Help Toddlers Breathe Easy With Sulfite-Free Dried Fruit

Z's tiny cross to bear in her life so far seems to rest directly on her lungs. She frequently has a cough and it has developed into bronchitis a few times in three years, the first case turning into pneumonia which required around three days in the hospital. Her most recent case emerged last week, and she has had a tiny, borderline-cute case of 'roid rage for the past seven days as she worked her way through a steroid which I, devoted blogger that I am, just dug through the kitchen trash to try to find the bottle to help name, because yes, today was the last day. Hurrah! Steroids make young children flighty, agitated, and aggressive, giving them higher-than-normal energy levels which they don't know what to do with, and which might lead to a lot of YELLING and various random and nonsensical HEATED ARGUMENTS.

Z's routine treatments include exercise limits during "coughy" periods, albuterol and a nebullizer (a cute penguin-shaped one at that - also comes in truck and train versions!), two daily allergy meds, and a vigilant, Roomba-assisted floor-sweeping regimen.

After digging a little deeper, we discovered that one of Z's favorite foods, the dried fruit she relishes in her morning bowl of yogurt or in Jenni's homemade cereal bars (we'll post a recipe in an upcoming Food Week next month) could be contributing to her respiratory problems. We had been regular consumers of dried cherries, blueberries, and cranberries, and the culprit was not the fruits themselves, but the sulfites used as preservatives in most storebought brands of dried fruit. (One of the little boogers is modeled in the graphic at top.)

The Food and Drug Administration's FDA Consumer says the following about sulfites:

Of all the food additives for which FDA has received adverse reaction reports, the ones that most closely resemble true allergens are sulfur-based preservatives. Sulfites are used primarily as antioxidants to prevent or reduce discoloration of light-colored fruits and vegetables, such as dried apples and potatoes, and to inhibit the growth of microorganisms in fermented foods such as wine.

Though most people don't have a problem with sulfites, they are a hazard of unpredictable severity to people, particularly asthmatics, who are sensitive to these substances. FDA uses the term "allergic-type responses" to describe the range of symptoms suffered by these individuals after eating sulfite-treated foods. Responses range from mild to life-threatening.

FDA's sulfite specialists say scientists, at this time, are not sure how the body reacts to sulfites. To help sulfite-sensitive people avoid problems, FDA requires the presence of sulfites in processed foods to be declared on the label, and prohibits the use of sulfites on fresh produce intended to be sold or served raw to consumers. [Link]

So in the interest of reduced coughing, we have been going without. We knew it wasn't a permanent situation, though, because there are sulfite-free dried fruit suppliers out there, and we just needed to find them. Now we have, and we thought we'd share what we found.

Amazon sells a variety of grocery items these days, with an emphasis on products that are high in value for their weight and aren't found on every street corner. Dried fruit is a perfect fit.

The best contender we found for sulfite-free basic fruits was Bare Fruit, which offers fruit in snack packs and in bulkier quantities. They sell dried cherries in cases of 24, 2.6-oz. snack-packs for around $30 (that's about $7.70 a pound for organic dried fruit!) or two pounds in bulk for about $20. They sell several other kinds of fruit, too - mangoes, apples, and bananas - at comparable prices.

If you're looking to experiment with something more exotic, Organic Nectars offers a variety of tiny, weird berries from exotic places - Tibetan Goji berries - the "small, sweet dried berries taste like cross between cranberries and raisins" - and Incan berries - "large, golden-brown, dried berries with tart/tangy taste and tiny, crunchy, chewable seeds." Prices for these mountain fruits range from about $1 to $1.50 an ounce.

You can also buy sulfite-free fruit leathers. Stretch Island makes a Fruitabu line of "smooshed fruit" which sells on Amazon for about $14 for four boxes of eight .4-oz strips, or in bulkier quantities for a bit more. (Those logic-defying Stretch Islanders!) That works out to over $1 an ounce too. You can also buy it direct from the company for even more if you're feeling spendy.

Check out all of Amazon's organic dried fruits here. As with many other Amazon departments, orders of $25 or more get free shipping, and several companies are competing for your berry-buying dollars.

Off the Amazon grid, Just Tomatoes, Etc. has what is quite likely the worst company name/website address in the dried-fruit-and-vegetable business. Guess what - they sell more than "just" tomatoes! In fact, they sell a wide variety of dried veggie mixes for snacking as well as a large assortment of freeze-dried fruits, including a few you don't see too often - persimmons, pomegranate, peaches, and raspberries. The freeze-drying makes for a crunchier texture, and the reduced moisture and thus lighter weight may explain their higher prices; 8-oz. cups of fruit sell for around $15. (Thanks for the correction, Elizabeth!)

If fresh fruit is in season and prices are good, drying your own fruit is not as hard as you might assume, and a dehydrator pays for itself fairly quickly. We have a Nesco food dehydrator we'll be pulling out of the closet soon - we did a lot of fruit and even vegetable drying before Z was born, and now we have a good reason to get serious about it again. The model we have, a Nesco Gardenmaster food dehydrator, is a good value and its design makes the trays easy to clean. The model sells for around $120 and delivers 1,000 watts of power, which makes for fast food drying, but Nesco also makes a 700-watt model ($60) and a 450-watt one ($40) with fewer drying racks. Drying your own fruit means you can preserve things you grow (we have a prolific fig tree) and also stock up at the peak of your favorite fruits' seasons, when stores are selling them almost at cost in order to get the stuff out the door.