Raisins
Food · Fruit · Food, Typed Supps
Seventy-four grams of sugar per hundred, and it is all intrinsic to the grape.
Stage by stage
- Adhesion (Teeth): They stick, which extends acid contact — the real dental issue, not the sugar mass.
- Concentrated (Stomach): About 80% of the water gone, and everything else concentrated in proportion.
- Potassium (Circulation): 915 mg per 100 g — over four times a banana by weight.
- Not free sugar (Gut): Cell walls stay intact through drying, so WHO does not count these as free sugars.
Timing
With meals if teeth matter. Contact time drives caries far more than quantity does, and raisins are unusually adhesive.
Time to effect
- Per 30 g box: About 22 g sugar, 275 mg potassium and 0.5 mg iron.
- Cumulative: The potassium and iron contribute over time rather than acutely.
Allergens
None of the fourteen major allergens. Derived from what this food is, not from a product label.
Eating patterns
Fits: Vegan, Vegetarian, Pescatarian, Halal, Kosher, Gluten-free. Depends on the product: Low-FODMAP.
Satiety
110 on the satiety index, where white bread is 100 — moderate. Modelled from the Holt et al. (1995) measurements.
Environmental footprint
1.1 kg CO2e and 199 litres of freshwater per kg, matched to "Other fruit" in Poore & Nemecek (2018), Science 360.
Cost band
Cheap — roughly £3 per kg, as a band midpoint rather than a price.
Key nutrients
Nutrition per 100g
- Calories: 306
- Protein: 2.1g
- Carbohydrate: 74.4g
- of which sugars: 74.1g
- Fat: 0.9g
- Fibre: 2.2g
- Sodium: 5mg
Food vs. supplement
Raisins and grape juice come from the same fruit and are classified differently: drying leaves the cell walls intact, juicing breaks them. That single structural fact is what separates intrinsic sugar from free sugar.
Kitchen tip
With a meal rather than grazed through the afternoon. The stickiness is the dental problem, and contact time is what drives it.
Common myth
“Dried fruit is just concentrated sugar — no better than lollies.” In reality: WHO does not count dried fruit sugars as free sugars, because drying leaves the plant cell walls intact — the same reason juice does count. Raisins also carry 915 mg of potassium per 100 g, over four times a banana by weight, plus iron. The genuine caution is dental: they stick to teeth, and contact time drives caries more than sugar quantity does.
Recipes that use it
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