How many teaspoons of sugar in raisins?

Raisins are dried grapes. Most are made from seedless green grape varieties, dried in the sun or in dehydrators until they lose most of their water, which darkens them. Sultanas and currants are close relatives made from different grapes or dried in different ways.

Dr Unwin’s fruits vs vegetables chart lists raisins at 60g, about a third of a cup. That is half the 120g weight the fruits chart uses for fresh fruit. The chart gives a glycaemic index of 64, in the medium band.

The chart prints the teaspoon figure but no glycaemic load, so the load here was back-calculated.

A second chart supports the figure. The sugar burden chart places raisins in its column of naturally occurring sugars, at 17.1 teaspoons per 100g. Scaled to 60g, that is 10.3, matching the fruits vs vegetables chart.

The fruits vs vegetables chart is arranged in two blocks. Boiled potato, sweet corn, frozen peas and cabbage come first; raisins lead the fruit rows, above banana, apple and strawberry.

Small snack boxes of raisins weigh much less than 60g, and the figure scales with weight. In baking, raisins are one ingredient among several, as in malt loaf, which the sugar burden chart lists separately under foods with added sugars.