You Might Want To Rinse Canned Fruit Before Eating It
Stocking your pantry with canned fruit is a convenient and affordable way to keep fruit on hand. It comes already cut and peeled, and unlike fresh fruit, it's got a long shelf life. While canned fruit retains a nutritional profile comparable to fresh, it often has high levels of sugar. To remove some of the excess, you might want to drain and rinse canned fruit before eating it.
The added sugars are suspended in the syrup that the fruit is canned with. Since fruit is porous, it absorbs whatever is in the liquid it's packed in, so unfortunately, washing off the syrup won't remove 100% of these additives, but it will at least take care of what's on the surface.
The amount of sugar present is related to the type of syrup used, and there is a big difference between canned fruit in light syrup vs heavy. These sweeteners usually include white sugar, corn syrup, and high fructose corn syrup. And all that added sweetness quickly adds up. Take, for example, peaches in heavy syrup — a ½ cup serving has more than 21 grams of added sugar. According to the American Heart Association, the daily limit of added sugar is 36 grams for men and 25 grams for women. Rinsing helps to remove some of these sugars while the most nutritious way to buy canned fruit is the kind packed in only water.
Wash the sugar from canned fruit but repurpose its syrup
Another benefit of canned fruit is that it's packed at the peak of freshness, guaranteeing consistency and quality. This means you can have summer fruit even in the dead of winter — making it possible for you to have seasonal treats like three-ingredient peach cobbler any time of year.
Cooking and baking with canned fruit is another good reason to rinse it before using. You can use canned fruit to make pie filling and desserts but to ensure that your cherry pie or pineapple upside-down cake recipes taste like they're supposed to, wash off the sugary syrup first to remove that tinny, straight out of the can flavor.
Setting high sugar considerations aside, one more reason to drain out the syrup is to repurpose the sweet liquid. You can save canned fruit cocktail syrup for a tasty ham glaze (or baste tofu with it if you're so inclined). It can also be used as a base for a sweet and savory teriyaki-style marinade for meats, shrimp, or roasted vegetables.