drying of Foods. Journal of Food Engineering Vol 223 1994 pg 201.

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