Are Dried Fruit Snacks Healthy? What Singapore Labels Actually Tell You

Pick up a packet of dried mango at any supermarket in Singapore, flip it over, and the nutrition panel can be startling. Forty grams of sugar per 100g. Sometimes more. Next to it sits a bag of sweets with a similar number, and the obvious conclusion is that they're much the same thing.

They aren't — but the reason is more interesting than "fruit is natural", and it has real consequences for how you read the pack. Here's what actually separates a good dried fruit snack from a bad one in Singapore.

Not all sugar on the panel is counted the same way

The World Health Organization's 2015 Guideline: Sugars Intake for Adults and Children splits sugars into three groups. There are intrinsic sugars, sitting inside the cellular structure of intact fruit and vegetables. There are milk sugars. And there are free sugars — everything added by a manufacturer, cook or consumer, plus the sugars naturally present in honey, syrups, fruit juices and fruit juice concentrates.

The WHO's recommendation to keep sugars below 10% of daily energy applies only to that third group. As the guideline puts it, there is "no reported evidence of adverse effects of consumption of intrinsic sugars", which is why the recommendation focuses on free sugars alone.

Plain dried fruit falls on the intrinsic side of that line. Drying removes water, which concentrates everything left behind — sugar, fibre and micronutrients all rise together per 100g — but it doesn't break open the cell walls holding the sugar. The UK's Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition reached the same conclusion in its working paper on defining free sugars, listing "sugars naturally present in whole, unprocessed and dried and frozen fruits" as excluded.

Worth knowing that this is a relatively recent call. The older UK measure, non-milk extrinsic sugars, counted 50% of the sugar in dried fruit as extrinsic. The same document notes that switching to the free sugars definition dropped dried fruit out of the count entirely. Reasonable experts have disagreed about this, so treat "it's only fruit sugar" as a fair point rather than a free pass.

What "no added sugar" means on a Singapore pack

This is where the Singapore-specific detail matters. The Health Promotion Board's Healthier Choice Symbol Nutrient Guidelines state plainly that all HCS sugar targets follow the WHO free sugars definition, and that "no added sugar" means no free sugars have been added to the product.

Under the Snacks category, dried fruit has its own line, and the bar is absolute: no added fat, no added sodium from any source, and no added sugar. There's no threshold to squeak under. A dried fruit product either qualifies for the HCS "No Added Sugar" tagline or it doesn't.

The guidelines also draw a distinction that's easy to miss. In the cereals section, sugar from plain dried fruit is exempt from a product's free sugar calculation — but the guidelines explicitly exclude "sugar coated or treated fruit" from that exemption. Sweetened dried fruit is treated as what it is.

One useful bit of context while we're here: Nutri-Grade in Singapore applies to pre-packaged non-alcoholic beverages, not to snacks. Dried fruit packets won't carry a Nutri-Grade letter, so the HCS is the label to look for.

The ingredient line that changes everything

Here's the trap. Dried cranberries are the classic example: naturally very tart, and almost always sweetened to be edible. Often that sweetening is done with apple juice or fruit juice concentrate rather than cane sugar.

Under both the WHO and SACN definitions, sugars in fruit juice and fruit juice concentrate are free sugars. The SACN paper works through exactly this case: a fruit bar made from dried pressed fruit contains no free sugars, while a bar made from dried fruit plus juice concentrate has the juice-derived sugar counted in full. Stakeholders in that same consultation flagged juice-infused cranberries as a product carrying a "no added sugar" claim on the front.

So the practical rule is: read the ingredients list, not the front of the pack. If it says "cranberries, sugar" you know where you stand. If it says "cranberries (apple juice infused)" you're also looking at free sugars, just wearing a nicer outfit. And if it says only "dried mango" — one ingredient — the 40g figure on the panel genuinely is fruit sugar.

Sulphur dioxide, and who actually needs to care

Pale, bright-coloured dried apricots and pineapple are usually treated with sulphites to stop browning. In Singapore this must be declared, because sulphur dioxide is classed as an allergen.

The Singapore Food Agency demonstrated this in March 2026, when it directed a recall of a 400g dried Pineapple Slices product after detecting undeclared sulphur dioxide. SFA's own framing is measured and worth repeating: sulphite "does not pose a food safety issue to consumers at large, except for those who are intolerant of or allergic to sulphites". For that group, excessive levels can cause hives, itchiness, stomach-ache, diarrhoea and vomiting.

If you're not sulphite-sensitive, this isn't something to lose sleep over. If you are, look for E220 or "sulphur dioxide" in the ingredients list — and note that unusually vivid orange apricots are a reasonable prompt to check.

The part nobody enjoys hearing: portion size

Dried fruit is dense. A handful of raisins is several grapes' worth of sugar and calories in a form that takes ten seconds to eat, and it's very easy to work through half a bag while doing something else.

The WHO guideline is also blunt about the other risk: dental caries is the most prevalent noncommunicable disease globally, and the association between free sugars and caries is one of the two reasons the 10% recommendation exists. Plain dried fruit sugars aren't free sugars — but chewy, sticky food that lingers on teeth is worth following with water regardless.

A 20-second check at the shelf

  • Count the ingredients. One is ideal. "Fruit + sugar" or "fruit + juice concentrate" both mean free sugars.
  • Look for the HCS "No Added Sugar" tagline — on dried fruit it's an all-or-nothing standard, not a threshold.
  • Check for sulphur dioxide if you're sulphite-sensitive.
  • Read the serving size, not just the per-100g column. The panel's headline number rarely matches what you'll actually eat.
  • Ignore the absence of a Nutri-Grade letter. That scheme covers drinks, not snacks.

Dried fruit is a genuinely reasonable snack, and the scary-looking sugar number is mostly a story about removed water rather than added sweetness. The thing that separates a good pack from a mediocre one isn't on the front — it's in the ingredients list.

Where HexaCrunch fits

We think about this a lot, because we make a snack in the same awkward category: something that has to taste good enough to finish and still hold up when you turn the packet over. Our baked brown rice crackers are made with cricket protein, which is how we get protein and fibre into a cracker without leaning on added sugar or heavy salting to make it interesting.

If you'd like to see how ours reads on the back of the pack, the Try-All 3-Pack is the easiest place to start.

Sources

This article is general information, not personalised dietary advice. If you have a specific medical condition or a diagnosed food allergy, speak to your doctor or a dietitian.

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