Dried mango slices should look like this! And they should contain “mango” and NO other ingredients! Yum!

You have a craving for some candy, but you hold strong and refuse to give into the temptation of all of those artificial colors and flavors. You reach for some dried fruit, instead, and rest easy knowing that at least you’re eating something “natural,” right? Well, kind of…maybe…..sort of….it depends – – You MUST read the ingredients list!

Let’s take dried mango, for example… because it’s my FAVORITE!! 🙂

You wouldn’t think you’d need to even look for an ingredients list on something like “dried mango.” After all, isn’t it just self-explanatory? You’d think so…and that’s how it should be….but that’s not how it is!

Here’s an example of some dried mango I recently purchased at Trader Joe’s in Omaha (not that Trader Joe’s is necessarily any better/worse than any other retailer – believe me, they also sell versions of dried fruit that are not so pure as this example).

(click photo to enlarge)

(click photo to enlarge)

Ingredients list shows that the product contains just “mango,” which is all that I would use if I were to dry some mango at home (click picture to enlarge).

Compare that ingredient list to the one on the bag  below. Granted, there’s still some “real fruit” in there, as the front of the package suggests. However, there are a few other things in there that you might not suspect. What makes this mango so much different from the others that it needs artificial colors, etc. to be added!?!? I’m not sure I want to know!!

(click photo to enlarge)

(click photo to enlarge)

My advice: Look for dried fruits that contain nothing but fruit in the ingredients list! They are out there!