5 Horrifying Ingredients Hiding In Your Dried Fruit

At first glance, dried fruit looks innocent. The packaging screams “wholesome,” slaps a photo of a meadow on the front, and maybe even adds a leaf logo to whisper “natural” into your subconscious. You toss it in your cart, thinking you just hacked the health system: candy, but healthy.

But then you flip the bag over. The ingredient list reads like a chemistry quiz you weren’t prepared for. Suddenly, you’re not looking at “apricots.” You’re staring down a cocktail of industrial goo disguised as a snack.

Why does this happen? Because food conglomerates are addicted—to profit, not to fruit. They lace dried fruit with sugar, preservatives, dyes, and mystery flavorings to make it last longer, look prettier, and keep you hooked like a lab rat on corn syrup. The kicker? None of that junk is actually necessary. Fruit is sweet, colorful, and delicious all on its own.

Let’s rip the shiny, eco-friendly packaging off and expose the horror show inside. Here are five horrifying ingredients hiding in your dried fruit.

1. Added Sugars & Syrups

Big Food couldn’t leave fruit alone. No, they had to drown it in a sticky bath of cane sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, or “glucose-fructose” (which is just corn syrup in witness protection).

A small bag of sweetened cranberries can pack 20+ grams of added sugar—that’s basically dessert cosplaying as health food. By the time the fruit’s been candied into submission, it’s nutritionally closer to Sour Patch Kids than anything found on a tree.

They call it “enhancing the flavor.” We call it “weaponizing fruit against your pancreas.”

2. Preservatives

Let’s talk sulfites. You know those dried apricots that glow brighter than a traffic cone? That’s sulfur dioxide keeping them unnaturally orange instead of letting them fade into their normal, rustic brown.

Preservatives like sulfites extend shelf life, sure. But they’re also linked to headaches, asthma attacks, and allergic reactions. Some people experience hives, others just get shortness of breath. Either way, that “healthy snack” is now playing respiratory roulette.

If you wouldn’t pour chemicals on your salad to make it Instagram-pretty, why would you eat them on your fruit?

3. Artificial Colors

Fruit already comes in colors. Mango is orange. Blueberries are blue. But apparently, that wasn’t loud enough for Big Food. They dump in Red 40, Yellow 5, and Blue 1—the same synthetic dyes used in neon sports drinks and carnival snow cones.

These dyes have been linked to hyperactivity in kids, migraines in adults, and existential dread in anyone who reads too many studies. But hey, at least your dried cherries look extra cherry-red while slowly poisoning you.

Artificial colors are the clown makeup of the snack world: creepy, unnecessary, and guaranteed to make you regret your choices.

4. Hydrogenated Oils

Ah yes, nothing says “nature’s candy” like a thin film of industrial sludge coating your apple rings. Some brands add hydrogenated oils (aka trans fats) to keep fruit from sticking together in the bag.

Problem: trans fats are so dangerous that even the FDA—the same folks who think pizza counts as a vegetable—finally admitted they’re linked to heart disease. That’s right, your innocent trail snack may be working a side hustle as cardiovascular sabotage.

Pro tip: fruit doesn’t need oil to taste good. That’s like deep-frying a salad and pretending it’s still healthy.

5. Artificial Flavors

When fruit stops tasting like fruit (because you’ve dehydrated it, sugared it, and preserved it to death), Big Food rolls out the chemical flavorings. “Natural flavors” may sound fine, but it’s often a legally murky umbrella term for lab-engineered compounds that make your mango taste “more mango.”

Artificial flavors are the food industry’s way of tricking your taste buds into forgetting you’re eating embalmed produce. You get the sensation of real fruit with none of the integrity. It’s like kissing someone through a plastic bag—you kind of get the idea, but it’s not the real thing.

Mortal Munchies: 1 Ingredient, Zero BS

Fruit was fine before food scientists put it through witness protection. It’s still fine when you leave it alone. That’s where we come in. Mortal Munchies makes dried fruit the way nature intended: with one ingredient—fruit. That’s it. No sulfites, no added sugars, no rainbow dyes, no oils, no flavor chemicals. Just the raw, uncut snack your ancestors would’ve eaten while fighting saber-toothed tigers.

Whether you’re chewing on Malicious Mango, Bad Apple, Belligerent Blueberry, or Cherry Bomb, you know exactly what you’re eating. Real fruit, real flavor, no FDA-approved nonsense.

So next time you pick up a bag of dried fruit, flip it over. If the ingredient list reads like a chemistry set, put it back. If it says “fruit” and nothing else, congrats—you found food that won’t kill you.

Or just skip the ingredient detective work and buy Mortal Munchies. One ingredient. Zero BS. All the taste, none of the horror.