Premium Dried Pineapple Chunks - 5lb Bulk Bag | Kosher Certified, Rich in Vitamins, Minerals & Fiber | Healthy Vegan Snack for Hiking, Office & Kids Lunch | Antioxidant-Rich Natural Sweet Treat

It's tasty. It's a lot of it. And it's label is very confusing to a lot of people. While I can't say much other than "It's dried pineapple and tastes like dried pineapple" for the quality of the product, quite a lot of research will allow me to clear up some confusion about this. Onward!The Praise (Good stuff):===================+ No sugar added (really, details below)+ Nutritious (It's pineapple) Potassium, vitamins, all the stuff+ Good quality and flavor when it arrives in good conditionThe Raze (Bad stuff):=================- All food deliveries through Amazon can end up with spoiled product that you often have no recourse for. Thankfully this appears to be rather rare.The Haze (Stuff to consider):=======================* The fat declaration on the packaging may not meet FDA standard* This is NOT low calorie (Most dried fruit isn't) and is rather tastily-addictive* The nature of drying food creates nutritional information that is exceptionally confusingThe sordid details...I looked at reviews and the label and was trying hard to comprehend having sugar as an ingredient but having the nutrition label listed as "0g added sugar". So I proceeded to do many hours of research on drying and FDA labeling guidelines, and now I present the delightfully more-confusing results of this.No sugar added?==============Everything used in the creation of the food that may have any presence in the food must be listed in order of amount of the ingredient. Pineapples are 87-90% water when fresh and ripe (as they must be before being dried). Then they are dried by osmotic drying, which means that they are dropped into a 67% sugar solution and left there for quite some time.During this sugary swim, the water concentration inside the pineapple is much higher than outside and osmosis causes the water to flow out of the pineapple and into the sugar solution. A little bit of sugar goes into the pineapple also, but not enough to reach 0.5 grams of sugar per 40g of dried fruit (it ends up being about 0.02g of sugar per 40g of dried fruit). Since FDA labeling requirements round anything under 0.5g as 0g, there are "officially" 0g of added sugar, even though there is logically 0.02g of added sugar.It's "Not enough added sugar to count as any added sugar". And to put it into practical perspective, you'd need to eat 1500g, or three pounds five ounces, to have it first count as "1g of added sugar" when it reaches 0.75g of added sugar. To get to an actual 1g of added sugar, you'd need to eat 4.4 pounds, almost the whole bag. That would be 4 calories from added sugar in 7000 calories of dried pineapple.Sulfur Dioxide... SO2=================This keeps the pineapple pineapple-colored and not brown and weird. After the 67% sugar soak, it goes for a very brief time into a 60% sugar. 1% SO2 (in the form of sodium metabisulphite or potassium metabisulphite) soak. This is less than bananas go into before being dried and results in a very low amount of SO2 as a preservative since very little of it gets into the outermost layer of the fruit.Candied candy?==============If anybody who claims it's candied pineapple is telling the truth in fact and not just their opinion, then they did not get the same product that is on this listing. First, the logic:Every 4g chunk of dried pineapple started its life as a 25-30g chunk of fresh pineapple. That's a lot of sugar stuck in there, and then mostly water. Just like eating a spoonful of sugar is sweeter than putting that spoonful into water, the concentrated sugar in the dried pineapple will be sweeter than the fresh pineapple.Then the obvious test:Lick a chunk.It's mildly sweet, but only very, VERY little sweet. That's because the sugar water it was soaked in was rinsed off and there is no sugar on the outside like candied pineapple would have.So yes, dried fruit is "nature's candy", but it's not candied pineapple if you receive the correct product.But... one oddity...===============*Insert dramatic music here.... duh duh duuuuuuuhn*We Got Nuts is the brand name of We Go Nuts Inc. It's not a typo! Oh, yeah... also....I wasn't able to find any FDA regulation or explanation for why it appears to show 0g of fat but 1g of saturated fat. Anything less than 0.5g rounds to 0, but even about the same amount of fresh pineapple has only about 0.3 to 0.4g of total fat and 0g listed of saturated fat. Even a WHOLE PINEAPPLE only has 0.1g of saturated fat listed. Even on their web site, they list 0g total and 1g saturated fat. So I really don't know, but unless they found a way to add fat, I suspect it's just a stupid mistake or hyper-vigilant rounding up. 0.03g must round to 1 because there is some at all? O.oThe end result============Dried fruit is good for you. If you don't get a fake product, it's got "No(t enough) Sugar Added (to count legally or to your body)", it's tasty and good quality.It's just apparently exceptionally confusing.Enjoy!Research Sources:Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations for information on drying fruit.US Food and Drug Administration NLEA requirements Attachment 7 for nutrition rounding mandates