Topic: Fruit

Fruit is the easiest column in the store to win. One sweet orange gives 325.8 mg of potassium and no measurable sodium. A cup of dried apricot halves gives 1,394.4 mg against 12.0 mg. Prunes land at 1,273.7 mg against 3.5 mg. Strawberries, raspberries, rhubarb and prickly pears behave the same way: real potassium, trivial sodium, and no processing trigger to worry about, because nothing was added.

The exceptions are worth knowing, because they are not obvious. Drying concentrates everything — potassium, sugar and calories — and a cup of dried fruit disappears in a minute in a way a cup of fresh fruit does not. Canned and sweetened fruit products are a different case again, since the syrup and the added sodium in some packs land in a column the fruit itself never touched.

One fruit family carries a warning that has nothing to do with blood pressure. Grapefruit, Seville oranges, pomelos and tangelos interfere with a list of prescription medicines, including the blood-pressure drug nifedipine, which is why the FDA requires some labels to say so. Sweet oranges are not on that list — a distinction that matters more than most fruit advice.

The rest is arithmetic. DASH calls for four to five servings of fruit a day, and the reason is the potassium column rather than any general virtue of produce. Five servings built from the foods in this section cover a real share of the 3,400–4,800 mg daily potassium range at a sodium cost close to zero, which is a trade almost nothing else in the store offers.

Below: each fruit scored on both numbers, the dried-fruit caveats, and the cases where a fruit arrives attached to a problem.

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