Drying pulls the water out and concentrates everything left. Sugar climbs from roughly 15% of the fresh fruit to 60–80% of the dried, which is why the aisle feels like confectionery. But the fibre, potassium, and polyphenols concentrate at the same time: a 30 g handful of raisins carries the potassium of a large banana ¹, and that matrix flattens the glucose curve the sugar would otherwise drive.

The glucose response is lower than the sugar suggests. Dried apricots score 42 on the glycaemic index, raisins 55, both well under white bread at 71 ².

Prunes are the bone fruit. Over twelve months, six prunes a day held postmenopausal hip density flat, a 0.3% drop against the control group's 1.1% ³; cortical density and tibia strength were preserved too ⁴. No other variety reproduces it.

Raisins are the blood-pressure fruit. In pre-hypertensive adults, about 84 g a day instead of a processed snack cut systolic pressure by 6 to 10 mm Hg ⁵, the range DASH delivers ⁶. On top of the crisps, you just keep the crisps.

Prunes are also the bowel fruit. For chronic constipation, 50 g twice a day beat the same dose of psyllium on stool frequency and consistency ⁷. The sorbitol pulls water into the colon; the effect lands inside a week.

Portion the handful, then pick the variety for the job. Eat it with a meal rather than grazing across the afternoon.

Pairing it with protein or fat, rather than refined carbs on an empty stomach, flattens the curve further and leaves less residue on your teeth.

The payoff arrives on different schedules.

• Within a week: if you were chronically constipated, prunes turn a once-every-few-days problem into something you stop planning around.
• Four to twelve weeks: swap the afternoon crisps for raisins and the home cuff starts reading lower.
• Six to twelve months: for the bone case, the DXA scan is the first place it shows. What you don't feel is what you didn't break.